Dr. Lucinda Austin
Dr. Lucinda Austin is an Associate Professor and serves as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She earned her BS from Radford University, and her MA and PhD in Communication from the University of Maryland College Park. Dr. Austin joined the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill in 2016 and has held multiple prior leadership roles, including Interim Senior Associate Dean, Director of the PhD and Master’s in Theory in Research Programs, and serving on Faculty Council. In her prior faculty appointment at Elon University (2011-2016), she served as Associate Director of the Honors Program.
Dr. Austin has actively served the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) for over 15 years in positions such as Public Relations Division Head and Research Chair and now serves on the AEJMC Research Committee. She also sits on the Advisory Committee for the International Public Relations Research Conference and serves on the Global Strategic Communication Consortium and the Commission on Public Relations Education.
Dr. Austin’s past professional experience includes research for clients such as CDC, HHS, FEMA, and Red Cross. She has won multiple top paper awards and has been awarded the AEJMC Mass Communication and Society Research and Promising Professor Awards, the Arthur W. Page Center’s Scholar Awards, and NCA’s PRIDE Award. She is also co-editor of two Routledge books on Social Media and Crisis Communication (2017/2022). Dr. Austin’s research focuses on pressing problems in strategic communication, primarily addressing social media’s influence on health and crisis communications and explores publics’ perspectives in corporate social responsibility and advocacy.
Dr. Austin has authored close to 70 journal articles and book chapters including top journals such as Communication Research, New Media and Society, Health Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, and many more. She also serves on multiple editorial boards, including the Journal of Public Relations Research, Contingencies and Crisis Management, and more.
Dr. J.D. DeFreese
Dr. J.D. DeFreese is a Teaching Associate Professor and serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. DeFreese grew up in Indiana, completing his undergraduate degree at Indiana University and his doctorate in Kinesiology, with a specialization in Sport and Exercise Psychology, at Purdue University. He also completed his postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining the Exercise and Sport Science faculty in 2016.
Dr. DeFreese holds research, teaching, and service roles at UNC Chapel Hill. His research examines the associations among current and former athlete mental, physical, and social functioning. His recent work has focused on how the transition from sport to non-sport activities is specifically associated with important biopsychosocial outcomes for athletes. In addition to research, Dr. DeFreese also teaches courses on sport and exercise psychology and research methods in the Exercise and Sport Science Department. In his role as Director of Undergraduate Studies in EXSS,a department that has approximately 1,300 undergraduate majors, he oversees the undergraduate curriculum, provides major and career guidance to undergraduate students, and is a member of the EXSS Leadership Team and Curriculum Committee. Dr. DeFreese also provides service to the UNC Chapel Hill community as a member of the Faculty Athletics Committee.
Outside of UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. DeFreese is an active participant in service to the sport and exercise psychology discipline as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology and the Chair of the American Psychological Association’s Division 47 Cornerstone Committee. Dr. DeFreese is an alum of multiple UNC Chapel Hill leadership development programs conducted by the Center for Faculty Excellence, including the Leadership Fundamentals Training, TEAM ADVANCE Faculty Mentor Training, and Peer Coaching programs.
Dr. Anna Krome-Lukens
Dr. Anna L. Krome-Lukens is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. She completed her BA in Anthropology and History at the University of Virginia, then earned a PhD in U.S. History at UNC Chapel Hill. Since 2015, Dr. Krome-Lukens has served as Director of Experiential Education for Public Policy, overseeing the success of a growing capstone program in which students work with community partners to conduct policy research. Dr. Krome-Lukens was recognized with the Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award for Engaged Teaching in 2021 and the Chapman Family Teaching Award in 2024. She teaches courses in higher education policy, the intersection of history and policy, and the Future of Food (a Triple-I course).
Dr. Krome-Lukens’ research focuses on the history of social welfare and public health policies, particularly the history of North Carolina’s eugenics and social welfare programs in the early 20th century. Her current book manuscript, The Reform Imagination: Eugenics and the Welfare State in the South, demonstrates the lasting influence of eugenics in shaping welfare policies and conceptions of citizenship. Her article manuscript, The Newest Science: The Appeal of Eugenics in the Progressive-Era South, was a finalist for the 2014 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award from the Organization of American Historians.
Throughout her time at Carolina, Dr. Krome-Lukens has been active in the broader University community. Her committee service has included the Faculty Advisory Committee, Faculty Council, the Administrative Board of the Library, and the University Committee on Copyright. From 2022 – 2025, she served as Director of Research Curricula in the Office for Undergraduate Research, where she oversaw the Carolina Research Scholars Program and the Graduate Research Consultant Program and supported the development of Research and Discovery courses across the University. She has also mentored undergraduate students through the UNC Scholars program and as a faculty advisor for student organizations.
Dr. Anne Lyerly
Dr. Anne D. Lyerly is a Professor in the Department of Social Medicine and a Research Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UNC’s School of Medicine. She is also a core faculty member in the Center for Bioethics at UNC Chapel Hill. She obtained her BA at Dartmouth College, MD at Duke University, and MA at Georgetown University. A board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and bioethicist, Dr. Lyerly studies ethically complex issues around women’s health and reproductive medicine, with a focus on how people assign meaning to reproductive events. She has addressed a range of topics including stem cell research, miscarriage, maternal-fetal surgery, vaginal birth after cesarean, forced treatment, conscience, and others.
Dr. Lyerly co-founded the Second Wave Initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of pregnant people are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies, and has led several NIH funded projects producing ethics guidance for research in pregnancy in U.S. and global contexts. She teaches in the School of Medicine and recently was appointed to co-Direct the Social and Health Systems course in the Medical School. She mentors at every level across the campus and the U.S.
Dr. Lyerly is a fellow of the Hastings Center and an elected member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. She is also an alumna of the Greenwall Foundation’s Faculty Scholars Program and Fellowship in Bioethics and Health Policy. She has served on numerous national committees, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Ethics, which she chaired; the National Institutes of Health Advisory Committee to the Director’s Working Group on Stem Cell Research; and the March of Dimes National Bioethics Committee. She has served as an advisor for the NIH, the FDA and the World Health Organization. Dr. Lyerly is the author of “A Good Birth” (Penguin Group/USA, 2014) and has written dozens of articles and book chapters for academic and public audiences, including publications in journals such as JAMA and The Lancet as well as the New York Times.
Dr. Lisa Rahangdale
Dr. Lisa Rahangdale is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and serves as the Associate Dean for Admissions at the UNC School of Medicine. She attended UNC Chapel Hill for her BS and MD degrees, then the University of California-Berkeley for her MPH. She completed her OBGYN residency at Northwestern University and fellowship in Reproductive Infectious Disease at the University of California-San Francisco. Dr. Rahangdale was a NIH K12-funded Women’s Reproductive Health Research Scholar at Stanford University before joining the faculty at UNC in 2009, where she has been actively engaged in all aspects of the UNC SOM’s tripartite mission.
As the Associate Dean for Admissions for the UNC School of Medicine since 2017, Dr. Rahangdale serves as Chair of the Admissions Committee, working to identify outstanding candidates for our medical school to ensure that we meet our mission to build the physician workforce across North Carolina and beyond. In the clinical arena, she has taken on multiple outpatient and inpatient leadership roles in the Department of OBGYN in service of expanding the clinical footprint and care of women in our region. Dr. Rahangdale is also a clinician scientist with extramural funding and international expertise in the fields of HIV, HPV, and cervical cancer prevention. She is an Editorial Board member for the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a member of the DHHS Perinatal HIV Prevention Guidelines committee.
Dr. Rahangdale serves as a research mentor and trained coach to colleagues, trainees, and students across the School of Medicine. She is a program leader in the “Leader as Coach” program, which supports faculty and staff who are developing their coaching skills. Through these experiences, Dr. Rahangdale views the combined contributions of the clinical, education, and research missions at the School of Medicine as critical tools to diminish health disparities and promote the health of women and families across the state of North Carolina.
Dr. Viji Sathy
Dr. Viji Sathy is the incoming Associate Chair for Curricula and Faculty Affairs and an Associate Professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science. She is also a core faculty member in the Matthew Gfeller Center and the Injury Prevention Research Center. Dr. Register-Mihalik serves as the Co-Director of the STAR Heel Performance Laboratory as well as the Traumatic Division Director for the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research. She completed her B.S. in Athletic Training at the University of Alabama and her M.A., Ph.D., and Post-Doctoral training at UNC-Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the faculty in Exercise and Sport Science, she served as the Senior Research Associate in the Emergency Services Institute at WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, NC.
Dr. Register-Mihalik’s primary research work is based in her background as an Athletic Trainer and centers on novel behavioral and clinical interventions to improve concussion care across the lifespan. She has been the recipient of several research grants to pursue this line of work including funding from the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control, and several foundations. Dr. Register-Mihalik is also an active member of many professional organizations, including the National Athletic Trainers’ Association and the American College of Sports Medicine.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, she has served on several department and University committees including the Administrative Board of the Library, the University Teaching Awards Committee, and the Vice Chancellor for Research Search Committee. She has a passion for inclusive faculty community and development as well as fostering and participating in a culture of innovation.
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse is the Associate Chair and a Professor in the Department of History in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. He is also the Faculty Director of the Office of Distinguished Scholarships at UNC Chapel Hill. He attended Princeton University for his BA degree, then Harvard University for his MA and PhD.
Dr. Waterhouse is a historian of modern America. His scholarly research focuses on the culture and politics of business in the United States, especially since the mid-twentieth century. He supervises graduate students in fields related to business history, labor history, economic culture, and American politics since World War II. At UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Waterhouse teaches courses in American business history, modern U.S. social and political history, the history of capitalism, and the history of finance and financial crises.
Dr. Waterhouse’s work has appeared in Aeon.co, Financial History, and Jacobin, among other outlets, and he has contributed several book reviews and op-eds to The Washington Post. His first book,Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA (2014), examined the role of large national business associations – and their lobbyists—in shaping economic policy and conservative politics between the 1960s and the 1990s. His second book, The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2017), provided a synthetic treatment of American business, labor, and politics from the colonial period until the 2008 Financial Crisis. Dr. Waterhouse is most recently the author of One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion that Conquered America (W.W. Norton, 2024), which explores how so many Americans came to believe that self-employment was the key not only to personal fulfillment but also to national economic growth. This work was supported through a grant received from UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities.