Care in the Academy Participants

Cate Denial (she/her/hers) is the Principal Investigator for the Mellon-funded project "Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care after COVID-19." The Bright Distiguished Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department, Cate is also the Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate is the winner of the American Historical Association's 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching award, a former member of the Digital Public Library of America's Educational Advisory Board, and sits on the editorial board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life. Cate is currently at work on a new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness, forthcoming with West Virginia University Press. Her historical research, supported by the Newberry Library and the American Philosophical Society, has examined the early nineteenth-century experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing in Upper Midwestern Ojibwe and missionary cultures. This research grew from Cate's previous book, Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country (2013). 

Elizabeth (Liz) Lehfeldt (she/her/hers), Professor of History at Cleveland State University, co-facilitates the work of this grant with Professor Cate Denial. Professor Lehfeldt has previously been Department Chair and Dean of the Mandel Honors College. She is a former Vice President of the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association (2016-2019). She was drawn to the work on this project by her desire to create environments and promote strategies that support faculty in doing their best work as teachers and scholars.

Catherine Johnson Adams (she/her/hers), Associate Professor of History, earned her M. A. in American Studies from Michigan State University and her Ph. D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has been a member of the SUNY Geneseo faculty since 2007. Her research interests and teaching specialties are Early American History, African American History, United States Women's History, Local and Public History, and Material Culture. She is the co-author (with Elizabeth H. Pleck) of Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England, Oxford University Press, (2010). She was selected as one of 14 liberal arts professors from across the United States to participate in the inaugural cohort (2018-2020) of the Knox College Bright Institute of American History Before 1848. She serves as Co-Coordinator of the Black Studies Program and is currently serving as the Interim Dean of Academic Planning and Advising at SUNY Geneseo. 

Tracie Marcella Addy, Ph.D., MPhil (she/her/hers) is the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania where she is responsible for working with instructors across all divisions and ranks to develop and administer programming related to the teacher-scholar model from classroom teaching to the scholarship of teaching. She received her B. S. from Duke University, MPhil from Yale University, and Ph. D. in Science Education at North Carolina State Education. She is the Director of the Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship and serves as ex officio on the Teaching and Learning Committee. Her center's many initiatives include a highly rated academy focused on inclusivity for intructors thatintegrates students as partners. In addition to these roles, she performs scholarship on teaching and learning and educational development, primarily focusing on learner-cenered practices including active learning and inclusive teaching. Her work has been featured in a variety of academic journals as well as other venues such as Inside Higher Ed and University Business and she has been an invited guest on a number of podcasts such as Teaching in Higher Ed, Tea for Teaching, Teaching for Student Success, and Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning. 

Dr. Addy is co-author of the book What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching (2021), a bestseller for Stylus Publishing, and a frequently invited keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. 

Kathy Becker-Blease Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is a Professor and Director of the School of Psychological Science at Oregon State University where she studies academic success and psychological trauma. She is excited for new insights that may come from the collaboration of faculty working in overlapping areas of traumatic stress, disability studies, and teaching and learning in higher education. 

Emily Beitikis (she/her/hers) recevied a Ph.D. in American Studies with a focus in Disability Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has taught at the University of Minnesota, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, Menlo College and currently serves as adjunct faculty at San Francisco State University. Since 2012, she has worked at the Longmore Institute on Disability SFSU, and she currently serves as the Interim Director. In this role, she continues her work as a scholar and advocate of disability to showcase new ways of thinking about disability through disability culture, access, and education. She was the project director for "Patient No More," a multimedia, interactice exhibit which modeled new standards for exhibit access, and she also serves as director for Superfest Disability Film Festival, the longest running disability film festival in the world. 

Emily is grateful to be a part of the CITA team! University structures too often aim only for compliance, but care and anti-ableism require much deeper work inside academia that this group is eager to support. 

Dr. Sharla Berry (she/her/hers) is an educator and an expert in the field of digital equity and online learning. She is the author of the recently released book Creating Inclusive Online Communities: Practices that Support and Engage Diverse Students. Dr. Berry is currently the Associate Director for the Center for Evaluation and Educational Effectiveness (CEEE) at California State University, Long Beach, as well as a lecturer in the College of Education and CSULB.

Emily Boehm (she/her/hers) is an educational developer and evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She works with faculty members to bring active and inclusive learning methods into their classrooms. Emily received a bachelor's degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Anthropology from Duke University. She has taught undergraduate courses in evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and conservation. "I have many colleagues who have left academia due to the lack of caring, supportive practices, and culture. We are losing wonderful people to this problem! That is why I am so energized by the opportunity to work of this important project."

Dr. Kathleen Bogart (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Disability and Social Interaction Lab at Oregon State University. She is a social/health psychologist specializing in disability, ableism, and rare disorders such as facial paralysis. Dr. Bogart received the first annual Social Personality and Health Network Diversity in Research Award and was named OSU Honors College Eminent Mentor in 2022. An advocate for people with rare disorders and disabilities, she serves on several boards including the American Psychological Association Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology and the Moebius Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. Passionate about disability community-building, she is the co-founder of the Disability Advocacy Research Network (DARN!) for social and personality psychologists who have and/or specialize in disability, and she is the faculty advisor for OSU's Disabled Students Union. 

In 2019, she co-edited the Journal of Social Issues special issue on Ableism. She is an Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Review and Rehabilitation Psychology. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Science Magazine, Financial Times, and Inside Higher Ed. Dr. Bogart presents to and consults with international academic, general, and TEDx audiences about disability awareness, disability as diversity, and facial paralysis, and she blogs about these topics for Psychology Today.

"I am thrilled to be part of this generative team, learning from others with diverse backgrounds and from diverse institutions. As a faculty member who identifies as disabled and whose scholarship focuses on disability, I've recognized that disabled people need support and care at all levels of development to stop the leaky pipeline and foster community at the hightes levels in academia."

Niya Bond (she/her/hers) is a faculty development fecilitator specializing in feminist belonging and online pedagogies. She is a co-creator at Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online, and online English educator, and a Ph.D. candidate in higher education at the University of Maine, studying online faculty support. She is particularly passionate about promoting community in online educational spaces and places and believes that this project will help (re)imagine the positive potential of caring-first practices in higher education (and beyond).

Mark Broomfield, Ph.D., M.F.A. (he/him/his), Associate Professor of English and Founding Director of Performance as Social Change at SUNY Geneseo, is an award-winning scholar and artist with numerous publications in the areas of race, gender, sexuality, dance performance, and ethnography. Broomfield has performed nationally and internationally, and danced with the repertory company Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, performing in leading works by some of the most diverse and recognized African American choreographers in the American modern dance tradition. An innovative educator and facilitator, Broomfield has lectured, choreographed, and directed widely across the U.S. 

His scholarship focuses on reimagining masculinity and embodied gender performance for transformational social change in the 21st century. His first book Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight, is forthcoming by Routledge; it examines the key role of black queer male dancers to understanding strategic gender performances on and offstage. 

A groundbreaking exploration of black masculinity and sexual passing in dance, the book explores the political dimensions of "coming out" versus "doing out" in American culture of the 20h and 21st centuries. The book features the acclaimed dancer-choreographers Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden, Co-Artistic Directors of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and Ronald K. Brown, Artisitc Director of Evidence. Broomfield demonstrates how black queer, gender non-confroming, and nonbinary men expose the illusions of gender performance. 

His upcoming documentary Danced Out tells the story about professional black male ballet and contemporary dancers in New York City who are gay. The dancers reveal the unique function of gay men in society and their surprising insights on masculinity in our culture. 

Among Broomfield's awards and recognitions are the Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellowship (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), the SUNY Faculty Diversity Award, the Ford Foundation Fellowship, and is featured in the 2001 Emmy Award winning Ailey Camp "Chowdah" Production. 

Hilary Buxton (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of history, focused on health and race in modern imperial Britain. She is currently at work on a project about the intersections of race and disability in the First World War. Her work on psychiatry, masculinity, debility, and empire has appeared in Past & Present and the British Journal for the History of Science. At Kenyon, Buxton teaches courses on the history of Britain and its Empire; comparative colonialisms; and the history of medicines, the body, and disability. 

As a teacher and writer on questions of imperialism and disability, the pandemic had brought home disparities and issues of access amongst faculty, students, and staff in a newly visible way. CITA can highlight contemporary questions of care for global academic communities where inequities have historic roots. 

Shavonne Coleman, M.F.A. (she/they/theirs) is the Assistant Director of Transformative Learning in the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. Honored to be the 2022 Anne K. Flagg Multicultural Award recipient (AATE), a 2021-2022 Donald H. Wulff Diversity fellow (POD Network), and recently received a 2022-2023 Actions that promote Community Transformation (ACT) Grant which will expand programming that is geared toward Inclusive Teaching and Learning on campus. Shavonne has cultivated her praxis through teaching at various higher ed institutions; developing and executing various projects with the Office of Academic Service-Learning and Engagement during graduate school; and years of teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms, afterschool programs, community projects, and et cetera as a teaching artist. Ms. Coleman is passionate about community building, collective approaches to educational development, and art integration to improve the quality of and access to education. Her work aims to improve equity in education, fostering highly effective learning environments through applied theatre techniques, promotion of wellness and humanity, dialogue, workshops, consultations, and community-building events. 

"This work aligns with my professional and personal passions. This work is important to my kids, my community, and to transforming the way we think of teaching and learning and how we improve the human condition."

Karen Costa (she/her/hers) is a faculty development facilitator (and proud adjunct faculty) specializing in online pedagogy, trauma-related aware higher education, and supporting ADHD learners. Karen loves leading faculty learners through fun, interactive, and supportive professional development experiences. Karen's first book, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, focuses on helping faculty and teachers make creative use of videos in their classrooms. Karen graduated from Syracuse University with a B.A. in sociology. She holds an M.Ed. in higher education from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a CAGS in educational leadership from Northern University. Karen has a professional certification in Trauma and Resilience (Levels 1 and 2) from Florida State University, a Trauma-Informed Organizations Certificate in Neuroscience, Learning, and Online Instruction from Drexel University. Karen is also a certified yoga teacher. She lives in Massachusetts with her family. Connect with Karen at http://www.100faculty.com/. 

On why this work is important: "The most common concern that I hear from faculty about creating trauma-informed, caring institutions is that they need more support from their campus leadership. My hope in joining the CITA team is to give executive leadership a clear pathway to becoming trauma-informed, caring leaders. I hope that our guidance holds campus communities accountable for doing this work and balances that challenge with ample support for working and living in this volatile era." 

Christian Ayne Crouch (she/her/hers) is Dean of the Graduate College and Associate Professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College. Her work focuses on the histories of the early modern Atlantic, comparative slavery, American material culture, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She is also currently Principal Investigator for "Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck," a 36-month grant from the Mellon Foundation's Humanities for All Times initiative. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. with Distinction in Atlantic History from New York Univeristy, and an A.B. cum laude in History from Princeton University. 

Professor Crouch served at Curatorial Advisor for the 2020-2021 Brooklyn Museum exhibition "Jeffery Gibson: When Fire is Applied to a Stone it Cracks." Her book, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Marital Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France 1600-1848 (Cornell University Press, 2014) won the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Prize for best book in French colonial history from the French Colonial Society in 2015. Examples of her academic writing include articles in William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, and chapters in the edited volumes France, Ireland, and the Atlantic in a Time of War: Reflections on the Bordeaux-Dublin Letters, 1757, and The French Revolution as Moment of Respatilization (De Gruyter, 2019).

Professor Crouch recently served on the council of the Omohundro Institute and was a member of the inaugural cohort of fellows at the Bright Institute at Knox College. In 2019, she received a Georgian Papers Program Fellowship and previously was a 2016-2017 Hutchins fellow at harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Yale Center for British Art, the John Carter Brown Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Massachusetts Hisotrical Society, and the Newberry Library. Her current manuscript in progress, Queen Victoria's Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince, studies the human consequences of the 1868 Maqdala Campaign. 

Wei Ming Dariotis (she/her/ta) is the University of Maryland, Baltimore's (UMB) assistant vice president of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Before joining UMB, Dariotis was the faculty director for the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning at San Francisco State University, where she supported campus faculty through the shift to online learning and developed and led the innovative Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Pedagogies of Inclusive Excellence (JEDI PIE) Institute. She also served as professor of Asian American Studies (in the College of Ethnic Studies), and affiliate faculty with the educational leadership doctoral program at SFSU, where her leadership experience included serving as vice chair of the Academic Senate and chapter president of the California Faculty Association (CFA). 

Her co-edited volume, Fight the Tower: Asian American Women's Scholars' Resistance and Renewal in the Academy (Rutgers, 2020) addresses the intersectional challenges faced by Asian American women in academia from undergraduate to top-level leadership roles. She is the co-founder of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference and co-definer of the field of CMRS (with Camilla Fojas and Laura Kina), and co-edited a related anthology, War Baby Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (with Laura Kina, University of Washington Press, 2013). She also co-founded the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies and is a founding member of the editorial board of Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies. Dariotis earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in English, with honors, from the University of Washington, Seattle. 

Andrew Dell'Antonio (he/him/his) is Distinguished Teaching Professor in, and Head of, the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division of the Butler School of Music in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Austin Texas at Austin.

He is co-editor with William Cheng of the series Music and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press) and co-author of the textbook The Enjoyment of Music (W.W. Norton). His collected edition Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing and monograph Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy are both published by University of California Press. 

He has recently turned his focus to Universal Design for Learning and related approaches to anti-racism, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity/inclusion in higher education music. His committment to UDL comes partly from his personal experience of neurodivergence. 

"First the pandemic and then our educational institutions' attempts to "return to normal" have made all the more evident the structural inequities in access to academic opportunties for historically excluded folks. As we dedicate ourselves to ensuring that all students can feel like they belong and therefore can succeed, it's also essential to build communities of support and care among those who support students' paths, since we have also been stretched in multiple ways by precarity and administrative retrenchment as well as multiple aspects of global insecurity, and we can best sustain an inclusive academy through intersectional solidarity. I'm grateful to be part of this essential conversations and actions in these directions through the CITA initiative."

Priscilla Dowden-White, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her research and teaching focuses mainly on 20th century African American freedom struggles, African American women's intellectual history, and American pragmatism. She is the author of Groping Towards Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910-1949 (University of Missouri Press, 2011), and is currently at work of a book-length biography of the late attorney and civil rights leader, Margaret Bush Wilson.

Dowden-White is also an ordained itinerant deacon and pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, having recently completed her Master of Divinity degree at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. While 'Rev. Dr. Priscilla' recognizes the clear distinctions between the academy and the church, she finds significant overlap and meaning in the closely related care needs of those who are a part of these institutional communities. 

Aimee Dunlap (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She researches the evolution and ecology of learning and decision-making, testing models with animals like bees and flies. Teaching responsibilities include courses in animal behavior and cognition, with a strong focus on inclusive teaching practices. In her free time, Aimee is an avid gardener, enjoys textile arts, and watching her two dogs. 

"I joined this project because I have found being disabled in academia to be a difficult and often isolating experience in many ways. The dimensions to this have changed and shifted over the course of my career, in some ways becoming easier and in others, much more difficult. I wanted to be able to learn more formally about ableism in academia while also sharing ideas and possible solutions with others. Creative forms of flexibility and better ways of caring for each other, and I don't want to see all of that diminish in the return to 'normal.'"

Melissa Garrison (she/her/hers) is a licensed psychologist and director of the Counseling Center at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. She has specialized in the field of college student mental health for over 15 years, providing training, consultation, and clinical services to support the mental health and well-being of campus communities.

Regan A. R. Gurung (he/him/his) is a social pyschologist by training with research encompassing social, health, and pedagogical psychology. He has had over 120 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and he has co-authored/co-edited 15 books. His most recent book is Thriving in Academia (Ansburg & Basham). He is founding co-editor of APA's journal Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, co-chaired the APA General Psychology Intitiative, and is currently past president of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. 

At Oregon State University, he is Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Professor of Psychological Science, and Director of General Psychology Program. 

"For too long, higher education has been so focused on content and delivery of knowledge that the humane elements of the profession have been neglected. The CITA provides an opportunity to address the whole person and pay attention to developing health faculty who in turn will be more likely to revel in their jobs as teachers, researchers, and colleagues."

Ruthann Daniel-Harteis (she/her/hers) is the Director of Student Accessibility and Support Services at Kenyon College. She has promoted access and inclusion for more than 2 decades in both higher education and the community. As an advocate and liaison for students/clients, Ruthann has guided individuals as they navigate around barriers and request access. 

"Working with the team on the Care in the Academy project feels especially important at this time. As institutional focus has mainly been resourcing and meeting the needs of the students/clients, a gap has developed that impacts how faculty and staff are supported and guided to obtain the support they may require to navigate their own journey with disability. Disability impacts not only students, but all areas of campus and the work being done by this project hopes to promote recognition of the gap and to provide a starting point for addressing it."

Rev. Dr. Alexandra M. Hendrickson (she/her/hers) is the College Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. Alex specializes in interfaith dialogue and trauma-informed spiritual support. Educators face emotional and spiritual demands while working with diverse student populations; those educators themselves require institutions who support and ethos of care. 

"As a College Chaplain, I spent nearly as much time providing spiritual care to faculty and staff as I do to students. We are connected to one another and this grant is helping us create concrete pathways to stronger educational communities."

James Hutchings (he/him/his) is the Associate Dean of Hummanities and Fine Arts and Assistant Professor of Music at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. His work specializes in choral music and online learning in the general education music classroom. Community colleges and their students were hit particularly hard during the pandemic and this grant has provided opportunities to explore ways to heal, support faculty and staff, and create models for inclusive and supportive programming. 

Rhiannon Kim (she/her/hers) is a mixed-race Korean and white. She is in the dissertation phase of her Ed.D. and has served as an adjunct for eight years. Her work focuses on integrating healing and social justice in her pedagogical approaches. She worked in public education as a para educator, interventionalist, a K-5 Speech Language Pathologist, and as a consulting SLP PreK-12. She hopes that the work of CITA brings more focus and change to harmful and inequitable institutional practices. 

Jennifer Larson (she/her/hers) is the Director of Credit Programs and Summer School in Digital and Lifelong Learning at UNC Chapel Hill. In this role, she helps provide services for online credit programs and non-degree students across campus as well as administratot of summer sessions for all units within Academic Affairs. 

Jennifer also teaches writing, literature, and film courses in UNC's Department of English and Comparative Literature. Her research interests include online pedagogy, pedagogies of care and compassion, African American drama, and contemporary American cinema. 

Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Wordgathering, Glass, South Carolina Review, Foglifter, and Hypertext, as well as in three chapbooks, The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019), Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and Vagaries (Fork Tine Press, 2022). 

"I am deeply invested in CITA because it extends the conversations around accessibility and accommodation beyond students to faculty, especially disabled faculty who are often presumed not to exist in the academy. Framing collective care in terms of disability inclusion and disability justice feels particularly urgent in our pandemic moment as more and more members of the academy become newly disabled with long-COVID."

Savita Malik, Ed.D., MPH (she/her/hers) has been involved in education for the past twenty years. As the Director of Curriculum and Faculty Development for the Metro College Success Program she serves on the cross-institution leadership team of Metro Academies, working across SF State and City College of San Francisco. She has a deep belief in the power of transforming faculty teaching through critical pedagogical principles and has a passion for the intersections between education equity and health equity.

She has done consulting work around faculty development for many years, working with many organizations. Her approach to faculty development is collaborative, builds community, and challenges folks to examine hidden biases. She works closely with faculty to deconstruct issues of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism within the context of higher education institutions. She is an accomplished curriculum writer, developing over 10 courses in her tenure at SF State, all of which have a foundation in social justice. She works consistently with faculty in multiple disciplines including science, math, ethnic studies, communications, English, and public health. She is a founder of the Metro program and sits on the leadership team, responsible for making decisions about the program and interfacing with the Provost, deans, chairs, and staff working in each of the departments. She is organized, responsible, and thoughtful about the work that she does with each group and tailors her trainings to meet the needs of the audience she is serving. 

Her prior work experience includes teaching middle school math, science, reading, and health for five years in urban, low-income schools in North Long Beach and South San Francisco, with large numbers of learners for whom English is a second language. For two of those five years, she chaired the sixth grade math and science departments. Savita received her Bachelor's Degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. She holds a Master's in Public Health and a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from SF State. 

Jeanie Phillips (she/her/hers) is a senior associate with the Great Schools Partnership. Before joining GSP, she worked as a professional development coordinator at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont where she partnered with schools to create more just, engaging, and equitable learning environments for learners. Jeanie began her career in education as a school librarian more than twenty years ago, working in both elementary and secondary school settings. Jeanie was awarded a Rowland Fellowship in 2014, focusing on making learning more relevant, meaningful, and engaging to students. She serves as Senior Rowland Associate, facilitating Rowland cohorts as they engage in their inquiry projects. Jeanie is currently in the education policy and leadership doctoral program at the University of Vermont. Her research interests are educational equity and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies. Jeanie lives and plays in Burlington, Vermont. When she doesn't have her nose in a book, she likes to be on her bike, cross-country skis, or her feet, enjoying the land around her. 

"I believe all teaching and learning should be a humanizing experience, one that honors the lived experience of both teacher and learner, and educates the whole human. Teaching with our full humanity in mind is liberatory and results in a more just, humane, and equitable world."

Dr. Viji Sathy (she/her/hers) is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Associate Dean for Evaluation and Assessment, Director of the Townsend Program for Educational Research, and Director of the Academic Leadership Program at the Institute for Arts and Humanities. She is a national expert on inclusive teaching, speaking, and writing widely on the topic. She is co-founder of inclusifiED.com and author of Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. 

Clarissa (Rissa) Sorensen-Unruh (she/they/theirs) has been a full-time Chemistry faculty member at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 2002. After earning her M.S. in Statistics from the University of New Mexico (UNM) in May 2020, she is now focused on finishing her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from UNM, where she is also listed as adjunct faculty for the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. Rissa's STEM educational research blends practitioner, researcher, and evaluator roles and focuses on assessment and evaluation, specifically Ungrading and ethics in educational technology and assessment, using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Rissa regularly serves as faculty for #MYFest, gives national and international talks on Ungrading, and serves in several committee roles in the American Chemical Society. Her Mastodon handle is @csoren1 and her webpage is at clarissasorensenunruh.com. 

Erika Switzer (she/her/hers) is an accomplished collaborative pianist who performs regularly in major concert settings around the world, such as New York's Weill Hall (Carnegie), Frick Collection, and the Kennedy Center. Her performances have been called "precise and lucid" (The New York Times), and "intelligent, refined, and captivating" (Le Monde). She has won numerous awards, including best pianist prizes at the Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Wigmore Hall International Song Competitions. Switzer is a co-founder of the organization Sparks & Wiry Cries, which curates opportunties for art and song creators, performers, and scholars through innovative initiatives that capture the stories of our diverse communities. She is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Collaborative Piano Studies at Bard College and its Conservatory of Music, and holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School. 

"I am involved in CITA because I want to advance awareness and actionable recommendations that foster caring classrooms and workspaces within academic communities."

Sharon Trotter-Martin (she/her/hers) is an English Instructor at Carl Sandburg College, a community college in Galesburg, Illinois, where she teaches Creative Writing, Film, Fiction, and Poetry, along with Composition. She also advises the college's literary magazine Phizzogs. Trotter-Martin hopes the past few difficult years in education have given us an opportunity to think differently not just about the way we teach, but how. What still works? What doesn't? What do we know better, and what can we do better now? The "how" applies not just to lessons, assignments, course policies, and expectations in the classroom, but the practices of the Academy too. With that idea that a workplace that is accessible, inclusive, and supportive of its employees will make for a better environment for all, what can we be doing better, as an institution, to meet the needs of and to support our faculty, staff, and administrators?

Alex Shevrin Venet (she/her/hers) is an educator, author, and professional development facilitator based in Vermont. She has taught middle and high school in an alternative setting, community college, and is currently an adjunct professor of education at Antioch University New England and Castleton University. She is the co-founder of Nurturing the Nurturers, a healing community for educators. She is the author of Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education (2021), a bestseller at W. W. Norton. 

"I joined Care in the Academy because I'm a big believer that when we invest in educators, we invest in students. As I navigate my own health and well-being in the academy, I hope to create change so that others need to fight less for the care they deserve."

Laura Westhoff (she/her/hers) is professor and chair of the History Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her research fields include: the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, U.S. democracy and social movements, the scholarship of teaching and learning history (SoTL), and the history of education. She is the author of A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform (The Ohio State University Press, 2007) and is currently working on a book on the mid-twentieth century democratic practices, titled Educating for Activism (under contract, University of Illinois Press). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of American Historu, The History Teacher, Women's History Review, and the History of Education Quarterly. Currently she is a contributing co-editor for the Textbooks and Teaching section of the Journal of American History. Dr. Westhoff is committed to advancing history education at all levels, and is a frequent presenter at history workshops and colloquia for teachers. She has served as the faculty coordinator for the Student Teaching in China program at UMSL In 2017 she received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2018 was awarded the Eugene Asher Award for History Education from the AHA. 

"Participation in the Care in the Academy grant has given me a way to pay forward the support I've received. Across my career, others have modeled for me that any effort to create encouraging, relational, and supportive academic workplaces matters for individual health and growth and collective professional well-being and success--however one defines it. And now more than ever, as the pandemic has exposed how much work there is to do, and as I've seen the limits and potential through a department chair's eyes, I'm grateful to be part of a group striving for these ends. It is inspiring and educational to work with others who share the conviction and put in the work for both structural and cultural change."

Nick Winges-Yanez, Ph.D., LMSW (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of instruction at the Texas Center for Disability Studies (TCDS) through the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the coordinator for the Critical Disability Studies program, teaching courses and facilitating programming. Nick holds a Master's and a Ph.D. in social work from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, her home for fifteen years prior to moving to Austin to be closer to her parents and her sister. As a sibling to someone labeled with ID, she is interested in creating a community for other adult siblings. 

Her research interests include critical discourse analysis specifically in the realm of intellectual disability. Her past research included sexuality and intellectual/developmental disabilities, sexuality education, and the intersections of the NASW Code of Ethics and person-centered practices. She is a queer crip feminist activist-scholar interested in critical discourse analysis and how language, signs, and symbols create and perpetuate our realities. Her work also interrogates histories of disability in relation to sexuality, citizenship, and trauma. 

"The Care in the Academy project provides the opportunity to collaborate and conspire with faculty around the country interested in humanizing and bringing an ethics of care to our work, I want to improve my pedagogical practice to support my colleagues as well as myself to thrive in a competitive institution that has not prioritized our overall well-being. This camaraderie, then, makes space for growth for staff, faculty, and students."

Jenny Wright (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of English at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. She coordinates the English and Honors programs, and she teaches classes including American Literature, Women and Literature, Poetry, and Composition. Her goal as an educator is to help shape the world by encouraging her students to become confident, competent, autonomous thinkers who love and value learning. She believes that Care in the Academy is crucial for achieving this since all the people that make up an institution of higher education must first feel seen, heard, supported, and valued before the can help others to thrive.