The Engaged Scholars Initiative seeks to develop, support and connect leaders who can advance co-created knowledge, critically engaged pedagogies, institutional change, and collaborative action to address societal issues.
Read the full announcement here
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY AND PROGRAM IN HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND SOCIETY
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
Sirry Alang is a medical sociologist and a health services researcher. Her research focuses on the social determinants of health and health inequities. Sirry strives to cut across disciplinary and methodological boundaries to find ways to improve population health. For her, this entails prioritizing mixed methods and community-based participatory action research approaches. Her current work explores structural racism within the healthcare system and how it affects the organization and delivery of health services. She investigates what racism within mental health systems looks like, highlight its role in creating inequities in access to and use of mental health services, and identify steps to confront structural racism, ultimately eliminating inequities. Connected to this work, she is exploring social exclusion and isolation among marginalized populations. I research dimensions of social exclusion in medical settings among Latinx populations and Black men. She also cares about how structural racism operates across several institutions to affect health. Specifically, she explores police violence as a social determinant of health. Her work identifies mechanisms through which policing policies and practices affect the health of marginalized groups, and explores programmatic and policy solutions that might be useful in addressing excess morbidity and mortality that result from policing. She is also a teacher. She creates opportunities for students to integrate classroom education with social action and community engagement. My students significantly engage in social action and with organizations or individuals whose work or perspectives are relevant to an issue that they are interested in. Her training: she obtained a BSc. in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Buea in Cameroon, an M.A. in Sociology from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in Health Services Research, Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
COORDINATOR OF SERVICE-LEARNING AND VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS, ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE
Samantha Frisk launched into the world of engaged learning as an AmeriCorps*VISTA with Campus Compact of Maine and Washington. There she found language and practices that complemented her hope to cultivate just, equitable communities. This lead to serving at the University of Southern Maine where Samantha currently coordinates an office which supports the design and delivery of academic and co-curricular service-learning. She also teaches for the Honors Program, was recently appointed Co-Chair of the President’s Intercultural and Diversity Advisory Council, and for the past 5 years, has served as a facilitator in an Intercultural Program at the Center for Grieving Children. Samantha holds a B.S. in Mathematics and International Service from Valparaiso University, and M.S.Ed. and Graduate Certificate in Culturally Responsive Practices in Education and Human Development from the University of Southern Maine. She seeks continuous anti-racist training and guidance from decolonizing pedagogies, local organizers, and community partners.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SPANISH, LANGUAGE STUDIES
HOLYOKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Raúl D. Gutiérrez has been a full-time faculty member at Holyoke Community College since 2013. He also is the One Community Holyoke Coordinator and the Community College Public Humanities Center (CCPHC) Coordinator at HCC. He teaches Spanish language and Latinx Studies. In spring 2017, he taught the first Introduction to Latin@ Studies at HCC. Raúl has conducted research on how to include community service in intermediate foreign language classes through the Service Learning program at HCC. He has worked on creating the upcoming Latinx Studies major at HCC. His areas of interest include community engagement in the academic setting and contemporary Latin American and Latino literature and film. He is especially interested in the cultural and artistic production in the Mexico-U.S. border. He is the advisor of the LISA Club (Latino International Student Association). He holds Bachelors and Master’s degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
ITHACA COLLEGE
David Harker is the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Ithaca College. Dr. Harker joined IC in December, 2016 from Colorado College, where he was Director of the Collaborative for Community Engagement. David earned his PhD (and MA) in Sociology from Boston College, where he wrote his dissertation on the ways students create meaning in their service-learning experiences – particularly if they saw their work connected to larger social movements or political engagement. David also taught in the areas of service-learning, civic engagement, higher education, political engagement, and social movements at Boston College, Tufts University, The College of New Jersey, and Colorado College. He has numerous publications in the areas of service-learning and community engagement, and is passionate about providing students with opportunities and resources to develop as active engaged citizens. David is originally from Ewing, New Jersey, and attended The College of New Jersey as an undergrad. He loves living in, learning about, and getting engaged in the Ithaca community with his partner Kelly, baby daughter Ramona, and dog Ginny. David is incredibly excited to join the ESI cohort with such impressive colleagues to engage in important critical research on our field. He also hopes this research informs his efforts to continue to deepen civic engagement and community partnership work at Ithaca College.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
COORDINATOR, PROGRAM IN BLACK STUDIES
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE
Nina Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Coordinator of the Program in Black Studies at Swarthmore College. Consistent with her previous study in Urban Studies (BA, Penn), African-American Studies (BA, Penn) and Culture, Communication and Criticism (MA, New York University), her research interests lie in the areas of inequality, politics, race, space, class, culture, stratification and mobility. She has recently published papers on issues of community and residential choice relative to the experience of upward mobility (A Long Way From Home: Race, Community, and Educational Opportunity) and a sociology of Black Liberation and contributed to a documentary (Turning A Corner, Beyondmedia Productions) on the legal, economic, and social barriers to exiting prostitution. She has done work on a project that looks at representations of race, class and place in mid century black novels, including the work of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston and a community video project on the impact of Islam on black religious, social and political life in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. Based on her dissertation research (PhD Sociology, Northwestern University 2012), her book project revisits Du Bois’ and Frazier’s classic works and considers issues of identity and meaning making processes among the black elite, its relationship to the larger black population, and its role in any projects of collective racial advancement. Her current research is a multi-method study of the impacts of mass incarceration at the neighborhood level, which is complimented by her teaching courses in Urban Sociology and public policy using the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program pedagogy. She wholeheartedly endorses every word of James Baldwin, but finds the following particularly prescient in shaping and informing her work, “The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here.”
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SOCIOLOGY
BRISTOL COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Enoch Lamptey is currently a full-time professor at Bristol Community College. He obtained his doctorate degree in Sociology from the University of Akron, Ohio in 2017. Prior to obtaining his PhD in the US and his master’s degree in Sociology and Gender from the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom (England). In terms of research, he is interested in topics ranging from family/marital relationships and health outcomes, medical sociology (health inequalities), social stratification, specifically class, gender, and race/ethnicity in the US, civic engagement, democracy, and community engagement. His dissertation at the University of Akron focused on the contextual effects of the relationship between marriage/family processes, gender, and health in a developing country such as Ghana. Aside from his dissertation research area,he is currently working on a paper titled “Negative Acculturation, Socio-economic Status, and Immigrants’ Health: Re-Examining the “Hispanic Paradox” and the Interaction Effect of SES and Duration in the US on the Health of Foreign-Born Immigrants”, which is about to be submitted to the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. Using a nationally representative data from the NHIS (pooled data from 2010-2014; sample size=85,314), I examined the interconnections between duration in the US and SES on self-reported health and hypertension. Additionally, he has a couple of co-publications on studies ranging on topics such as the association between religious beliefs and intimate partner violence in Ghana, and Acculturation Effect and Birth-Weight among Immigrants in the US. With respect to teaching, whilst at the University of Akron, he taught courses such as sociology of health and illness, introduction to sociology, and sociology of the family. he then had a one-year full time visiting professor position at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. At Carroll College, he taught causes which included medical sociology, gender, health and medicine, social problems, research methods, sociology of gender, and introduction to sociology. He is currently teaching sociology of social problems and principles of sociology at Bristol Community College, MA.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR, DC SCHOOLS PROJECT
CENTER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE RESEARCH, TEACHING AND SERVICE
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Jessica Lee is a first generation Korean American and college graduate from Portland, Oregon, where she attended Lewis and Clark College for her BA in International Affairs and Foreign Languages. She attended the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California for her Master’s in Public Administration, with a concentration on international management and returned to Portland to work with the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon at the intersections of racial justice, immigration, education, and health equity in Oregon’s communities of color. In 2013, she joined the Center for Social Justice team at Georgetown University as the D.C. Schools Project Program Director, where she works with 15 student leaders and approximately 160 tutors to provide English language and literacy skills support to children, youth, and adults of low-income, immigrant backgrounds in the D.C. area. As a social justice educator, Jessica focuses on consciousness raising and social justice framework development with her students, to be able to better serve and advocate for D.C.’s immigrant communities. Jessica has been in D.C. for the last 7 years working in API communities and the broader immigrant community supporting racial and migrant justice work, advocating for domestic violence survivors, mentoring youth of color, and providing college readiness and access programming for D.C.’s low income youth.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGED LEARNING AND RESEARCH
THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY
As Executive Director of The College of New Jersey’s Center for Community Engaged Learning and Research, Michael is responsible for facilitating TCNJ’s curricular and co-curricular community and civic engagement activities in the Trenton, NJ, region, specifically the Center’s three main programs: Community Engaged Learning (CEL), TCNJ Bonner Community Scholars, and Community Engaged Research and Initiatives. Prior to being appointed to this position, Michael served as CEL Coordinator of environment-related activities at TCNJ’s Bonner Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, and worked with faculty, students, and community partners in implementing high-quality CEL experiences. Michael is also an affiliate faculty member of the TCNJ Political Science Department, teaching courses on political theory, environmental politics, and social justice. Before to coming to TCNJ in 2012, Michael was an assistant professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, where he also served as interim department chair. He earned his Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, and his BA in Politics and German Studies from Ithaca College. Michael’s scholarly interests revolve around questions of how to create effective democratic agents of change in a contemporary context that is, at times, openly hostile to democratic practice. In particular, Michael is interested in integrating the insights of radical democratic political theory—critiques of neoliberal logic and liberal notions of agency, and broadened conceptualizations of political action, specifically—into the scholarship of service learning and community engagement. He is excited to join the Engaged Scholars Initiative to become a part of a community of practice that thinks critically about the ethics, politics, and impact of their work, while working collaboratively to enhance the transformative potential and impact of the field.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SOCIOLOGY
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
Kimberly B. Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2013. Kimberly’s intellectual work is motivated by two main questions: How do people interpret social interactions and know how to act and feel within them? How do interactions reflect and contribute to social inequality? Her research aims to uncover the mechanisms through which social inequalities are perpetuated, identifying inflection points for social change. Kimberly works to build connections between academic knowledge about inequality and the people and organizations equipped to leverage this knowledge for social intervention. In her teaching, she shows students how to use sociological theory and research to identify inequalities and be change-makers in their own lives and local communities. Her introductory course is part of Dartmouth’s Gateway Initiative, which supports active learning in large-enrollment classes. Her methods class and upper-level course on the social psychology of inequality both incorporate social impact practicums in collaboration with the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, having students develop research designs and collect data for nonprofit organizations in the local community. Her course on status and power in social interactions teaches students to engineer theoretically and empirically-grounded interventions to reduce inequalities found at Dartmouth. In her institutional and disciplinary service, Kimberly works to develop programming and policies that support vulnerable communities, and has a special interest in mentoring those navigating a system designed to advance others’ interests over their own. She routinely engages students in inequalities-focused research, and mentors a variety of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students and early career scholars through professional organizations, campus institutes, and other forums.
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND EVALUATION, CENTER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND SERVICE
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Jennifer Rosales serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation at Georgetown University’s Center for Social Justice. At the CSJ, she conducts research on social justice issues, arts, and education and supports faculty and student research in these areas. She works with faculty across the university and abroad on grant-funded research about transnational media education and global community-based learning. Currently she is conducting research on arts education in DC Public Schools and co-authoring a book on media literacy at the margins. In addition, she leads the evaluation plan, implementation, and analysis for the various community engagement programs. She teaches Research Methods for Justice and Peace Studies and co-teaches courses on qualitative field research and evaluation. She received her PhD and MA in Cinema and Media Studies and her BA in History from the University of Southern California.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
DWIGHT HALL, CENTER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE & SOCIAL JUSTICE
YALE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Marquita Taylor is a Leadership Engineer and Researcher who conducts high quality in-depth qualitative and quantitative research in the areas of entrepreneurship and human development. In her current role, she is the Assistant Director for Innovation and Leadership Development at the Center for Public Service and Social Justice at Yale University. Her aptitude and academic excellence have resulted in her passion to lead and research, which has been fostered through the pursuit of a Doctorate in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service, while obtaining a certificate in Race and Equity from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Master of Business Administration in 2012 immediately after receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and Management and Political Science. She champions inclusivity and equity in education among diverse groups, particularly underserved populations and women. Moreover, her career objectives include inspiring and cultivating all to pursue socially responsible endeavors while building non-cognitive, entrepreneurial and leadership skills for the betterment of communities and personal outcomes. During her doctoral studies, she founded The Woman Doctor, a nonprofit in which she works to inspire women and girls to pursue higher education while building noncognitive, entrepreneurial and leadership skills- this year she will award her first academic scholarship. After several years in the corporate sector and within government agencies she became a Professor. She teaches in the School of Business at Concordia University, and has taught business at the University of California Los Angeles.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN PUBLIC HEALTH
URBAN PUBLIC HEALTH AND NUTRITION
LA SALLE UNIVERSITY (PA)
Dr. Sara Shuman has a Ph.D. in Public Health from Temple University with a concentration in Social and Behavioral Health. She holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Arizona. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Public Health program at La Salle University. Dr. Shuman’s research focuses primarily on immigrant health, gender-based violence, and community-engaged teaching. She is especially interested in mixed-methods research and works in Philadelphia and globally. Dr. Shuman has been working with unauthorized immigrant populations in the United States for ten years and her recent research has focused on the relationship between intimate partner violence, physical and mental health, and help-seeking behaviors among undocumented immigrant women in South Philadelphia. This research resulted from community-based work with Puentes de Salud, a health and social service non-profit in Philadelphia where she has volunteered since 2010. She is currently the Director of Promotoras at Puentes de Salud.