People on the Move

Elms College has named accomplished higher-education executive Antoinette Candia-Bailey the college’s first vice president of Student Affairs and chief Diversity officer. Reporting directly to the president, Candia-Bailey, who will join Elms College on April 1, will be responsible for the strategic oversight and management of the college’s Student Affairs and Diversity and Inclusion offices. Candia-Bailey is joining Elms from the University of Wisconsin Madison (UWM), where she currently serves as senior project coordinator to the deputy vice chancellor for Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to that, she was associate dean of students and Student Life at UWM. Abiding by the college’s social-distancing policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, she will be working remotely at the start of her tenure. The position of vice president of Student Affairs and chief Diversity officer is a new one for the college. Candia-Bailey will be responsible for providing leadership, management, and supervision to the director of Diversity and Inclusion, the dean of students, the director of Campus Ministry, and the director of Athletics. She will advise the president and other members of the executive leadership team on all student-affairs and diversity matters. Candia-Bailey has more than 20 years of progressive experience in student affairs and diversity and inclusion at higher-education institutions, including North Carolina State University, Towson University in Maryland, and North Carolina A&T State University. She holds a doctoral degree in leadership studies from North Carolina A&T State University, a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling and disability studies from Michigan State University, and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Lincoln University in Missouri.

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Nicholas Reich, a UMass Amherst biostatistician who directs the UMass-based Flu Forecasting Center of Excellence, was invited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force to participate in last month’s coronavirus modeling webinar. The four-hour, virtual gathering included 20 of the world’s leading infectious-disease and pandemic forecasting modelers, from researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. to those based at institutions in England, Hong Kong, South Africa, and the Netherlands. Reich, associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at UMass Amherst, heads a flu-forecasting collaborative that has produced some of the world’s most accurate models in recent years. He and postdoctoral researcher Thomas McAndrew have been conducting weekly surveys of more than 20 infectious-disease-modeling researchers to assess their collective expert opinion on the trajectory of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. The researchers and modeling experts design, build, and interpret models to explain and understand infectious-disease dynamics and the associated policy implications in human populations. Reich is co-author of a new study in Annals of Internal Medicine that calculates that the median incubation period for COVID-19 is just over five days and that 97.5% of people who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days of infection. The incubation period refers to the time between exposure to the virus and the appearance of the first symptoms. The study’s lead author is UMass Amherst biostatistics doctoral alumnus Stephen Lauer, a former member of the Reich Lab and current postdoctoral researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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PeoplesBank announced the appointments and promotion of several key associates. Eric Coutinho has been appointed mortgage consultant for Hartford and Tolland counties. In his new position, he assists homebuyers with finding the right mortgage option as well as guiding them through the application process. Coutinho has a history of volunteer service that includes serving on the fundraising committee for Longmeadow Knights Cheerleading. Aieshya Jackson has been appointed Westfield Banking Center manager. She has more than 10 years of financial services and banking experience. In her new position, she oversees and manages all aspects of a full-service banking center, including staffing, sales, lending, operations, business development, and community relations. Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bay Path University. Her volunteer service includes serving as an executive member of the board of directors of Martin Luther King Jr. Family Services, where she serves as chair of the financial committee. She also serves on the board of directors for Junior Achievement of Western Massachusetts. Daniel Malkin has been appointed East Granby Banking Center manager. He has more than eight years of financial services and banking experience. In his new position, he oversees sales and operational success of the banking center. Malkin is a member of the board of directors for the Bradley Chamber of Commerce and Kent Memorial Library in Suffield. Sara Roberts has been promoted to Sixteen Acres Banking Center manager. She has more than 10 years of financial-services and banking experience. In her new position, she aims to ensure the banking center meets and exceeds service and sales goals, provides excellent customer service, operates according to all bank policies and procedures, and serves as a leader within the community. She previously served as the assistant Banking Center manager in Holyoke. Roberts has a history of volunteer service that includes providing financial-literacy instruction for Credit for Life and at the Picknelly Adult and Family Education Center.