Affiliated Faculty
Ayana Allen-Handy
Professor
Department Chair, Policy Organization and Leadership
ayana.m.allen@drexel.edu
Drexel University | School of Education
Ayana Allen-Handy, PhD is a Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Policy, Organization, and Leadership at Drexel University. She is also the Founder/Director of the Justice-Oriented Youth Education Lab (The JOY Lab). Grounded in critical race and intersectional theoretical framings, her work is dedicated to justice-oriented urban education and is built upon debunking and (re)framing pejorative narratives of urban students, schools, and communities. Her work strives to (re)imagine urban from a place of decline to a place of possibilities. Therefore, her research employs asset-based critical perspectives which recognize the resources and assets that individuals and communities possess that derive from their lived experiences, and the role that power and privilege have played in maintaining inequitable educational opportunities. Particularly, her work centers the strengths that illuminate the community cultural wealth and funds of knowledge that are embedded in historically marginalized places and spaces and amongst the mosaic of diverse people groups therein. She seeks to highlight the human, cultural, and social capital that are often unrecognized and unacknowledged by the status quo. Her work does not focus on problems and issues in urban education alone, but critical solutions and participatory approaches in an effort to espouse equity, agency, and critical capacity building. For example, her work strives to support the capacity of students, teachers, schools, and communities to create, implement, and sustain their own solutions to issues that directly impact them through critical Youth and Community-led Participatory Action Research.
Tosha Arriola
Interim Head of Upper School
Providence Day School | Faculty Website
As a transformational coach, Tosha Arriola supports educators by providing the strategies, tools, and resources that they need to move to the “next level of success” in her role as CEO of CustomEx Consulting. She is currently an administrator at an independent school in addition to supporting leaders and schools through her coaching programs. She was previously a professor and the Director of the Teaching Fellows Program at Queens University of Charlotte. This is her 28th year as an educator, and she’s taught and led from the preschool level all the way up to college and everything in between! Tosha is most passionate about providing support for people who have been promoted to leadership roles, but have not been provided with the training or guidance that they need to become confident and effective leaders in their schools.
Arriola taught for fifteen years in the Charlotte Mecklenburg School district and also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica early in her career. She received her B.A. in Spanish and Education from SUNY Cortland and her M. Ed. in Literacy from Queens University. She is finishing her degree in Organization Development with a certificate in Executive Coaching. Tosha has a passion for diversity, community engagement, and service learning.
Adrienne D. Dixson
Professor
add5746@psu.edu
Penn State University | College of Education
Dr. Adrienne D. Dixson attended Southern University from 1985-1989 where she was a flautist in the Southern University Jazz Ensemble and a Jazz Studies Major in the Alvin Batiste Jazz Institute. In 1990, she earned a B.A. in Music Theory and Composition from the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University in Ohio, and an M.A. in Educational Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She earned her Ph.D. in Multicultural Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Dixson currently serves as the new head of the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State’s College of Education. Dixson locates her research within two theoretical frameworks: Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Black Feminist theories. Her work is widely published in academic journals and edited books. Her books include Critical Race Theory and Education: All God’s Children Got a Song, Handbook of Critical Race Theory and Education, Resegregation of schools: Education and race in the 21st Century (Routledge).
Abiola Farinde-Wu
Associate Professor
abiola.farinde@umb.edu
University of Massachusetts Boston | Department of Leadership in Education
Abiola Farinde-Wu is an assistant professor of urban education and the graduate program director for the Urban Education, Leadership, and Policy Studies doctoral program in the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In her previous position, she was a visiting assistant professor in the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh.
Farinde-Wu’s teaching and service focus on preparing urban pre-service and in-service teachers for diverse student populations. Her research focuses on equitable educational opportunities for students of color. More specifically, she is interested in research questions lying at the nexus of the school experiences of Black female students and their educational and life outcomes.
Highlighting how racial, social, and cultural issues impact the educational opportunities and treatment of Black women and girls, she draws from critical theories to interrogate policies, structures, and practices that influence the recruitment, matriculation, and retention of this particular group in urban schools and contexts.
Her research interests are the educational experiences and outcomes of Black women and girls, diversifying the U.S. teacher workforce, and urban teacher education. She has authored and co-authored numerous studies published in journals, such as the Urban Review, Teachers College Record, Urban Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education. In addition, she is the co-editor of Black Female Teachers: Diversifying the United States’ Teacher Workforce (Emerald, 2017).
Her professional activities include serving as an assistant editor for Journal of Teacher Education, an editorial board member of American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), and an affiliated faculty member in The Urban Education Collaborative.
Sejal Parikh Foxx
Professor
sbparikh@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | Department of Counseling
Dr. Foxx is a Professor and Counseling Department Chair. She is also the Director of the Urban School Counseling Collaborative. She has experience as an elementary and high school counselor. She is co-author of School Counseling in the 21st Century, 6th ed. In 2015, she received the Counselor Educator of the Year Award from the North Carolina School Counselors Association. She teaches both doctoral and master’s level courses and her special areas of interest are school counseling, multicultural and social justice, urban education, and creating equity and access to college and career readiness. She has been successful working with interdisciplinary teams to obtain over $4.2 million dollars in grant funding from the Department of Education and National Science Foundation. Dr. Foxx currently serves as the Chair of the International Registry of Counsellor Education Programs (IRCEP).
Kareema J. Gray
Associate Professor
kgray@jcsu.edu
Johnson C. Smith University | College of Business and Professional Studies
Dr. Gray currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Social Work and serves as the Co-Chair of the Department of Social Work and Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) Program Director at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received both her Ph.D. and her master’s degrees in social work from The University of Georgia in Athens, GA. Her undergraduate degree in biology was completed at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. Dr. Gray also works as a clinical medical social worker at Atrium Health.
Dr. Gray’s research interests include projects that examine the effectiveness of community initiatives to alleviate poverty, international disaster case management and disaster response, social work in sports, and a variety of social justice and social advocacy issues. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees at her alma mater – The Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, PA. Dr. Gray also serves as an executive board member for Dedication 2 Communities in Charlotte, NC, which addresses community relationships with local and federal law enforcement.
Stephen Hancock
Shirley Frye Distinguished Professor of Urban Education
sdhancock@ncat.edu
North Carolina A&T State University | College of Education
Dr. Hancock is the Frye Distinguished Professor of Urban Teacher Education and the inaugural Director of the Center of Excellence for Educational Equity Research at North Carolina A&T State University. He also serves as the Director of the International Conference on Urban Education (ICUE). Currently, he serves as a member of the European Cooperation in Science & Technology, where we are tasked with providing European scholars with innovative data driven information on intersectionality, equity, justice, and critical understanding cultural competence. In addition, he serves on the Social Justice Action Committee at AERA, and have served as Chair of the Scholars of Color in Education Committee, Program Coordinator for the Research Focus on Black Education SIG, and the Undergraduate Fellows Program at AERA and President of NC-National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME).
Dr. Hancock’s research investigates how whiteness impacts the identity, emotional health, and academic performance of teachers and students, the effect of curriculum supremacy on the intersectional identity of students, and the phenomenological reality of self in racialized contexts. More specifically, his scholarship has explored how curriculum supremacy impacts identity, achievement, mobility, and engagement in schooling and STEM, the impact of curriculum trauma on learning attitudes, and the process of navigating race and other intersectional identities in a racially marginalizing society. He has co-edited five books (two in press), numerous chapters as well as articles in top journals including the Harvard Education Review.
Eugenia B. Hopper
Associate Professor
ehopper@coastal.edu
Spadoni College of Education & Human Sciences | Coastal Carolina University
Eugenia B. Hopper is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at Coastal Carolina University in the Spadoni College of Education and Social Sciences. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education with a mathematics concentration from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro, NC and her Master of Science degree in Educational Psychology with a concentration in measurement and evaluation from Purdue University. She taught public school for 11 years, five of those years as an Early Childhood/Generalist National Board Certified teacher. She also served as an instructional coach for four years. Dr. Hopper received a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in urban elementary education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Hopper’s research interests include teacher preparation, teacher professional development, teacher retention, as well as culturally sustaining pedagogy.
Brittany Hunt
Assistant Professor
bdhunt@vt.edu
Virginia Tech | School of Education
Brittany Hunt is a member of the Lumbee Tribe. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Brittany received her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and a Master of Social Work from UNC-Chapel Hill. She developed and operated the American Indian Urban Education Division at the Urban Education Collaborative. Her research interests include the experiences of American Indian students in education, but more specifically how the K-12 system disenfranchises Native history in the classroom and those effects on American consciousness and Native cultural identity.
Lateefah Id-Deen
Associate Professor
liddeen@kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University |
Dr. Lateefah Id-Deen is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Elementary & Early Childhood Education at the Kennesaw State University. She earned her doctorate in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University, with foci in Mathematics Education and Urban Education. Her research examines marginalized students’ perspectives on their experiences in mathematics classrooms, and ways to support educators in hearing and developing practice in relation to students’ expressed interests. Further, she investigates instructional practices that promote student-teacher relationships, affirm mathematics identities and cultivate belongingness to support students’ learning experiences in mathematics classrooms. Her research and teaching reflect her passion for creating equitable learning environments for historically marginalized students in mathematics classrooms.
Tambra O. Jackson
Dean, Professor
tambjack@iupui.edu
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis | School of Education
Tambra Jackson has been a professional educator for over 27 years. Prior to joining the academy, she was an elementary teacher and taught first, second, and third grades. As a teacher educator, she draws upon her own classroom teaching experiences focusing on the complexities of teaching diverse learners and attending to social justice issues pertaining to the marginalization of children in U.S. schools.
Tambra Jackson considers herself a scholar-activist and is committed to social justice issues pertaining to the historical and contemporary oppression, miseducation, and liberation of children of Color in U.S. schools. Her teaching, scholarship and service is a means of activism. She explicitly applies her knowledge and understanding of her field to interrupt institutional inequity and promote social justice in education.
Her scholarly agenda coheres around equity methodologies aimed at improving schooling outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse students through teacher development and learning from the teacher identities and praxis of Black women educators and faculty. She designs research projects and situate her research, teaching, and service within spaces that acknowledge the perspectives and voices of historically oppressed and marginalized populations.
Her most recent research projects the development of culturally relevant/sustaining practices with preservice and practicing teachers of Color and the teacher identities and praxis of Black mother educators.
Joshua Kirven
Associate Professor
kirvenjo@winthrop.edu
Winthrop University | Department of Social Work
Dr. Joshua Kirven is an associate professor in the Department of Social Work at Winthrop University and Part-Time Instructor at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC. He is a research-practitioner with over twenty years of experience as an educator-practitioner. Joshua’s research areas are fatherhood engagement and impact, neighborhood adversity and safety, prosocial youth development and sports culture influence and academic achievement. He has an array of practice experience with solution-oriented, evidence-based interventions and macro programming across communities and public-private sectors in the area of socially conscious capitalism. He is a Fulbright Scholar and graduate of Hampton University, University of South Carolina and The Ohio State University, respectively.
Patricia J. Larke
Professor Emerita
Texas A&M University | Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture
Dr. Patricia J. Larke is a professor emerita at Texas A&M University in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture (TLAC) and the 2014-2016 Teacher Education Fellow. She is currently serving as a Scholar in Residence at University of North Carolina, Charlotte in its Urban Education Center. Dr. Larke has been a scholar in the field of Multicultural Education for over 25 years and has over 100 publications and has made over 400 conference presentations. Her research interests include: Effective Multicultural Teachers, Academic Achievement of Girls of Color, Integrating Multiculturalism in the Curriculum and Diversity in Driver Education. She was a 2005 Fulbright Scholar to China. She was the recipient of National Association of Multicultural Education’s (NAME) 2004 Multicultural Educator Award. She served as President of Texas NAME Chapter and received the 2010 Legend Award. She received TLAC’s Award of Excellence (2015) and Climate and Diversity Award (2014).
Sonyia Richarson
Assistant Professor
sonyia.richardson@unc.edu
UNC | School of Social Work
Sonyia Richardson is an Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Social Work and holds a secondary appointment with the UNC Department of Psychiatry.
Richardson is a dedicated health equity scholar whose research focuses on identifying and removing barriers (practical, systemic, organizational and cultural) to mental health treatment for Black youth and developing interventions to support their persistence in mental health treatment. As a community-engaged researcher and clinician with more than 20 years of experience, she has extensive expertise in generating knowledge to enhance wellness among diverse populations and creating interventions that tend to their specific cultural needs.
Richardson has secured competitive funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Educational Research Association-National Science Foundation grants program. Additionally, she participated as a fellow with the National Institute of Minority Health Disparities (NIMHD) Health Disparities Institute, National Institute of Health Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials, Researcher Resiliency Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Institute of Mixture Modeling for Equity Oriented Scholars with the University of California Santa Barbara.
Derrick E. Robinson
Associate Professor
drobinson2@ncat.edu
North Carolina A&T State | College of Education
Derrick Robinson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Educator Preparation at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Dr. Robinson brings 24 years of public education experience in teaching and leadership. Dr. Robinson has 15 years of K-12 teaching in Social Studies and Business Education and 7 years of K-12 leadership experience in urban schools from Prince George’s County MD, Washington D.C., and Charlotte, NC.
Dr. Robinson’s research interests explore the contextual nature of school climate and culture, leadership effectiveness, and teacher effectiveness all in urban settings. Dr. Robinson studies the P-20 educational trajectory of urban students. His latest works examines Critical Care Leadership in urban schools, identity development of Black junior faculty, and Leader Mindfulness in public school administrators. Recent evolutions of Dr. Robinson’s research interests explore how educational leaders can enact resiliency, cultural responsiveness, and academic optimism to impact instructional experiences of students from pre-school to the doctoral program. As such, teacher effectiveness and identity development from public and higher education has become a focus of Dr. Robinson. Dr. Robinson also explores leader mindfulness, wellness, and care as an aspect of leader effectiveness practices.
Tonya J. Rose
Assistant Professor
Tonya_Rose@subr.edu
Southern University and A&M College | Curriculum and Instruction
Tonya Rose is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, LA. She is the Science, Mathematics, and Technology content specialist for the undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs, the CAEP Coordinator for national accreditation and the TPI Liaison for state approval.
Dr. Rose earned her doctorate in Science and Mathematics Education from Southern University and A&M College. Her research focused on the Effects of Informal Science Learning on Middle
School Students’ Science Attitudes.
As a consultant, Dr. Rose has worked with SHEEO’s Project Pipeline Repair program, that aims to increase the number of African American males entering the teaching profession and various
Praxis Preparation programs for aspiring teachers. She also facilitates workshops on how to utilize technology effectively in the classroom and track student growth.
Spencer Salas
Professor
ssalas@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | College of Education
Dr. Spencer Salas is Professor of Education in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and K-12 Education at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he leads the Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction Urban Literacies/TESL sub-concentration. An award-winning District of Columbia Public School ESL teacher (1994-2001), he has been a Fulbright Fellow to Romania (1998), Guatemala (2007), and South Africa (2013); a Senior English Language Fellow for the U.S. Department of State to Peru (2001-2003); and, since 2003, a frequent English Language Specialist for The US Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. His empirical and theoretical scholarship focuses on the New Latino South and the intersections of Latino immigration with national and regional educational policy and praxis. His work has been featured in venues such as TESOL Journal, Bilingual Research Journal, The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, The Peabody Journal of Education, The Journal of Basic Writing, and Community College Review. In 2001, he was named a Presidential Graduate Fellow by the University of Georgia; in 2004, a Scholar for the Dream by the Conference for College Composition and Communication; in 2008, a National Council of Teachers of English New Voice among Scholars of Color; in 2009, an Early Career Fellow with the University of Georgia’s Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education; and in 2016, a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador. He is co-editor of Vygotsky in 21st century society (Peter Lang, 2011); U.S. Latinos and education policy (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2014); and Latinization, U.S. Schools, and Communities (SUNY Press, 2017).
Victoria Showunmi
Associate Professor
V.Showunmi@ioe.ac.uk
University College London | Institute of Education
Faculty Website
Dr. Showunmi has developed a national and international reputation for her work on identity and leadership. The emerging themes of are gender identity and race in the context of leadership, and the implications for the experiences of learners and educators. In the early part of her research career she focused on the experiences of ethnic minorities in ITT, whilst latterly her research spans across two related themes: first, gender, education, leadership and empowerment, and second, young Black women’s experiences of education in the context of their well-being.
Dr. Showunmi has been the principal and co-principal investigator for five research projects. The UK WomenKind project centred on women and violence, nationally and internationally. A project on identity and leadership, funded by Race in the Community and BELMAS, explored non-white women in senior leadership positions across sectors in England. My ‘Coaching and Mentoring’ project explored how coaching and mentoring can assist with the progression and development of BME staff. More recent projects include Gender and Leadership in Higher Education in Pakistan: Capturing the voices of BME PhD students (funded through the Liberating Curriculum); and Black Girls/Young Black women’s experiences in education. These projects have led to publications in peer-reviewed journals such as EMAG and Curriculum Inquiry. The research also informed book chapters; for instance, The Role of the ‘Black Girls Club’ Challenging the Status Quo Feminist Pedagogy, Practice and Activism. She has been commissioned to write a co-authored book with Carol Tomlin entitled: Managing Everyday Racism (Lexington Rowman & Littlefield) and an edited book – the Bloomsbury Gender Handbook on Educational leadership and Management (Bloomsbury).
Tracy Spies
Associate Professor
tracy.spies@unlv.edu
University of Nevada, Las Vegas | Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education
Appointed associate professor with the Educational & Clinical Studies department, Tracy Spies is fluent in Spanish and will be engaged with Teaching English as a Second Language. With a master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Sam Houston State University and a doctorate degree in Hispanic Bilingual Education from Texas A&M, Dr. Spies has fifteen years experience as a teacher and principal. In 2010, she received the National Milken Educator Award as one out of fifty-five educators in the nation. She has secured more than $3 million in grants. Tracy has been very involved in community service working in the areas of hunger and TESL. Her research agenda includes the following: second language acquisition, the effects of the second language on the native language, effective teacher pedagogy with ELLs in native and second language, and dispositions of school leaders identified as successful with ELLs.
Stephanie Woodard
Assistant Professor
Stephanie.thomas@lr.edu
| Lenoir-Rhyne University
Stephanie Thomas joined the faculty at Lenoir-Rhyne University in 2021. She is an assistant professor and teaches courses in education. In addition, she serves as the coordinator for the Master of Arts in Teaching program. As a writer, scholar and educator, Thomas has more than 15 years of experience in educating, coaching and training teachers. She also serves as Assistant Director of The Urban Education Collaborative at UNC Charlotte.
Her research has been featured in top journals such as the Journal of Negro Education, the Journal of Multicultural Education and the Journal of African American Males in Education. She has also co-authored several book chapters and books, including Political, Legislative and Economic Solutions to Urban Education and the Implications on Teacher Preparation, released in fall 2021.
Thomas currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she enjoys time with her family.
Andrea L. Tyler
Director
atyler2@tnstate.edu
Tennessee State University | Graduate Student Services
Andrea L. Tyler, Ph. D is currently the Director of Graduate Students services and a Research Associate at Tennessee State University. She is also the Director of the POTUS Fellows Program that supports African American STEM graduate students in an attempt to address the global need to increase African American representation in the STEM disciplines. Andrea earned her doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from the Miami University of Ohio. Andrea also holds degrees in Curriculum and Instruction and Mechanical Engineering.
Andrea’s research focuses on the higher education experiences of African American graduate students and faculty. More specifically, her research explores graduate student achievement, outcome, and career choice in STEM; graduate and faculty mentoring, socialization, and identity constructs; and African American females in STEM.
These interests have led Andrea to conduct research and write grants on a variety of topics such as academic preparation and retention in STEM fields, the influence of mentoring relationships on student outcomes, the experiences and motivational patterns of high achieving students of color, Black single motherhood, and higher education access for STEM students of color.
Prior to completing her doctoral work at Miami University of Ohio, Andrea worked as a Mechanical Engineer for companies such NASA, Honeywell, and ServiceMaster and as a K-12 central office administrator for a large Mid-West urban school district.
Bettie Butler
Professor
bettie.butler@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | College of Education
Dr. Bettie Ray Butler is Professor of Urban Education and the Director of the Student Discipline Joint Task Force at UNC Charlotte. She also serves as the Program Director of the Master’s of Education (M.Ed.) in Urban Education. Dr. Butler completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M University in 2011. Her research investigates issues of equity, representation, and social justice in education. Her area of interests are school discipline and culturally responsive classroom management. Her current work utilizes a restorative framework to assess racial and gender disproportionality in school punishment and identify and develop alternatives to student suspension. In 2023, she was honored with the Cato College of Education’s Distinguished Faculty Award for her service to schools and the profession.
Gloria Campbell-Whatley
Professor
gcampbe1@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | College of Education
Gloria Campbell-Whatley is an Professor in the Department of Special Education and Child Development. She is a nationally recognized as an inclusion specialist, consultant, trainer, and keynote speaker. Related to inclusion, she has developed 14 modules/training manuals and written five applied research reports. She has also delivered and produced 51 keynote addresses, strands, workshops, and television presentations, as well as 60+ international, national, regional, state and local presentations across the United States and abroad (Spain, Africa, Brazil, China, and Australia). Scholarly leadership pursuits include 66 published book chapters and articles, 15 modules and training manuals, 6 applied research reports 4 books, 2 recent ones are Leadership Practices for Special and General Educators (2013-Pearson Education) and A School Leader’s Guide to Implementing the Common Core: Inclusive Practices for All Students (2016- Routledge/Taylor Francis). Recently she served as a Faculty Fellow for Inclusion for General Administration in The University of North Carolina system (2015-2017). She worked system wide (17 universities), with both Traditionally White and Historically Black universities, and measured climate, convened focus groups and administered surveys. In fact, the curriculum methodology was cited and published in INSIGHTS for Diversity as innovative. Presently, in the College of Education, as an active member and acting chair of the Diversity Committee, she conducted a Diversity Audit.
Heather Coffey
Professor
hcoffey@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | College of Education
Dr. Heather Coffey is Professor of English Language Education in the Department of Middle, Secondary and K-12 Education and serves as the Director of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project. She completed her Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2009. Her research interests include ways to develop critical literacy with urban learners, bridging the gap between educational theory and practice in teacher education, and supporting in-service teachers in urban school settings through professional development. Dr. Coffey has been recognized widely for her excellence and teaching and commitment to service. She has received the AERA, Service-Learning and Experiential Education SIG Outstanding Conference Submission Award (2021), UNC Charlotte’ s Bank of America Teaching Excellence Award (2020), and was the nominee for the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching Award.
James Davis
Associate Professor
jdavis9@coastal.edu
Coastal Carolina University | Educational Leadership
Dr. James Davis has been an educator for the past 20 years, serving as a Professor, Author, School Turnaround Principal, Assistant Principal of Instruction, and classroom teacher.
Dr. Davis is also certified as an Exceptional Children’s Director. He has his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Urban Education. His areas of expertise include school turn-around, elementary education, middle grades education, at-risk populations, increasing student achievement, and teacher effectiveness.
Aside from being a full-time professor, Dr. Davis and his highly qualified team members have presented and been published at the state, national, and international level. As a former “Principal of the Year” and “Teacher of the Year,” Dr. Davis works daily in an enthusiastic manner on his personal mission statement, to “Love Kids, Support Teachers, Involve Parents, and Pass it On.”
Ruth Greene
Professor Emerita
704-378-1052
rgreene@jcsu.edu
Johnson C. Smith University |
Dr. Ruth Greene is Professor Emerita at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her doctorate degree from the University of Massachusetts and has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Aging and Human Development at Duke University Medical Center and the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
Her research and professional interests have been broad based and include minority issues in the area of urban education, minority aging, cultural competency, diversity training and adolescent development and health. She has served as Assistant Dean of Studies at Mt Holyoke College, Chair of the Education and Psychology Department at Fayetteville State University and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Robert L. Albright Honors College at Johnson C. Smith University. She also served as an Extramural Associate with the National Institutes of Health and faculty researcher for the Department of Defense.
Dr. Greene has served on numerous boards that include the Executive Committee, Ford Foundation, Charlotte Mecklenburg School Reform Initiative, Co Chair, Research Committee of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Charlotte, the Larry King Center, Council on Children, the Carolinas Association for Community Health Equity, the Executive Board, American Red Cross, Greater Carolinas Chapter, the Governor’s Planning Committee on the Concerns of Older Women in North Carolina, the Executive Board of the Human Services Council for Charlotte Mecklenburg, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Mental Health Board, the North Carolina Cultural Competence Initiative Advisory Committee, the Executive Board, of the Council on Aging for Mecklenburg and Union Counties, the Education Committee of Division 20, Adult Development and Aging, American Psychological Association.
Esrom Pitre
Principal
esromdpitre@gmail.com
St. Landry Parish School Board
As a seasoned educational leader and researcher, Dr. Pitre’s core value is the ability to drive transformational change in schools through equity-focused leadership. He specializes in revitalizing underperforming institutions and substantially improving academic success, graduation rates, and overall school culture. Passionate about dismantling systemic inequities, particularly addressing disparities in special education and closing achievement gaps, he utilizes data-driven strategies, foster meaningful community partnerships, and mentor educators to create inclusive, rigorous learning environments. Dr. Pitre’s ultimate goal is to prepare every student to excel beyond the classroom and into their future.
Esrom Pitre has done more than just teach the principles of educational leadership; he has actually practiced them. Prior to joining the UHCL faculty in fall 2013, Pitre successfully took on the challenge of transforming a low-performing/high poverty Louisiana high school into a model of academic change and success. After years of low performance, Donaldsonville High School rated an F school for eight consecutive years, the school had been placed on the academic watch list and was on the verge of being taken over by the state. The graduation rate at the school was a low 67 percent and that the school culture was one where the students weren’t motivated to learn and showed no respect to teachers, with teachers encountering discipline and attendance problems. Dr. Pitre explored the following three research strands: (1) the impact of culturally responsive leadership on improving marginalized students’ achievement, (2) the impact of law and policy on student development and achievement in urban schools, and (3) what role does community engagement play in sustaining school improvement in urban school.
Malcolm E. Scott
Assistant Professor and MSSW Program Director
Malcolm.scott@acu.edu
Abilene Christian University | School of Social Work
Malcolm E. Scott is MSSW Program Director and Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. Dr. Scott attended Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, in Baton Rouge, where earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Work (1999). Dr. Scott earned graduate the Master of Science degree in Social Work (2001) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Education and Human Resource Studies from Colorado State University (2005). Dr. Scott’s research interests focus on youth and community development, urban education and community-engaged scholarship, issues facing vulnerable populations, and higher education access and opportunities for historically underrepresented students. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the center of his scholarship and community academic partnership (CAPs) efforts to address disproportional school discipline practices, food security, and adult reentry programs and services.
Dr. Scott infuses diversity into his teaching and helps students understand human growth and development from a perspective that appreciates the influence of culture, age, sexual orientation, religion, and the multitude of factors that influence a truly multi-cultural society.
Tehia Starker Glass
Professor
tstarker@charlotte.edu
UNC Charlotte | College of Education
Dr. Tehia Starker Glass is an Professor of Elementary Education and Educational Psychology in the department of Reading and Elementary Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the first Black woman to earn tenure in the College of Education at UNC Charlotte. Hailing from San Diego, California, Dr. Starker Glass earned her B.S. degree in Elementary Education from Bethune-Cookman University. She earned her M.A. in Educational Technology from the University of Northern Iowa, and her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interests include preparing preservice and inservice teachers’ culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy, examining motivational factors that influence teachers’ behavior towards culturally diverse students, culturally responsive classroom management, the impact of teacher education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU’s), and instructional design. Her current personal and research endeavors include preparing caregivers and teachers to discuss race with children.