The School of Professional Studies in Business and Education has announced two new appointments in its Undergraduate Division. Amy M. Yerkes, executive assistant to the dean since 1997, has been appointed director of external academic programs, and John Robert Baker Sr. has been appointed director of technology programs.

Yerkes holds a master's in English from the Pennsylvania State University and is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. With interests in 18th- and 19th-century American literature, literature by women, and the history of literary theory, she also will serve as a faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Studies program.

Prior to her arrival at SPSBE, Yerkes lectured at Western Maryland College; served as an instructor in composition and critical reading at the University of Maryland School of Medicine; and taught modern drama, American women writers and American autobiography at the University of Pennsylvania.

Baker holds a master's in business degree from Hopkins and a bachelor's in computer science from Loyola College. He has more than 25 years' experience in managing, designing, marketing and implementing technology in a broad array of fields, including business, education, finance, aerospace and government. He once served as project manager for a space shuttle information support team and has undertaken computer system work for the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Department of the Navy.

Since 1998, Baker has been a senior faculty associate in SPSBE, assisting the business technology program director with program development and operation. He previously served as director of technology programs for the school from 1987 to 1995. Since 1995, he had been director of consulting services for JRB Advanced Technologies Group in Columbia, Md., where he provided consultation, planning and project managing services for clients such as AT&T, MCI, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
--Neil A. Grauer