KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

NANCY JACKSON

Nancy Jackson, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the International Security Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Center’s mission is to create technology-based solutions through international cooperation to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism. International Security Center programs include warhead security protection programs in Russia, border and port security around the world, and safeguards and security work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Prior to her present position, Dr. Jackson was involved in research and development at Sandia, first as a researcher, then as a program and a line manager. Primarily her research was in heterogeneous catalysis with an emphasis on energy applications. Later work involved chemical imaging with a wide variety of applications from biological systems to homeland defense problems.

Dr. Jackson, a Seneca, has been actively involved in diversity issues in science through volunteer work at the American Chemical Society, where she is now on the Board of Directors, and through service on various boards and committees including the Sandia American Indian Outreach Committee and the American Indian Outreach Committee. She has worked with several tribal colleges and sits on the Board of Trustees of a small liberal arts school in Montana which has a significant American Indian enrollment and many American Indian programs. Dr. Jackson has participated in committees and studies of the National Academies including the Board of Chemical Sciences and Technology and the Board on Higher Education and Workforce. Dr. Jackson is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was recipient of the 2005 American Indian Science and Engineering Society Professional of the Year Award. Dr. Jackson has a B.S. degree in chemistry from George Washington University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She is married and has two sons.

CALVIN MACKIE

Professor, Speaker, Author and Inventor. As an undergraduate, Mackie was a dual-degree achiever. In 1990, he earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Morehouse College, where he graduated magna cum laude. Two years later, he earned a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. In March 1996, he was conferred the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. In 2004 – 2005, he was a visiting professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Tau Sigma and Tau Beta Pi National Honor Societies, his passion for scholarship is well established. In 1992, he co-founded Channel ZerO, an educational and motivational consulting company and has been active on the public speaking circuit for over fifteen years giving motivational presentations to numerous educational, civic and corporate institutions. Mackie is also a tenured associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA, specializing in heat transfer, fluid dynamics and alternative energy. In May 2004, President Bush honored Dr. Mackie with the 2003 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

Mackie has won numerous other awards including the 2003 National Title One Distinguished Graduate for Louisiana, 2002 Black Engineer of the Year Award for College Level Educator, 2002 New Orleans Data News Weekly Trailblazer Award, and the Pi Tau Sigma/ASME Excellence in Teaching Award in Mechanical Engineering for 2000 and 2002. In November 1999, he received a patent on a device to retrofit luggage stowbins on 737 and 757 Boeing commercial airliners. In October 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana appointed Mackie to the twenty-six member Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), the guiding agency to lead the state's rebuilding efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Most recently, Mackie was prominently featured on HBO in Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. He is the author of the book: A View from the Roof: Lessons for Life and Business and is married to Tracy R. Mackie and has two sons, Myles Ahmad and Mason Amir.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKERS

MONICA A. COLEMAN

Monica A. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Immediately before coming to LSTC, Coleman was the founding Director of Womanist Religious Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, she founded and coordinated an organized church response to sexual violence in Nashville, TN that became the basis for her book, The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence.  Her expertise in religion and sexual violence has taken her around the country to speak at churches, colleges, seminaries, universities, and regional and national conferences. Because of this work, the interdenominational preaching magazine The African American Pulpit named Coleman one of the “Top 20 to Watch” – The New Generation of Leading Clergy: Preachers under 40. Coleman is currently working on a womanist process theology. Her current research interests include black religious pluralism and disability theology.

ROBERTO G. GONZALES

Roberto G. Gonzales is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and a Ford Foundation Fellow for 2006-2007. His research takes place in Orange County and explores the effects of legal status on the adult children of unauthorized Mexican migrants. In particular, his dissertation examines the role of the economy and the state in shaping the realities and options available for unauthorized Mexican migrants and their children. Gonzales’ research interests include: International Migration, Unauthorized Migration, Urban Sociology, the 1.5 and 2^nd Generations, and Latino/a Sociology. He is the coauthor of “Immigration and Incarceration: Patterns and Predictors of Imprisonment among First – and Second-Generation Young Adults,” in Immigration and Crime: Ethnicity, Race, and Violence, Martinez, R. and A. Valenzuela eds., and “Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men” appearing in the Migration Information Source. At UCI, he is the co-founder of DREAMS – Dedication for the Realization of an Education and Always Motivated for Success – student organization, the co-director of the Labor Studies program, a Research Assistant for the Center for Latinos in a Global Society, and a member of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy. Prior to UCI Roberto received his A.M. in public policy and social work administration from the University of Chicago. He has also spent much of his professional life working in immigrant communities and with youth as an organizer and educator. Gonzales is cofounder of Video Machete, has worked as a consultant with the Coalition of African, Asian, and Latino Immigrants of Illinois, and the Multicultural Youth Project in Chicago, and served on the board of the Crossroads Fund and the Great Lakes Regional Committee of the American Friends Service League.

FRANK R. HALL

Frank R. Hall received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island in 1991. His dissertation research involved Quaternary paleoceanographic reconstructions of the high- latitude Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. In 1994, he was awarded a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to study at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado. His research involved the post-glacial paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Scotian and Labrador Margins. Two peer-reviewed publications and a book chapter resulted from the research he was able to perform with the fellowship. In 1998, Frank joined the faculty at the University of New Orleans as a geoscience educator, focusing on the preparation of preservice and inservice grades K-12 science teachers. Prior to joining to the Ocean Studies Board, he served as a Program Officer in the Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education at the National Science Foundation.

MODERATORS AND SESSION PARTICIPANTS

LEISY ABREGO

Leisy Abrego is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of interest include International Migration, Gender, and Families. In previous research, Leisy has written about undocumented Latino students and their blocked access to higher education. Her dissertation examines the economic, social, and emotional effects of family separation due to migration. She compares the experiences of Salvadoran families in which mothers migrated to those in which fathers migrated to support their children from afar.

JANUS ADAMS

Emmy Award-winning journalist/historian/talk show host, Janus Adams, is the author of a three-volume saga of African-American history and culture: Glory Days: 365 Inspired Moments in African-American History; Freedom Days, a chronicle of the civil rights years; and, Sister Days, a “herstory” of African-America.  A publisher and producer, she created the groundbreaking BackPax children's book-and-audio series. A long-term contributor to Essence Magazine, her commentaries are a regular feature of NPR (National Public Radio), her OpEds have appeared via UPI.com and in USA Today, her guest credits include CNN's TalkBack Live and NBC's Today Show.

SUSAN C. ANTON

Dr. Susan C. Antón is a physical anthropologist specializing in human evolution, skeletal biology, and the evolution of human development in the Center for the Study of Human Origins of the Department of Anthropology, New York University. Susan is the joint-editor of the Journal of Human Evolution, the top journal for Paleoanthropology. She is also the director of the MA program track in Human Skeletal Biology at NYU. Susan did her graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley (MA, 1991; PhD, 1994). Dr. Antón’s field research programs in Indonesia concern the evolution of Homo erectus including insights into the timing and causes of human dispersal from Africa. Her field programs in the Cook Islands consider the influence of human colonization on island ecosystems and the influence of resource scarcity on human behavior and anatomy. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren and Leakey Foundations, and the National Geographic Society.

RAMONA AUSTIN

Ramona Austin is writing her dissertation, Nti Mfumu, Tree of the Chief: Staffs of Office of the Annointed Chiefs of the Lower Congo, under Robert Farris Thompson at Yale University. She won a Belgian American Educational Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (1982-83) for archival preparation for fieldwork at The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. She won a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship from 1984-85, renewed for 1985-86, for research in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Ms. Austin also was a Smithsonian Pre-Doctoral Fellow in 1987 at the National Museum of American Art researching African American staffs for that area of her dissertation. Austin has held curatorial positions for African Art at The Art Institute of Chicago (1987-1994) and the Dallas Museum of art where she was The Margaret McDermott Associate Curator for African Art (1994-2001). She has also been the Director of the Hampton University Museum and Archives (2001-2004). Austin has published nationally and internationally in the fields of African and African American Art and has lectured extensively in colleges and universities, and is at present an independent art consultant. Her academic credentials are a B.F.A. in Acting and Directing from The Goodman Memorial Theatre School of Drama in Chicago (1973): a B.A. in English from Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa (1973); and an M.A. and M. Phil in Art History (major African Art, minor Meso-American Art) from Yale University (1983).

VILNA BASHI TREITLER

Vilna Bashi Treitler teaches at Rutgers University.  She has a PhD in Sociology, and masters degrees in both Economics and International Affairs.  Her scholarship is found at the intersection of international migration and social stratification (most especially in race and ethnicity). She is most recently the author of Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World, due out in February 2007 from Stanford University Press, but is at work on two new book projects.  One is a an ethnic history of the United States that theorizes about the links between race and ethnicity, and the other is a study of the racialization of foreign-born children adopted by white American parents.

GRACE BENIGNO

Grace Benigno is a doctoral candidate in mathematics education at the University of Maryland. Her research interests center on equity issues in early and elementary mathematics education. This includes critically examining the existing practices of school mathematics as it relates to outcomes for different students, studying pre-service and in-service teachers' perceptions of diversity and how this relates to their mathematics teaching practices, and understanding how children make sense of both mathematics as well as the culture of school mathematics in their socio-cultural worlds. Her dissertation study is focused on investigating the everyday mathematical experiences of 4-year-old African American children, who are from lower-income backgrounds and have not yet started formal schooling, as situated in their home and broader societal contexts.

CARROLL PARROTT BLUE

Carroll Parrott Blue is a tenured full professor at the University of Central Florida's School of Film and Digital Media. In addition to being an educator, Blue makes documentary films (include Mystery of the

Senses: Vision, Nigerian Arts-Kindred Spirits, Conversations with Roy DeCarava, and Varnette's World: A Story of a Young Artist) and experiments as an author with blending text and moving image in traditional and new media formats. One result, The Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing, is a Book/DVD-ROM/Website from the University of Texas Press, 2003. In 2004 Dawn's book was selected by the American Library Association as one of the 30 best of 500 American Association of University Press publications. Dawn's DVD-ROM won the 2004 Sundance Online Film Festival Jury Award in its New Forms category. In 2006 – 2007, Blue is a University of Houston Visiting Professor where she is turning Dawn into a public art installation and website community development tool.

COURTNEY MARIE BONAM

Courtney Marie Bonam is a third year student in Stanford University's social psychology PhD program.  Her current research focuses on racial cues and their relationship to racial identity, interracial interactions, and housing discrimination.  In addition to researching, Courtney has been a teaching assistant for cultural psychology, as well as introduction to psychology.  Community service is also an important part of Courtney's life, and she is active in Stanford's Black Graduate Students' Association. Upon completion of her degree, she plans to continue her research, teaching, and service with a career in academia.

DAVID T. BRADLEY

David T. Bradley recently completed his graduate work at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in the Architectural Engineering program with an emphasis in acoustics.   David also received a B.A. in physics from Grinnell College, and is currently working as an acoustical consultant with BRC Acoustics & Technology in Seattle, WA.   Eventually, David would like to teach physics at a small liberal arts college.

MARK BROOMFIELD

Mark Broomfield is currently a PhD student in Dance History and Theory at the UC Riverside. Prior to that, he taught in the Theatre and Dance Department of Phillips Academy Andover and as an Assistant Professor at Santa Fe Community College, Gainesville, Florida, where he was Resident Choreographer. As a dancer he has performed in the companies of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Snappy Dance Theater, and Gerri Houlihan and Dancers. He holds a BA from SUNY Geneseo and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His most recent work Pink Pumps, an evening length solo performance re-examines expressions of masculinity in our contemporary culture through one man’s journey. “Dance of the Male Goddess” continues to explore these central themes in his work. His choreography has also been featured at the Florida Dance Festival.

GLORIA CHACÓN

Gloria Chacón recently completed her Ph.D. in Literature at the University of California Santa Cruz.  Chacón's research explores indigenenous literatures of Abya-Yala, Central American poetics, and literary and cultural theories.  Her dissertation examines the emergence of Maya writers in Guatemala and México, focusing on the theoretical challenges they pose to established Latin American literary and cultural paradigms.  She will further her research as postdoctoral fellow at UC Davis in the fall.

ALEX E. CHAVEZ

Alex E. Chavez is both a Ford and National Science Foundation fellow currently pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology with a concentration in folklore and public culture at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.A.s in government and Mexican American Studies (2004) and M.A. in anthropology (2006), all from the University of Texas. At present, his research focuses on the practice and performance of huapango arribeño among transnational Mexican immigrant communities, a musical form of oral tradition that originates in the Sierra Gorda of Mexico, yet his interests also extend to U.S.-Mexico cultural relations and Mexican/Chicano music, folklore, and popular culture more generally. A fourth generation musician whose musical and family roots extend to the Sierra Gorda, he is also an active musician currently involved in an assortment of grassroots and musical projects.

JOSEPH CLARKE

Joseph Clarke received his PhD from the Department of Literatures in English at Rutgers University in 2001. He has been a visiting assistant professor at Kenyon College and an Assistant professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently the Lynette S. Autrey Visiting Assistant professor in the English Department at Rice University.

MICHELLE DAWSON

Michelle Dawson received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University in 1999. Opting to continue her education in a more traditional engineering discipline, while having the opportunity to do biomedical research, Michelle elected to work toward her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Dr. Justin Hanes. Michelle received her Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins in 2005 when she presented her thesis, titled “Mucosal Barriers to Gene Delivery in the Cystic Fibrotic Lung.” Michelle received numerous awards for her Ph.D. research, including fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Achievement Rewards for College Students. Michelle also received several awards for outstanding research, including the 2003 Graduate Student Research Award from the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine and the 2004 Capsugel-Pfizer Innovative Aspects of Oral Drug Delivery Award. After graduation, Michelle was eager to pursue a more translational postdoctoral training position related to the design and delivery of cancer therapeutics. Thus, she joined Dr. Rakesh Jain’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she continues to focus on gene delivery using cell-based delivery systems. Specifically, Michelle is interested in designing mesenchymal stem cell therapeutics for the treatment of solid tumors. After finishing her work as a postdoctoral fellow, Michelle hopes to attain a career in academia focused at the interface of engineering and medicine.

JUANITA DIMAS

Dr. Dimas earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California – Berkeley in 1995, and completed a 2-year clinical internship and postdoc at the University of California – San Francisco. She has been licensed as a psychologist in the State of California since 1999. After having worked as a researcher and professor, and later as a Program Manager for a local non-profit health plan, Dr. Dimas now dedicates her professional efforts full-time to private practice – psychotherapy, program evaluation, and community development. She works collaboratively with physicians, other health care providers, social services, schools, and other community resources as needed to address the impact of psychosocial issues in the various areas of the patient’s life. Her professional presentations and publications have focused on culture and health/mental health, health disparities, minority status stress, and multiracial issues.

JUALYNNE ELIZABETH DODSON

Jualynne Elizabeth Dodson is Professor of Sociology and founder and Director of the African Atlantic Research Team at MSU. She is equally a faculty member of the graduate program in African American and African Studies housed in the College of Arts and Letters on our campus. Dr. Dodson was a Ford Foundation Post-doctorate Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University, and held the John A. Hannah Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Michigan State University. She was recruited to join the MSU faculty and did so in fall 2003, bringing the African Atlantic Research Team (AART) with her and continues to direct this mentoring collective. The formation of the Team was inspired by the theoretical and multidisciplinary work of the African Diaspora that was pioneered by the late Dr. Ruth Simms Hamilton of MSU’s Department of Sociology. Beyond its investigative activities, the goal of AART is to increase the number of students of color who pursue an academic undergraduate degree with a commitment to graduate school and the Ph.D. Jualynne Dodson is well known as an expert on religions and cultures of African descendants in the Americas and has published numerous articles and books, including Engendering Church: Women, Power, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church and her forthcoming volume, Sacred Spaces: Socio-historical View of Religious Traditions in Oriente, Cuba. The latter volume is the initial release by editors Charles H. Long and David Carrasco in the series entitled Religions in the Americas: Rims and Boundaries. Her current research focuses on indigenous religions of African descendants in the Americas through which she works in Cuba and Curaçao.

DEBRA MAGPIE EARLING

Debra Magpie Earling is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana. She has published fiction and essays in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Last Best Place, Talking Leaves: An Anthology of Native American Writers, The Best of Northern Lights, Circle of Women, Reinventing the Enemy¹s Language, and Ploughshares. In 2003 her novel Perma Red won the American Book Award, the WILLA award, the Spur Award, the Medicine Pipe Bearer Award, the Washington State Book, and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award. In 2006, she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

CYNTHIA FELICIANO

Cynthia Feliciano is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she was a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003, where she was a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow from 1999-2002, and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow from 2002-2003. Her research focuses on the intersections of race and ethnicity, education, and immigration. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Demography, International Migration Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Social Science Quarterly. She recently published a book entitled Unequal Origins: Immigrant Selection and the Education of the Second Generation.

GABRIELLE FOREMAN

Gabrielle Foreman is Professor of English and American Studies at Occidental College where she teaches African American and American literature and culture as well issues of social justice. She is the author of Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (forthcoming) and more than a dozen articles. She is also the editor of several critical editions including the Penguin Classic’s reissue of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black in which she “managed to pick up one of the coldest trails in 19^th century African American studies,” as one reviewer put it. The American Council for Learned Society awarded Gabrielle a Graves Award for Teaching and Scholarship; and she was named a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow for her work with youth. With young activists and partners from the non-profit sector she co-founded ASHAYE, Action for Social Change and Youth Empowerment. She is on the consulting board of several academic journals. She graduated from Amherst College, Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude, and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Ethnic Studies. She is at work on a subsequent project entitled “Rebellious Desires: Antislavery Rhetoric and Resistance in the Spanish and English Speaking Diaspora.”

WILSON A. FRANCISCO

Dr. Wilson A. Francisco is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University. He obtained a B.S. from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Texas A&M University, where he was an NSF graduate fellow. Wilson did his postdoctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley with the support of the Ford Foundation and NIH postdoctoral fellowships. Wilson is an enzymologist specializing in the study of metalloenzymes and has published extensively in this field. He has served as a reviewer for a number of journals, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Biochemistry, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta and Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics.

DESIRÉE GARCIA

Desirée Garcia is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University. Her focus is on race and ethnicity in early American film. She also works as a freelance producer of historical documentary films for public television. A native of Oregon, Ms. Garcia graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in history and currently resides in Boston.

JOHN CARLOS GARZA

John Carlos Garza is a Supervisory Research Geneticist and leader of the Molecular Ecology and Genetic Analysis Team at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Carlos, as he is known, is also an Adjunct Professor of Ocean Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz and serves on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

He is a population geneticist and the research in his laboratory combines high-throughput molecular biology and novel analytical and statistical methodology to address questions regarding the ecology, evolution, behavior, conservation and management of marine species. Most of their current work is on salmon, trout, rockfish and marine mammals. Carlos was a Ford Predoctoral and Dissertation Year Fellow at UC Berkeley and credits the Ford Foundation fellowship and annual conferences with providing him the necessary resources to focus on his graduate research and a network of like-minded scholars to support him as he successfully established himself in his field.

ANNA GRUBEN

Anna Gruben is an advanced PhD candidate in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is a 2006/2007 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship awardee and a research fellow at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (LLILAS). Gruben’s research engages questions regarding the creation and maintenance or ‘viability’ of democratic institutions, asking whether and when formalized interactions between civil society and the state enhance the participation of civic associations in governance. Gruben is currently writing her dissertation on civil society participation in Brazilian water and health management. This project is based on data gathered over a twelve-month period in Brazil with a Fulbright-Hays fellowship.

OLIVIA HALL

Olivia Hall is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. She earned her A.B. cum laude in psychology from Harvard University in 2002. Since then she has supplemented her studies with coursework at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland; Cologne University, Germany; and the Law Faculty of Lund University, Sweden. Olivia is a 2006 awardee of the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship as well as the recipient of several academic year and summer Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships

EILEEN M. HAYES

Eileen M. Hayes is an assistant professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of North Texas. She earned her doctorate from the University of Washington in 1999 and was a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow 2004-2005. She is the co-editor of Black Women and Music: More than the Blues (University of Illinois Press, 2007).  Her publications on black women and women-identified music include a chapter in African American Music: An Introduction, edited by Portia K. Maultsby and Mellonee Burnim (Routledge, 2005), and a review of "Radical Harmonies" in Ethnomusicology.  Currently, she is writing a book on race and the politics of sexual identity in women-identified music, a micro-music that emerged from a subculture of lesbian feminism in the early 1970s.

DANIELLE HOLMES

Danielle Holmes is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical child psychology in her home town of Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota.  She received both her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Stanford University, where she also minored in comparative studies in race and ethnicity (CSRE).  Her primary research interests include childhood maltreatment, early childhood trauma, and developmental psychopathology.

ALVARO HUERTA

Born to Mexican parents from Michoacan, Mexico, Alvaro Huerta was raised in East Los Angeles’ turbulent Ramona Gardens Housing project. Growing up in the projects, Alvaro never dreamed of attending the university to become a community activist and scholar. Like many of his peers, Alvaro was not encouraged to pursue the university either by his public school teachers or Spanish-speaking parents, who had no formal education. When the pressure to join a gang and take drugs became intense, he desperately sought a way out of his rough neighborhood through higher education. Being the first in his family to attend the university, Alvaro felt a great responsibility to succeed academically for his family and community. Upon entering UCLA as a freshman in 1985, however, Alvaro became shocked by the lack of Chicanos / Latinos on campus and aware of the social inequalities impacting ethnic communities. As a result, Alvaro dedicated himself to a life a social activism and scholarship, shedding light on the social and economic inequities impacting Chicanos / Latinos in the United States. He is particularly interested in conducting research on Chicano / Latino workers in the informal economy (e.g., contract gardeners, domestic workers and street vendors) and documenting urban, social justice movements in this country. After receiving his master’s degree from UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning (2006), Alvaro will initiate his doctoral studies (Fall 2006) at U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Regional and City Planning (DRCP). Lastly, Alvaro is happily married to his wife of 14-years, Antonia Montes. They reside in Albany, C.A., with their wonderful son, Joaquin Montes Huerta.

LISA LINDEMAN

Lisa Lindeman is a third-year graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, completing an individualized graduate major that cuts across the clinical, cognitive, psycholingistic, and developmental subgroups.  Her self-designed program of study brings together research on embodied cognition with research on the cognitive causes of emotion and emotion disorders.  The latter encompasses appraisal theory, attribution theory, and cognitive models of depression.  Specifically, her research is focused on testing a new theoretical model describing how thoughts give rise to emotion and exploring the implications of this model for depression and psychotherapy.  Lisa obtained her BA from the University of California, Berkley, in 1999 where she studied cognitive neuroscience, category learning, conceptual metaphor theory, and the psychology of consciousness and meditation.  She then worked as a research associate for the Association of Academic Health Centers in Washington, DC, where she published papers on mental health care policy.  Her hobbies include writing science fiction short stories and creating expressionist oil paintings.  She is also the mother of two boys.

ROBYN LINGO

Robyn Lingo is the Program Associate for Training and Curriculum Support for the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools, based in Washington, DC. During her graduate work in education, she taught undergraduate seminars focusing on increased awareness, understanding and dialogue around issues of social inequality including racism, classism and sexism. Robyn earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Grinnell College and a Masters in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

IRIS LOPEZ

Iris Lopez is the director of the Latin American and Latino/a studies program at City College and an associate professor in the department of sociology.  My Ph.D is in cultural anthropology and I am currently completing my book: Sterile Choices: Reproductive Dilemmas of Puerto Rican women in New York City.

BECKY MARQUEZ

Becky Marquez was born in Los Angeles, California. She was raised in East Los Angeles and graduated from Garfield High School. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at the University of California, Davis and then entered the graduate program in the Field of Physiology at Cornell University where she received her PhD. She is currently applying for postdoctoral positions.

MARION R. MARTIN

Marion R. Martin is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry at Stanford University. Born and raised in Columbia, SC, he went on to complete his undergraduate work at Furman University in Greenville, SC, where he was a member of the football team and served as a Team Captain his senior year. After completing his Masters degree in the laboratory of Dr. Lon B. Knight, Jr. at Furman, he moved to Stanford University to pursue his Ph. D in 2001.  Marion is currently a member of Dr. Richard N. Zare's research group where he is working in gas-phase reaction dynamics, with the goal of gaining a microscopic understanding of chemical transformations and the forces that govern them by investigating reactions at a fundamental level.  He is also an active member of the Black Graduate Students' Association and InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship at Stanford. Motivated by a passion for teaching and mentoring, Marion plans to pursue a career in academia upon completion of his degree.

NEO MARTINEZ

Neo Martinez received a Bachelors from Cornell, a Masters from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Masters and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley where he has taught Ecological Economics and remains an affiliated faculty of the Energy and Resources Group.  His postdoctoral research fellowships from the National Science and Ford Foundations supported his work at the University of California at Davis, Imperial College in England, and the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado where he continues to conduct research during the summers.  After serving as an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University and a Visiting Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at Cornell, he and his colleagues founded the Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology lab, the independent nonprofit "PEaCE lab" appropriately based in Berkeley, California where he currently serves as Director.  Throughout his career, Neo has studied ecological networks called food webs that depict who eats whom among species within natural habitats.  His early empirical work fundamentally changed the way scientists though about food-web structure showing them to be much more complex yet remarkably similar among ecosystems.  His methods for conducting such research on complex networks has since been widely applied by other network scientists.  While continuing such empirical work, his more recent collaborations with information and computer scientists as well as mathematicians and ecologists have applied high performance computing to the simulation of the nonlinear dynamics of food webs to better understand the function of these complex networks and advance the fields of ecoinformatics and computational ecology.  These advances have been widely covered by the media and the network visualizations illustrating ecological complexity created by PEaCE lab software is frequently seen in the top science journals and presentations throughout the world.

THERESA MAY

Theresa May is Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief at the University of Texas Press. During her twenty-nine years there, she has worked in almost every department and has been midwife at the birth of more than 900 books. She is just going on sabbatical from her other full-time career as a theater costume designer and plans to spend the next year learning how to write cheesy mystery novels.

CHRISTINA M. MEDINA

Christina Medina was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY in bicultural Puerto Rican/Italian family. She was a first generation college student earning a B.S. in Biology with honors at St. Francis College in 2003. While at St.Francis, Christina participated in two summer research programs through the Leadership Alliance Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP). In 2001, she investigated p53 and cell cycle arrest with Dr. Jill Bargonetti-Chavarria at Hunter College. In 2002, she studied Wnt signaling in Xenopus with Dr. Sergei Sokol at Harvard Medical School. For her summer research, Christina received the “Acres of Diamonds Award” as a winner in a national abstract competition and for distinction in oral and poster sessions at the Minority Trainee Research Forum. In September 2003, Christina matriculated to the Ph.D. program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she has since earned her M.S. Her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Richard Kitsis explores a role for ARC, an inhibitor of apoptosis, in breast cancer. Among awards receive during her graduate work is the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union Scholarship as the winner in an essay competition administered by the Hispanic Center of Excellence. In line with the goals of the Ford Foundation, Christina is one of the founders and Co-Chairs of the NYC Minority Graduate Student Network: an organization aimed at bringing together traditionally underrepresented graduate students, in the biomedical sciences, from all research institutions in New York City. Inspired by her previous mentors, Christina plans to pursue an academic career involving teaching and mentoring.

IRMA MCCLAURIN

Irma McClaurin is the author of Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America and Editor of Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics (named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), both published by Rutgers. She has published three books of poetry and her poems have appeared in over 16 magazines and anthologies, and have been translated in to Spanish and Swedish. A former professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, she is now Program Officer for Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation.

 KILEEN MERSHON

Kileen Mershon attended California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry magna cum laude. During the summer between her junior and senior years, she interned in the pharmacology department of Theravance, a biotechnology company. She examined the paradoxical role of the anti-schizophrenic drug clozapine, which functions as a muscarinic agonist in humans and an antagonist in rats. After graduating from Cal Poly, Ms. Mershon entered a Ph.D. program at the University of California Los Angeles. She just completed her third year of graduate school, and works in the laboratory of Dr. Sherie Morrison, a member of the department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics.

JAMILA CELESTINE MICHENER

Jamila Celestine Michener is a 3rd year graduate student in the Political Science department at the University of Chicago. Originally from Queens, NY, she received her B.A. in politics from Princeton University. Currently her research interests broadly center on African-American politics, the politics of youth of color, the politics of marginalized groups in America, gender politics, and Democratic theory.

NATALIA MOLINA

Natalia Molina is an associate professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is interested in relational notions of race and is the author of Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940, University of California Press, 2006. Her new project, entitled The Power of Racial Scripts: What the History of US-Mexican Immigration Teaches Us about Race, examines Mexican immigration to the United States in the early twentieth century through a comparative racial approach.

JOANN MOODY

JoAnn Moody, PhD, JD, is a faculty developer and diversity consultant. She helps campuses and professional schools improve their recruitment, mentorship, and retention of faculty and graduate students—most especially under-represented U.S. minorities in all fields and majority women in male-dominated science and engineering fields. Her practical publications, containing insights from her consulting practice and from her earlier years as a college professor and administrator, are used throughout the country. Examples: “Rising Above Cognitive Errors: Guidelines for Search, Tenure-Review, and other Evaluation Committees”; “Demystifying the Profession: Helping Junior Faculty Succeed”; “Vital Info for Women and Under-Represented Graduate Students”; and Faculty Diversity: Problems and Solutions (Routledge). New monographs—“Reducing Stress for Solo Faculty” and “Reducing Stereotype Threat for Vulnerable Students”—will be published in 2007. Her website: www.diversityoncampus.com.

MICHELLE NEYMAN MORRIS

Michelle Neyman Morris was awarded a 1991 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and graduated with a PhD in Nutrition from the University of California, Davis in 1997. She became a Registered Dietitian in 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor and Dietetic Internship Director in the Nutrition & Food Sciences Program at California State University, Chico. Her teaching and research interests include projects related to community nutrition, specifically, nutrition education and social marketing interventions among college students, senior nutrition needs assessment, and hunger and food insecurity among low-income populations. In 2006 she was awarded a David W. and Helen E.F. Lantis University Professorship for her proposal entitled, Today’s Dietary Habits Decide Tomorrow’s Health Outcomes: Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer-led Nutrition Education Program.

STEPHANIE MORRIS

I was born and raised in Queens, NY. I earned my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience and Behavior (and Biology) from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT in 2000. Following my undergraduate career, I worked for 2 years as a Research Technician in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Brenowitz at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. While a Technician, I directed the Analytical Ultracentrifugation Facility within the department of Biochemistry at Einstein. In the Fall of 2002, I entered the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences program at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Since 2003 I have been working with Dr. Brian Strahl in the department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC, investigating chromatin modifications and how they regulate the expression of genes. Specifically, my dissertation research has focused on the functions of histone methylation and acetylation during gene transcription. I expect to graduate in the Summer of 2007.

KIMBERLY RIOS MORRISON

I am a fourth-year PhD student in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University. I completed my undergraduate studies at Stanford in 2003, with majors in Psychology and Asian American Studies. I do research in experimental social psychology, with a general focus on how people's identities and self-concepts affect their behavior. I am also in the early stages of planning my dissertation, which will look at the role of self-certainty in individuals' willingness to express minority opinions. After completing my doctorate, I intend to pursue an academic career in either a business school or a Psychology department.

ELIZABETH PÉREZ

Elizabeth Pérez is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School, focusing on religious formations of the African Diaspora. Her current research interests include the aesthetics of Caribbean altar display and popular representations of African-derived initiatory traditions, such as Haitian Vodou and Brazilian Candomblé. Her dissertation will examine the intersection of ethnomedical healing, female leadership, and conversion in Afro-Cuban Santería. She has also published poetry in the Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe, the anthology El Coro: A Chorus of Latino/a Poetry, and elsewhere.

DIANNE PINDERHUGHES

Dianne Pinderhughes is a Full Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She was a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1985-2006) in Political Science, the African-American Studies and Research Program, and the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. Her publications include Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory. Her current research project, The Evolution of Civil Rights Organizations in the Twentieth Century: Voting Rights and African American Politics, explores the creation of American civil society institutions in the twentieth century, and analyzes their influence on the formation of voting rights policy. In addition to the Ford Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship, she also has also held fellowships awarded by the Open Society Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the UCLA Center for African-American Studies and the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois. She is currently President-Elect of the American Political Science Association.

JULIA RASOOLY

Julia Rasooly is a first year graduate student in bioengineering at Stanford University. I was a simultaneous degree major in bioengineering and near eastern studies languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. I am from a small town in California named Lafayette. One of my future goals is to incorporate my engineering skills into biological research. I have been doing research on a piezoelectric needle-less jet injector for over a year, and most of my work has been concentrated on the Microjet applications to ear infections in children. In my future career as a bioengineer, I wish to bridge the gap between the real world needs in the clinical world to the biotechnological advancements in the research world, for the advancement of health care and medicine.

JAMES L. RODRIGUEZ

James L. Rodriguez is an associate professor of education at San Diego State University. He earned a B.A. in Psychology from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in Child and Adolescent Development from the Stanford University School of Education where he was supported by a Ford Foundation Minority Predoctoral Fellowship and an Irvine Dissertation Fellowship. His research is focused on: (1) furthering the understanding of the psychosocial development and educational experiences of Latino children and adolescents within varying sociocultural contexts; (2) the formulation of developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant models that can be applied across diverse contexts; and (3) bridging the sociocultural gap that often exists between the home and school experiences of Latino children and adolescents, many of whom are immigrants and or English Learners. His publications have appeared in educational and psychological journals including Applied Developmental Science, Child Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, High School Journal, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Review of Educational Research, and Theory into Practice. He is an active member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), and the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). He currently serves as a member of the SRCD Ethnic and Racial Issues Committee and as a member of the Steering and Founding Committees of the SRCD Latino Caucus.

ROCIO ROSALES

Rocio Rosales is a second year graduate student in the Sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles.  She received her A.B. in Sociology with a certificate in Latin American Studies from Princeton University.  She is currently working on an ethnography of Latina fruit vendors in Los Angeles exploring issues of immigration, private businesses in a public space, and gender dynamics within small business networks.  She is also conducting interviews with former garment workers in El Paso, Texas—her hometown.

LUCIA M. SUAREZ

Lucía M. Suárez is Associate Professor of Spanish at Amherst College. She is the author of the recently published (FEB 2006) The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory. She began research for this new book on citizenship and dance in Brazil thanks to a six month Rockefeller Fellowship which allowed her to work in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1999. She returns to do more ethnographic work in January thanks to a Ford Foundation Grant.

FEDERICO SUBERVI

Federico Subervi (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin 1984, Ford Postdoctoral Fellow 1989) is a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University-San Marcos.  Since the early 1980s, he has been conducting research, publishing and teaching on a broad range of issues related to the mass media and ethnic minorities, especially Latinos in the United States.  His research also includes assessments of racial issues in Brazilian media, and the political economy of the media system of Puerto Rico, his country of origin. His book, The Mass Media and Latino Politics, is scheduled for publication in 2007.  Subervi also directs the Latinos and Media Project (www.latinosandmedia.org), a site dedicated to the dissemination of research and resources pertaining to Latinos and the media, and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Latinitas, Inc., and organization and Web-based magazine for Latina adolescents and teens (www.latinitasmagazine.org).

CHRISTOPHER TIRRES

Chris Tirres was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. He attended Princeton University as an undergraduate, studied in Mexico City for a year on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, and completed a PhD in the Study of Religion at Harvard University. He is currently assistant professor of religious studies at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His research interests include U.S. pragmatism, liberation theology, critical theory, aesthetics, and philosophies of education.

MOLLY TOVAR

Molly Tovar Is the Director of Leadership Programs & Scholar Relations of the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship program. Dr. Tovar’s nationally recognized expertise in strategies for ensuring the success of minorities in undergraduate and graduate education has garnered her positions on committees such as the Council of Graduate Schools Advisory Committee on Minorities, Council of Southern Graduate School in Graduate Education, ACT Policy Research Advisement Committee. Her dedication to the advancement of minorities in education has also earned her numerous awards including the Outstanding Oklahoma Native American leadership Award, Holmes Scholar, National Hispanic Scholar, and recently was selected as one of sixteen fellows of the prestigious International Women’s Forum Leadership Foundation.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG

Julian Vasquez Heilig obtained his Ph.D. in Education Administration and Policy Analysis and a Masters in Sociology from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters of Education Policy in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and a Bachelor’s in History and Psychology from the University of Michigan. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin. His current research includes quantitatively examining how high-stakes testing and accountability-based reforms and incentive systems impact urban minority students. Additionally, his qualitative work considers the sociological mechanisms by which student achievement and progress occur in relation to specific NCLB-inspired accountability policies in districts and schools for students of different kinds. Julian’s research interests also include issues of access, diversity and equity in higher education.

CORD J. WHITAKER

Cord J. Whitaker is pursuing a Ph.D. in the English department at Duke University. He studies medieval literature, and he is currently writing a dissertation that investigates the relationship between religious conflict in medieval romance and modern notions of race. He also has interests in African contributions to the Roman and medieval churches as well as the work of memory in late medieval romance and theological writings. In addition, he is the editor of Noirbaby, an online journal on African-American parenting.

HEATHER A. WILLIAMS

Heather A. Williams is a former attorney with the United States Department of Justice and the New York State Attorney General’s Office. She received undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. She is currently assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, published by UNC Press in 2005, received the Lillian Smith Book Award given by the Southern Regional Council and the George A. and Jeanne S. DeLong Book Prize given by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. She is currently researching a book on the separation of African American families during slavery and attempts at family reunification after the Civil War.

PSYCHE WILLIAMS-FORSON

Psyche Williams-Forson is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department and is an affiliate faculty member of the Women's Studies Department. Her research and teaching interests include cultural studies, material culture, food, and women’s studies along with social and cultural history of the U.S. in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Her current work examines the complexity of black women's legacies using food as a form of cultural work. Her new research explores issues of class and entrepreneurship in African American material culture from the late 19th century to the present.

She is the author of several articles and the book Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (UNC Press, 2006). She is also the recipient of several fellowships including the Lord Baltimore Fellowships, which she currently holds at the Maryland Historical Society.

NAZERA S. WRIGHT

Nazera S. Wright is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park. She received a B.A. in English and African American Studies from the University of Virginia and a M.A. in English from Howard University. Wright is the recipient of academic fellowships and awards that include the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, an Erskine Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship at the University of Notre Dame, a fellowship by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for archival research at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, an Ilene H. Nagel travel grant and a QCB Research and Travel Grant from the University of Maryland to conduct archival research at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and a Dean’s Scholarship at the University of Maryland. Courses taught by Ms. Wright in African American Literature were at the University of Maryland, Howard University, and Bowie State University.

ORLANDO YARBOROUGH III

OrLando Yarborough III has begun his fourth year of graduate study at Yale University in the laboratory of Richard P. Lifton. OrLando's interested in exploring how the intersection of genetic and environmental factors contribute to human health and disease.