2024 Research Workshops

Nicole R. Harris, PhD (she/they) is a Black feminist autoethnographer exploring the intersection of race, gender, and leadership in general and the lived experiences of Black women specifically. She is passionate about bringing a liberatory leadership praxis to life.

Brittney Plascencia-Saldana, MS, is the Director of Student Success & Belonging in the Office of Student Engagement (OSE) at Whittier College. She has dedicated her career to serving first-generation Latina students from low-income backgrounds and hopes to advance knowledge on Hispanic Serving Institutions as a doctoral student. Brittney earned her Master’s degree in College Counseling and Student Development from Azusa Pacific University. Brittney is a proud alum of Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Spanish and James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

Jes Takla (she/her) is an artist (BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago), student affairs educator (MA from Bowling Green State University), and qualitative researcher (PhD from Azusa Pacific University) who explores and engages radical imagination and critical creativity praxis for liberatory transformation. She invites you to "scholar outside the lines" and join her in becoming CRITICAL CREATIVES (Collective Radical Imaginaries Transforming Interdisciplinary Creativity [to] Advance Liberation [by] Co-constructing Reflexive Ecologies [for] Abolitionist, Trans*/queering, [&] Indigenizing Vocation Engaged Sustainably).

Dr. Charle H.F. Davis III is a third-generation educator, organizer, and artist committed to the lives, love, and liberation of everyday Black people. He is currently an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab at the University of Michigan. Dr. Davis’ work employs digital ethnographic methods in conjunction with frameworks from decolonial studies and the Black radical tradition to examine the ways campus and community organizers work collaboratively to reimagine public safety and world without police.

Candace N. Hall, EdD (she/her/hers) is a creative academic in Higher Education and Student Affairs. Her research interests include the recruitment, retention, and support of Black faculty at historically white institutions. Hall aims to show the possibility of Black joy in the academy in hopes that more people will invest in spaces where Black faculty can authentically experience joy, hope, and community. Her recent project clusterluck, a documentary short, highlights the experiences of a group of Black faculty within a department at a historically white institution. This short film unpacks what community means and what it looks like for Black scholars to have supportive communities within their departments at their institutions.

Dr. McGuire is an interdisciplinary scholar who draws on Africana studies frameworks to examine how race, gender and religion shape minoritized college students' identities and their everyday experiences. Additionally, Dr. McGuire investigates the ways racism, sexism, and heteronormativity undermine the experiences of minoritized college students as well as they ways students resist and respond to such marginalization. He received a joint PhD in Higher Education and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and in 2019, he was named a National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow and ACPA Emerging Scholar.

Wilson Kwamogi Okello, PhD, is a transdisciplinary artist scholar who draws on Black critical theories to think about knowledge production and student/early adult development. Most immediately, he is concerned with how Blackness makes visible the epistemic foundations that structure what it means to be human and imagining otherwise possibilities for Black being therein. His work is published in venues such as the Journal of College Student Development; Race, Ethnicity and Education; and the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Among his national recognitions, he received the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Mildred Garcia Junior Scholar Award.

Kamaria B. Porter, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Porter’s research examines gender and racial inequities in higher education, particularly university response to sexual assault, graduate education, and faculty experiences. Her primary research examines Black women’s perspectives of the legal system in weighing whether to report sexual violence to their university. The data come from 60 trauma informed narrative interviews with survivors. Dr. Porter trained to be a rape survivor crisis counselor (during Masters degree at Loyola University Chicago) and injects trauma informed practice into her research methods, teaching, and facilitation.

Dr. Cinthya Salazar is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration at Texas A∓M University. Dr. Salazar’s research focuses on the mechanisms used by undocumented students to access, persist, and succeed in higher education. She uses participatory action research (PAR) and engages undocumented students as co-researchers to generate localized student success models that can promote their college retention. Because of her innovative PAR dissertation, she received the prestigious Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2019 and the Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year award in 2020. Her PAR scholarship has been published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and Journal of Qualitative Research, among others.

Kyoungjin Jang-Tucci serves as a Project Assistant at the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NCA) and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research centers on the career development and college-to-work transitions of historically underserved college students, employing critical quantitative and mixed methods. Her recent projects delve into the critical examination of emerging research methods and explore how these can be utilized for social justice-oriented research, especially in the realms of social network analysis and text analytics.

Dr. Ross Benbow is also a Researcher with the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ross also co-leads the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NCA). His current research focuses on relationships among teaching and learning, student support services, and sociocultural transitions in colleges and universities, with a particular interest in the career paths of marginalized undergraduates. He is the Principal Investigator of the Veteran Education to Workforce Affinity and Success Study (VETWAYS), a National Science Foundation-funded project centered on the support networks and professional trajectories of student military service members and veterans.

Dr. Nidia Bañuelos is an Assistant Professor in Liberal Arts & Applied Studies in the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Principal Investigator at the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NCA). A sociologist by training, she studies the design and implementation of new postsecondary programs for working adults – including the community college baccalaureate. She has a special interest in the history of older, working undergraduates with dependents and the institutions that serve them. In her research and teaching, she uses asset-based approaches to highlight the strengths students bring to their schooling.

Taylor Odle is an assistant professor of educational policy studies and affiliate in data science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As an applied quantitative policy scholar, Taylor’s research seeks to identify strategies that “work” at reducing racial and socioeconomic inequality in college access and success—most commonly done in close partnership with state agencies and non-profit organizations. This includes the use of experimental and quasi-experimental strategies to identify the impacts of college admissions practices, advising/coaching interventions, financial aid, and other structured supports. He teaches classes in the economics of education, higher education policy, and program evaluation.

Evelyn Vázquez, Ph.D., M.S., (pronouns she/ella) is the first in her family to attend college. Dr. Vázquez is an Assistant Researcher in the Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health at the School of Medicine, University of California, Riverside. Her scholarship focuses on mental health and well-being in higher education settings, social determinants of health, and health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her methodological expertise is in Transformative research; Rapid qualitative research; and Mixed methods.

Dr. Vázquez leads an engagement award project titled “Engaging the Academy to Address Underrepresented Graduate Students’ Mental Health Needs”, funded by The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Jerrel Moore is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and a Research Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at Prairie View A&M University. His research foci include non-cognitive issues that affect academic achievement and the application of regression models in the fields of health science and education. Dr. Moore’s skills as a methodologist and statistician allow him to conduct research in other fields of study including engineering and agriculture. Currently, Dr. Moore is completing a second doctoral degree at Texas A&M University in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in research, measurement, and statistics.

Stella Smith is an Assistant Professor for Educational Leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling at Prairie View A&M University. A qualitative methodologist, Dr. Smith’s scholarly interests focus on the experiences of faculty and administrators of color in higher education; African American females in leadership; access and inclusion of underserved populations in higher education, and P–20 educational pipeline alignment. Dr. Smith earned her PhD in Educational Administration with a portfolio in Women and Gender Studies and BS in Microbiology from The University of Texas at Austin and an MA in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix.

Ben Marcy is a PhD Candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Higher Education track in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. His dissertation is tentatively titled "A Post-Intentional Phenomenological Exploration of Undergraduate White Men’s Sense of Belonging at a Changing Predominantly White Institution." His academic passions include student development as it relates to topics of leadership, career development, masculinity, and whiteness. He has previously worked as a graduate assistant in the University of Minnesota’s Leadership Minor and in the University of Minnesota’s Information Technology Infrastructure major.

Keelin (she/her) is an educator, facilitator, researcher, and ice cream enthusiast. Dr. Yenney received her PhD in Organizational Leadership & Policy Development from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2019. Her research interests include sense of belonging, the experiences of rural students in higher education, as well as exploring her role in dismantling systems of oppression as a White educator. Dr. Yenney currently serves as the Associate Director of Student Learning & Success at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities as well as co-founder, coach, and consultant with Yellow Umbrella Coaching & Consulting.