URM Executive Committee
The Executive Committee for the Recruitment, Retention and Advancement of Underrepresented Minority Faculty guides the development and implementation of initiatives to address issues and concerns specifically associated with the hiring, retention, and advancement of minority faculty at UMBC.
MEMBERS
Philip Rous, Provost, Co-Chair
Brandy Wallace, Associate Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Public Health, Co-Chair
Pamela Bennett, Associate Professor, Public Policy
Mauricio Bustos, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences
Linda Hodges, Director, Faculty Development Center, ex officio
Ivan Erill, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Ramon Goings, Associate Professor, Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program
Loren Henderson, Associate Professor, Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health
Anthony Johnson, Professor of Physics, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and Director of CASPR
Ravi Kuber, Associate Professor of Information Systems
Jennifer Mata-McMahon, Associate Professor of Education and Director of Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities
Pat McDermott, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, ex officio
Marcela Mellinger, Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Derek Musgrove, Associate Professor of History
Nkiru Nnawulezi, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Autumn Reed, Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, ex officio
Tom Robinson, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Psychology
Carlos Romero-Talamas, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Affinity Groups
Asian and Asian American Faculty Staff Council
Chair, Dr. Tamara Bhalla (tbhalla@umbc.edu)
The mission of the AAAFSC is to promote and support opportunities for Asian and Asian American faculty and staff members at UMBC. This broad goal encompasses the following specific aims:
- Promote Asian and Asian American faculty and staff visibility and concerns on campus.
- Reflect Asian and Asian American visibility and UMBC diversity to the larger community.
- Promote reflection of Asian and Asian American experiences university-wide through the curriculum.
- Advance recruitment, retention and promotion of Asian and Asian American faculty and staff members.
- Aid in recruitment, retention and graduation rates of Asian and Asian American students.
- Promote and support Asian and Asian American student experiences at UMBC.
Black Faculty Committee
Chair, Dr. Belay Demoz (bdemoz@umbc.edu)
The Black Faculty Committee works to improve the recruitment and retention of black faculty, and enhance the sense of community and professional welfare and development among UMBC’s Black faculty, staff, and students.
CAHSS Women’s Faculty Network
Co-chairs, Dr. Kate Drabinski (drabinski@umbc.edu) and Dr. Michelle Scott (mscott@umbc.edu)
The mission of the CAHSS Women’s Faculty Network is to promote and support opportunities for women faculty members at UMBC.
This broad goal encompasses the following specific aims:
1. Support and facilitate mentorship for women faculty.
2. Advance recruitment, retention and promotion of women faculty.
3. Promote women faculty’s visibility and concerns on campus.
4. Amplify and publicize women faculty’s work and diversity on and beyond campus.
5. Promote the reflection of women’s experiences university-wide through the curriculum.
6. Support and coordinate with UMBC departments, programs, initiatives, and organizations related to recruitment, retention, graduation rates, and the campus experiences of women students.
Latinx and Hispanic Faculty Association
Chair, Dr. Maria Martha Manni (mariamanni@umbc.edu).
The Latinx and Hispanic Faculty Association is a group connecting all self-identified Latinx and Hispanic faculty with full-time academic appointments at UMBC in order to promote retention and promotion of Latinx and Hispanic faculty, as well as the mentoring and recruitment of outstanding graduate and undergraduate students of Hispanic and Latinx heritage.
LGBTQ+ Faculty Staff Association
President, Dr. Tim Phin (tphin@umbc.edu).
The LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association (LGBTQ FSA) is a group of full-time UMBC staff and faculty who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-cis-gender and non-heterosexual identity (abbreviated as LGBTQ+). Our overall mission is to advocate for LGBTQ+ faculty, staff, and students at UMBC.
Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)
Chair, Dr. Phyllis Robinson, (probinso@umbc.edu).
Supports and encourages women STEM faculty through mentoring, development opportunities, policy development, advocacy and educational programs.
Faculty Working Groups
Anti-Racism and Action
Leader: Elaine MacDougall (UMBC)
The Anti-Racism and Action Faculty Working Group seeks to promote new coalitions, conversations, and creative work surrounding anti-racism. Envisioned as a collaborative, interdisciplinary community of scholars that will support this work and spur research and teaching activity focused on anti-racism, the group meets regularly to read, discuss, listen to experts, and/or plan research and activism, as the members may decide. UMBC faculty from any department, faculty from other area colleges and universities, and advanced UMBC graduate students are invited to join.
Data Studies
Leaders: Jessica Pfeifer (Philosophy) and Susan Sterett (Public Policy)
Data analysis, in both for-profit and public governance, can contribute to improving lives or exacerbating inequality or exposure to risk. The Data Studies Faculty Working Group explores problems about the questions people ask, how they share information, and how the availability of online records draws more people into surveillance by both state and private actors. How does one ask good questions driven by shared concerns, rather than availability of records? How do you craft collaborative analyses? The group meets to discuss the implications of the rise of data analytics.
Digital Storytelling and Civic Agency in Higher Education
Leaders: Bill Shewbridge (Media and Communication Studies) and Bev Bickel (Language, Literacy, and Culture)
The Digital Storytelling and Civic Agency in Higher Education Faculty Working Group explores the research focus of digital storytelling including discussions of digital literacies and competencies in the humanities and social sciences, narrative and storytelling research, and classroom work across disciplines. They serve as a steering body for ongoing digital storytelling activities and connect with other campus work that involves storytelling for civic agency and engagement. The group promotes opportunities for faculty involved in digital storytelling research to share their experiences through presentations, workshops, roundtables and a one-day conference.
Disability Studies
Leader: Drew Holladay (English)
The Disability Studies Faculty Group group focuses on reading interdisciplinary scholarship in disability studies (DS) and its application in higher education and other contexts. They read and discuss DS and DS-related theories of embodiment, epistemology, methodology, subaltern politics, and cultural analysis. Applications of DS include programs of inclusion, universal design, and accessibility in education and elsewhere (such as accessibility in technology and digital spaces). Group conversations can include how faculty can use DS scholarship in their classes and to redesign their own teaching practices.
Immigration
Leaders: Sara Poggio (Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communications) and T. H. (Tim) Gindling (Economics)
The Immigration Faculty Working Group brings together faculty members and graduate students who study international migration to promote interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching, research, and service related to international migration at UMBC. International migration is a complex phenomenon, with cultural, economic and political aspects. Its causes, processes and consequences have been analyzed in multiple disciplines, from a variety of theoretical perspectives and with different research methods. UMBC currently has several faculty members and graduate students whose work on immigration reflects this diversity of approaches. However, for the most part, this work has been carried out independently, by individual faculty members and graduate students within their home departments. There is an untapped potential for interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching, research and service related to this broad theme.
Latin American Feminisms
Leaders: María Célleri (Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies), Tania Lizarazo (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communications and Global Studies), Yolanda Valencia (Geography and Environmental Systems), and Thania Muñoz D. (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication)
The Latin American Feminisms Working Group is an interdisciplinary multilingual research group that focuses on feminist and decolonial Latin American and Caribbean scholarship from a hemispheric perspective. Attentive to the inequitable politics of translation between South America and North America, the group centers scholarship from and for Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, it considers the formation of Latin American and Caribbean feminisms from a decolonial and intersectional framework that honors the work of Indigenous, Black, and Brown women. They bring together faculty, graduate students, artists, and community members from the humanities and social sciences to engage in and debate issues around race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, mobility, feminism and decoloniality as these pertain to the Latin American and Caribbean hemisphere, which begins in the Southern Cone and extends to the Latinx/Chicanx diaspora. We read and discuss recent work around Latin American and Caribbean studies, invite scholars from Latin America to speak about their work, as well as collaborate to support our work and move our research projects forward.
Offices, Centers and Divisions
CALT (The Center for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching):
Resources for the Diverse Classroom
Crafting an Inclusive Course Climate
COEIT:
The Center for Women in Technology
The Dresher Center and CAHSS:
Office of Equity and Inclusion:
Faculty and Staff Professional Resources
Office of Student Disability Services:
EDUCAUSE Inclusive Language Guide
Instructor Resources: Accessibility, Tools, Disability Information
Provost’s Office:
National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity