Former Diversity Scholars

Caroline Charles received her BA from Williams College in 2018, she is currently a PhD Candidate in the English department at Syracuse University, and a 2023-2024 Diversity Scholars Fellow at Ithaca College. Her dissertation,Practices of the Black Visual Archive in Film,argues that cinema is a generative space in which Black cultural workers have negotiated and challenged the institutional constraints of traditional archival repositories. Her project closely analyzes the creative methods that late 20thand early 21stcentury Black filmmakers have employed to intervene in material histories shaped by Black visual subjection, hypervisibility, fragmentation, and absence.

In 2019-2020, Caroline was awarded Syracuse University’s African American Studies Fellowship, and in 2022 she was selected to be aGraduate Curatorial and Instruction Assistant in Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). In that position, Caroline co-curated the exhibition,A Love Supreme: Black Cultural Expression and Political Activism of the 1960s and 1970s, an archival exploration of the Black Arts and Black Power Movements previously on display in the SCRC and currently exhibited in Syracuse’s Community Folk Art Center. As a 2023 recipient of the Humanities NY Public Humanities Grant, Caroline is currently working co-collaboratively on a project titled Family Pictures Syracuse. This initiative seeks to build a more inclusive archive of the city of Syracuse using the community’s every day, family photographs.

Nushelle de Silva received her PhD in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022. She holds a SMArchS, also from MIT, and a BA in Architecture from Princeton University.

Her work is broadly concerned with how culture is defined and deployed to further imperialism in the present. Past research topics include U.S. industrial exhibits selling capitalist development in non-aligned countries, dubious museum policies for accruing and disposing of collections, distortions of heritage discourse to maintain ethnic hegemony, and the institutionalization of counter-culture movements to majoritarian ends.

Her dissertation, "Moving Experiences: Traveling Museum Exhibitions and the Infrastructures of Cultural Globalization," examines how the ambitions of international organizations dedicated to cultural peacebuilding spatially reorganized museums to prioritize object exchange through traveling exhibitions in the mid-twentieth century and argues that the uneven globalization facilitated by these exhibitions still augments rather than alleviates the coloniality of museums.

Her doctoral research has been supported by the Winterthur Museum, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Design History Society, among others.

Sayanti Mondal is a Doctoral candidate at Department of English Studies, Illinois State University. Her dissertation, titled "Illustrating Postcolonial indigeneity: Locating experimenting , Collaborative Indian Graphic Narratives in the Twenty-First Century", reassesses the genre of South-Asian postcolonial graphic narratives, particularly the Indian graphic narrative genre, as it experiments with autochthonous modes of storytelling in representing Indigenous epistemologies, while also examining these texts as 'glocal' cultural artifacts circulating within the contemporary twenty-first century global market. 

Her research interests include South-Asian literature, Children's Literature, Transmedia studies, Writing Studies, and Postcolonial Museum Studies. She has designed and taught both Composition and Literature/Literary Genres and Theory courses at ISU, where she also received the Diversity and Equity Teaching Award in 2021.

Lycinda was a Diversity Scholar in the Psychology Department for the 2020-21 academic year. She received her Doctor of Philosophy-PhD Counseling Psych at the University of Houston.

Cedrick was a 2020-21 Diversity Scholar within sociology. He completed his PhD at Boston College and now works within the Rochester, NY school district as an administrator.

Stephan was a Diversity Scholar in the Economics Department for the 2019-2020 academic year and taught Race and Economic Power in the fall and Mathematical Economics in the spring. He wrote his dissertation on extended family wealth and higher education as a PhD student at American University. He has research published on Puerto Rico in Diálogo, a Latin American and Latinx Studies journal, and on stratification economics in an edited collection on "post-racial" frameworks (2020, Routledge). Lefebvre earned his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his M.A. from American University.  . He now works as an Assistant Professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

Gloria was a Diversity Scholar within the education department for the 2019-2020 academic year. Her fall course was Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. She finished her dissertation, “Pedagogies of The Movement: Malaquias Montoya and Teachings of Chicano Public Art” as a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Poveda (previously Toriche) earned a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies with a minor in Sociology from the University of California, Davis and an M. A. in Chicana/o Studies with an emphasis in Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Gloria is currently a lecturer in California Northstate University's Health Sciences department. 

Natasha was a Diversity Scholar for the Department of Psychology during the 2019-2020 academic year while also a PhD candidate in the Social Psychology program at the University of Kansas. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Surrey, in the UK. Natasha's research integrates decolonial and feminist theory with a cultural psychological approach. She is currently writing her dissertation, which utilizes social cognition research to examine ethnocentrism in normative beliefs about women's sexuality.   She is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ithaca College.

Jonathan worked in the Writing Department as a 2019-2020 Diversity Scholar while also a PhD candidate in the English Department at Northeastern University. Osborne co-edited a collection of essays titled Landmark Essays on Rhetorics of Difference (2018, Routledge). His dissertation, titled "Difference within Difference: A Study of Modern Black Conservative Rhetoric" analyzes the rhetorical techniques of prominent Black conservatives to understand how they persuade audiences. Osborne earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Tulane University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Louisianna State University.

Ryan was also a 2019-2020 scholar and his area of research was Representation Theory and Lie Theory. As a graduate student, he was actively involved in the National Math Alliance, whose goal is to increase the number of underrepresented students getting into PhD programs in mathematics. He also organized a Math Circle at an elementary school where he worked to support and increase the success in mathematics of fourth/fifth grade students. Ryan was recognized for his work, receiving numerous awards, including a Commencement award and being appointed Student Marshal.  He currently teaches at California State University, East Bay in the Mathematics Department. 

Zohreh Soltani was a Diversity Scholar Fellow in the Department of Art History for the 2018-2019 academic year. She is assistant professor of architectural studies in the department of Art, Art History, and Architecture at Ithaca College. Dr. Soltani is trained as an architect and architectural historian specializing in modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism of the Islamic World, committed to studying it through the analytic lenses of buildings and cities, using a critically informed and layered approach to understanding historical change, the accretion of memory, and the impact of radical political changes, trauma, and war on modern Middle Eastern landscapes. 

Vanessa was a 2018-2019 scholar in the Sociology Department. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Marist College in New York.

Shahan was a 2018-2019 scholar with a focus on Women and Gender Studies. He graduated from Arizona State University as a Doctor of Philosophy.

Shehnaz was a 2017-2018 scholar in the Women and Gender Studies Department. During her time at Ithaca, she taught Islamic Feminism one semester and Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East in the other. She graduated from Emory University with a bachelor’s in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and earned her PhD in Islamic Studies with a focus on gender from the University of Texas at Austin.

Shehnaz has been teaching at Mercer University since fall 2018 as an assistant professor in the Religion department, specializing in Islam. She teaches the following courses regularly: Introduction to World Religions; Abrahamic Religions; Western Religions; Islam and Gender; Islamophobia; Introduction to Islam. Her interests generally include religious authority, lived religion, religion and feminism, and change and tradition. Her first book is forthcoming with Oneworld Academic, scheduled for publication in September 2024. It explores the issue of the negotiables and non-negotiables in Islam, using ethnographic methods and textual sources on Islam. 

Currently, Shehnaz is working on her second book, which is a study of Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims. A journal article based on my textual research on this topic was published with Journal of Qur’anic Studies, available on her Academia.edu profile.

Raul was a scholar during the 2017-2018 academic year for the Writing Department. Raul remained at Ithaca College and taught various writing courses. He is currently an Assoicate Dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

He is the author of "A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens" (forthcoming from Dutton), and "In This World of Ultraviolet Light" (winner of the 2021 Don Belton Prize and forthcoming from Indiana University Press). He earned his Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska, with a specialization in ethnic studies. He was awarded a dissertation fellowship through Ithaca College’s diversity scholars' program, which he used to complete his dissertation Manteca, a novel set in 1980s Miami in the shadow of Mariel and the killing of Arthur McDuffie by a Latino police officer.

Palma is a member of the fiction faculty. His research and teaching interests include creative writing studies, creative writing pedagogy, and composition studies, with a leaning toward topics in LatinX studies, women and gender studies, narratology, and transnationalism. Most recently, he has turned his attention to decolonizing the syllabus and the work that takes place in the creative writing classroom. In class, craft and creative writing lore are sites of excavation; he uses critical theory to see the situational factors that give rise to craft.

His work has also appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chattahoochee Review, The Greensboro Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and The Sonora Review. The first chapter of his novel Manteca was distinguished/notable in Best American Short Stories (edited by Junot Diaz), and his short fiction was included in Best Small Fictions 2018 (selected by Aimee bender). His work has been supported with fellowships and scholarships from the CubaOne Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Santa Fe Writer's Conference, Sewanee Writer's Conference, and Sundress Academy for the Arts.

Elizabeth was a diversity scholar for the 2017-2018 academic year with a focus on cinema studies. She graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2007 with her bachelor's degree (honors) in English Literature and again in 2010 with a Master of Literary Studies. In 2015, Elizabeth earned her Master of Comparative Literature from Cornell University, soon followed by her PhD of the same topic in 2018, also from Cornell. She is a member of the American Comparative Literature Association, Association for Asian Studies, and the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. 

Elizabeth's research interests include Global Chinese cinemas, transnational film collectives and networks, contemporary East and Southeast Asian cinemas circulating through international film festivals, eco-cinema, cine-ethics, media theory, film theory, critical theory, and continental philosophy, and is published within these topics. She is currently an Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Natasha was an art history scholar for the 2016-2017 academic year. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Art and Art History at York University, Toronto.

Nandadevi was a scholar for the 2016-2017 academic year in the Biology Department. She remained at Ithaca College where she is now an Associate Professor of Biology.

Kayla Wheeler was also a 2016-2017 scholar in Philosophy and Religion and earned her PhD in 2017. She has been at Xavier since 2020 where she is an Assistant Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies and Theology and the Africana Studies Program Director.

Henrietta was a 2016-2017 Diversity Scholar within the School of Health Sciences. She earned her Bachelors of International Studies from Illinois Wesleyan University and went on to complete her Master of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. In 2018, Henrietta received her PhD in Health Policy from Brandeis University. She currently serves as the director at FasterCures, a Center of the Milken Institute in Washington, D.C. 

Saemi Lee was also a 2016-2017 scholar with a focus on exercise science. Saemi earned her PhD from West Virginia University. She is currently employed at California State University, Los Angeles as an assistant professor in sport and exercise psychology, physical cultural studies and is the Program Director of Golden Eagle Physical Activity Mentoring (GEPAM).

Ashley was a 2015-2016 communication studies scholar and remained at Ithaca College as a faculty member until 2019. The courses she taught included Introduction to Public communication, Advanced Public Communication: Social Justice & Cultural Communication, Black Feminist Theory, African American Rhetoric. She is currently teaching in the Iowa State University Communications Department.

Eric Glover was a 2015-2016 theatre scholar. He is now an assistant professor adjunct at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, where he practices dramaturgy and dramatic criticism. He published "African American Perspectives in Musical Theatre" (London: Methuen Drama, 2024) and has other works featured in "Milestones in Musical Theatre" (London: Routledge, 2023), program materials, Sondheim from the Side, and various works inTheater magazine, where he is a contributing editor. He is also a member of the editorial board and a peer reviewer for Studies in Musical Theatre and serves on the board for Yale Cabaret. Glover was elected secretary of the American Society for Theatre Research in 2023.

Hayley was a 2015-2016 Women and Gender Studies scholar. She is of Māori (Ngāti Whitikaupeka, Ngāti Pūkenga) and Pākehā (English, Irish, Scottish, Jewish) descent. She holds a PhD (Cultural Foundations of Education) and C.A.S (Women's & Gender Studies) from Syracuse University where she wrote a doctoral thesis on the colonial context of sexual violence and trauma experienced by Māori whānau (indigenous extended family) and the connections between violence on the land and body.

She holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Psychology from the University of Waikato (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and a Certificate in Māori Language (Poupou Huia Te Reo) from Te Wānanga o Raukawa (Aotearoa/New Zealand). Hayley is currently a teaching fellow in the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato where she teaches Māori and indigenous research methods to graduates. She is also an adjunct professor in Native American & Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University where she teaches indigenous women’s lives.

Christine was a writing scholar for the 2014-2015 academic year. She holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and serves on the advisory board for the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies and is an active member of the U.S.-Japan Council.

She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Sky Country (BOA Editions, 2017), and Birds of Paradise (Lynx House Press, 2011). Sky Country won the Central New York Book Award and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She co-edited the oral history collection Who You? Hawai'i Issei (University of Hawai'i / Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i Press, 2017) and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women's Poetry (Blue Oak Press, 2022). She is currently an associate professor at Stony Brook University where she teaches in the MFA and BFA programs in Creative Writing and Literature. She has served on the faculty for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 2018.

Tyrell was also a 2014-2015 writing scholar. Tyrell was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College before taking his current position at Cornell University as a Lecturer in Management Communication and the Writing Program Coordinator at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. He teaches AEM 2700: Management Communication and a writing-intensive course for the Grand Challenges Program. Stewart-Harris earned a PhD in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include writing pedagogy, housing policy, and marketing. 

Lillian-Yvonne was the third 2014-2015 writing scholar and has numerous publications including the forthcoming poetry collection Negative Money (Soft Skull, 2023), and the poetry collection Travesty Generator (Noemi Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Noemi Press Poetry Prize and finalist for the National Poetry Series. Travesty Generator received the 2020 Poetry Society of America Anna Rabinowitz Prize for interdisciplinary and venturesome work, and Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017), to name a few. They are now an Associate Professor of English, Africana Studies, and Art & Design at Northeastern University. Previously they directed the MFA in Creative Writing at UMASS Boston. They have previously taught at St. Lawrence University, Ithaca College, and Williams College. They also direct the Chautauqua Institution Writers’ Festival. 

Bertram holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, among degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Petros was a 2013-2014 economics scholar and worked at Ithaca College as an instructor until 2015 where he then moved on to Duke University for one year. Petros currently works as a U.S. economist. 

Enrique was a modern languages scholar during the 2013-2014 academic year and remained at Ithaca College. He is an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature and obtained his PhD in Hispanic Literature in 2014 from The University of Texas at Austin. 

His current book project Archiving the Revolution: Claiming History in Cuban Literature and Film examines the close relationship between post-revolutionary Cuban Literature and Film and its ties to important Cuban state institutions such as Casa de las Américas and the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC). His research appears in top peer-reviewed journals including the Puerto Rican Studies Centro Journal and Black Camera, a film journal published by Indiana University Press. Dr. González-Conty is also the co-coordinator of the Latin American Studies Program at Ithaca College and one of the faculty in charge of the Study Abroad in Cuba program. In the community he is the director of the Cine con Cultura Film Festival in Ithaca, NY and a board member of several local organizations including the Latino Civic Association, the Tompkins County Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations (CUSLAR) at Cornell University. He teaches Latin American Literature and Film and World Cinema courses, as well as Spanish language and Spanish translation. 

Josh was a 2013-2014 art history scholar. As an artist, he produces and exhibits at least one artwork annually. This practice ensures that his scholarship is constantly informed by the processes of making and showing work. His art has been exhibited and supported by Co-Lab Projects, Esperanza Peace & Justice Center, WorkSpaceBrussels, Mini Art Museum, NurtureArt Gallery, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, DePauw University, HistoryMiami Museum, Studio SoHy, Elsewhere Museum, Addison Gallery of American Art, Agave Festival Marfa, Zygote Press, 516ARTS, and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. In 2023-2024, he is overseeing the permanent collection installation at Syracuse University Art Museum, which will serve as the setting for a performance series.

Ana Paula Pimentel Walker was a 2012-2013 anthropology scholar and is an associate professor in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She teaches graduate courses in participatory planning and community development, comparative housing, environmental planning, award-winning capstones, and comparative planning law. She investigates how disenfranchised communities engage with urban governance and evaluates the significance of participatory institutions in planning socially and environmentally just cities. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies.

Pimentel Walker’s research goal is to identify institutional designs and participatory planning practices that have the potential to produce socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable cities. She is conducting three research projects: 1) “The Significance of Participatory Institutions in Planning Socially Just Cities,” 2) “Legal Institutions and the Planning Process: Conflicts between the Right to Adequate Housing and to a Sustainable Environment,” and 3) “Migrant-run organizations (MROs) in Michigan,” which documents the nature and scope of immigrant- and refugee-led community-based organizations and civic inequalities in the undercounting and underfunding of MROs.

Pimentel Walker received a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego; a Master of Urban Planning and a Master of Arts in Latin American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a law degree from the University of Cruz Alta in Brazil.

Armando Lara-Millán was also a 2013-2013 scholar in the Department of Sociology. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley, a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar, and earned his PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2013. He is a faculty affiliate of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, Center for the Study of Law and Society, and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society.

Armando is fascinated by how powerful organizations, whose actions affect the life fortunes of large numbers of people, use language to reshape critical material resources; that is, he examines how these organizations use culture and cognitive processes to recast the economic worth of resources that many people depend on, purchase, or are subject too (e.g. jail and hospital space, crime, advanced medical technology, or even property value). He has examined such processes in the context of urban poverty governance within large American urban jails and public hospitals, and is now turning his attention to the gigantic American healthcare system, digital crime platforms, and venture capital firms.

His work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Criminology, Social Problems, and among others, the American Journal of Sociology. His book “Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity” was published with Oxford University Press in 2021 and was the winner of the 2022 Distinguish Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association, the 2022 Eliot Friedson Outstanding Publication Award from the Medical Sociology Section of the ASA, and the 2022 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the SREM section of the ASA. Armando is also the recipient of awards from the National Science Foundation, Law and Society Association, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, the Ford Foundation, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Lai Sze Tso was also a sociology scholar during the 2012-2013 academic year and has taught undergraduate courses at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Ithaca College, Aquinas College, and Chattanooga State College. To broaden the scope and rigor of my pedagogical skills, I earned two teaching certificates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Kaufman Teaching Certificate, Teaching/Learning Lab and the University of Michigan-Graduate Teaching Certificate, Center for Research on Learning & Teaching.    

Internationally, she is part of Mobile Medical Materials Working Group, a collective of academics, practitioners, policy makers, and healthcare system users focused on addressing the mobility and blockages of medical care, supplies, technologies, pharmaceuticals, and related critically needed materials. A concise portfolio of her work is available through the NIH's National Library of Medicine. In the summer of 2022, she began serving as a guest editor at Frontiers in Medicine and in September, she was invited to join the Editorial Board of the Asian Journal of Medical Humanities and began serving as a peer-reviewer for the International Journal of Cultural Studies.  In October, Lai Sze was nominated to serve on the Sociologists of Minnesota's Board of Directors as the Faculty Representative for the Southern Region and, shortly after, in recognition of her contributions to medical health research, was nominated and inducted into Full Membership for Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society , "an international multidisciplinary community of science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) professionals dedicated to research excellence, promoting public engagement with science, and fostering the next generation of researchers" (Sigma Xi 2022). To better integrate her teaching, research, and social advocacy for Minnesota's diverse communities, she became a MPC Affiliate Member at the University of Minnesota Population Center as of December 2022. As of January 2023, she is one of six nationally selected Population Scholars for the University of Minnesota Population Scholars Program.  

Shauna M. Morgan was a 2011-2012 English scholar. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky and is a Faculty Advisor for Equity and Inclusion Initiatives. Her research interests include Creative Writing, African American Literature and Culture, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies, Women's Literature and Gender Studies, Literary Theory, African Literature & Film. Her publications include, "For the "Dark Star": Reading Womanism and Black Womanhood in the Novels of Caryl Phillips.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 48.3-4, “Neocolonialism and Ethnic Gerrymandering in the North American Academy.” College Language Association Journal 60.2, and “A Problematic Agency: The Power of Capital and a Burgeoning Black Middle Class in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.” South Atlantic Review 79.1-2. 

Christopher A. House (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) was a 2011-2012 communications scholar and is currently an associate professor of Communication Studies and affiliate faculty in Culture and Communication and Martin Luther King Scholar program.
 His research interests are in Black Pentecostal rhetoric & social action, rhetorical theology, critical media & digital studies, communication, culture & race, Black church studies, African American rhetoric and rhetorical theology.  

As a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, Syracuse University Fellow, and K. Leroy Irvis Fellow, he has received several national awards and honors. His scholarship has been published in Journal of Communication and Religion (2018), Southern Journal of Communication (2018), Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric (2017), International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods (2016), Journal of Race & Public Policy (2014), International Journal of Communication (2013) and Memphis Theological Seminary Journal (2012). His current manuscript, Living Witnesses: The Holy Spirit, Social Justice, Black Pentecostal and What we all can learn from Them is expected to be published early 2021.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. House is also a man of faith and currently serves as the pastor of Christian Community Church Ithaca and he is an accomplished motivational & inspirational speaker, and lecturer for several religious, non-profit and community organizations in the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, and in several African countries. In addition to his academic, professional, and ecclesiastical responsibilities, he enjoys spending time with family and friends.

Eric was a 2011-2012 education scholar and has been involved in student and community-organizing since 2000. He completed his doctorate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying how community education can support Mixed-Race people's political movements and ways to incorporate stronger anti-racist frameworks into those educational efforts.

Eric has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ithaca College, the Smith College School for Social Work, and beginning Fall 2014, at Shoreline Community College in Washington State.

As an independent trainer & consultant, Eric presents on Multiraciality, popular culture, and other social justice issues to universities, professional associations, and community organizations across the United States. Selected presentations include: An Introduction to Multiraciality: Politics & Identities, Mixed-Race on Campus: Multiracial student identities & issues in higher education, What should Multiracial people learn? Learning goals for anti-(mono)racist education, Improving anti-racist education for Mixed-Race participants, Harry Potter and the Mistaken Myth of the Mixed-Race Messiah, Zombie Orientals Ate My Brain! Orientalism in contemporary zombie film & fiction, Missionary Position: Race, class & religion in "teacher movies."

Jeffreen was an art history scholar during the 2010-2011 academic year. Hayes, Ph.D., a public art historian and public curator, merges administrative, curatorial and academic practices into her cultural practice of supporting artists and community development as the Executive Director of ThreeWalls . As an advocate for racial inclusion, equity and access, Jeffreen has developed a curatorial and leadership approach that invites community participation, particularly those in historically excluded communities. Her curatorial projects include SILOS (2016-18), Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman (2018-2020), AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People (2018), Process (2019) and AFRICOBRA: Nation Time (2019).

Jeffreen also speaks and writes about art history, Black art, and arts activism. She participated in TEDX Jacksonville and spoke about “Arts Activism in Simple Steps” and “Small Great Conversations on Race.” Additionally, Jeffreen has spoken at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Norton Museum of Art; ArtPace; Rollins Museum of Art; and Columbia College among several other arts organizations and institutions.

Her writing can be found in several independent online print art publications as well edited museum publications. Some of her books include Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman, AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People, and Etched in Collective History.

She currently serves as an advisory board member for CONDUIT: A Midwestern Black Visual Art Preservation. Jeffreen is also a board member of Artist Communities Alliance. She has previously chaired of the Art Events and steering committee member for The Soul of Philanthropy Chicago exhibition, and previously served as an advisory committee member of Light Switch Dance Theatre and Open Television, respectively.

Hollie was a 2010-2011 anthropology scholar and currently teaches at Penn State University as an Associate Professor of Education.

Donathan L. Brown was a 2010-2011 communications studies scholar. After his time as a scholar, Brown went on to serve Ithaca College as an Assistant Professor, then Chair of the Diversity Scholar Program, the Culture and Communication major coordinator, and finally the Director of Faculty Diversity and Development for the School of Humanities and Sciences. He then went on to serve the Rochester Institute of Technology as the Assistant Provost and Assistant Vice President before moving into his current role.

Brown is now the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity at Northeastern University. In this role, Dr. Brown works collaboratively with the Office of Academic Affairs and academic deans to lead, envision, and implement proactive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in support of Northeastern University’s strategic diversity action plans. Among other responsibilities, he leads outreach efforts to develop talented and diverse applicant pools to ensure that Northeastern can accelerate its progress towards recruiting and retaining faculty members who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

He is also an Associate Professor, former U.S. Fulbright Professor and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador.