STRIDE

Germine Awad’s scholarship is characterized by three interrelated areas of inquiry: prejudice and discrimination, identity and acculturation, and body image among women of color. She has also written in the area of multicultural research methodology. Much of her research is guided by the questions “What factors lead to discrimination against minoritized ethnic groups?” and “What impacts perceptions of experienced discrimination?” The two populations that she has primarily focused on are Arab/Middle Eastern Americans and African Americans. Dr. Awad is concerned with how prejudicial attitudes and ideology impact attitudes towards minoritized ethnic groups generally and within specific domains such as the workplace and higher education. In addition, she examines how racial/ethnic identity and acculturation impact minoritized ethnic groups’ perceptions of discrimination. She has expanded her identity and acculturation research to the study of body image concerns among women of color.

Bart Bartlett is an Arthur F Thurnau Professor of Chemistry, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. He received his AB in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating summa cum laude. He earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a post-doctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley. He served as the Associate Director for Science and Technology at the UM Energy Institute from January 2014 – December 2019. He is the recipient of many awards for his research and teaching including LSA Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award, the Seyhan N. Eğe Faculty Development Award and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Excellence in Education Award. His research focuses on understanding chemistry-related basic science needed in the large-scale production of clean, efficient, renewable fuels. His research program addresses these problems in synthesizing compounds that will have immediate impact in fundamental science needs for energy conversion and storage: 1) semiconductor materials that are stable under extremely oxidizing environments under a wide-range of pH to generate solar-derived fuels; 2) high stability electrolytes for next-generation magnesium batteries. Beyond these energy implications, a unifying theme of this research is the synthesis of solid-state materials with well-defined, but easily-tuned structures and compositions that allow electrons or ions to flow within the solid.

Nicholas Henriksen (he/él) is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, with appointments in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Department of Linguistics. As an experimental linguist, his research delves into how factors influencing the physical elements of speech shed light on the cognitive representations of linguistic forms, working with communities in Argentina, South Africa, and Spain. Henriksen serves as co-director of Michigan’s Speech Production Lab and received the Linguistic Society of America’s Early Career Award in 2021.

Henriksen served as Associate Chair and Assistant Interim Chair of his home department, and was the Principal Investigator of the Africa to Patagonia Humanities Collaboratory project. He strongly advocates for the trans and nonbinary members of Michigan’s community, with his work supported by LSA’s New Initiatives/New Instruction grant, and the ADVANCE’s Faculty Fellowship.

Amy E. Hughes (she/any) is a Professor of Theatre & Drama in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD), a Faculty Associate in American Culture (LSA), and an Associate Director of ADVANCE. A theatre historian who studies US theatre/performance during the nineteenth century, Hughes employs theories and methods from disability studies, material and visual culture studies, animal studies, digital humanities, and documentary editing. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, American Antiquarian Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, Massachusetts Historical Society, and Winterthur Library and Museum. She has received multiple awards for her research, teaching, and service, including the Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History (American Society for Theatre Research), the ATHE-ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Theatre and Performance Scholarship, a Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities, Brooklyn College (CUNY)’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award from her alma mater, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Aparna Joshi is a Professor of Management at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Her research focuses on how social differences translate into inequality with a specific focus on gender inequality across a range of professional settings such as among scientists, lawyers, engineers, and chief executives. In these occupational contexts, although women and minorities have made significant human capital gains, fundamental barriers to future progress remain. Her research aims at building actionable theoretical models that can inform practices aimed at reducing barriers and enhancing inclusion in these settings. She has received numerous awards including the Cummings Award for Early to Mid-Career Scholarly Achievement, one of the highest professional honors in the field, by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management and she was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 2019. She has also been featured on Stanford’s list of the top 2% of research scientists in the world. Prior to joining Michigan Ross, she was on the faculty of the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, and at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Gretchen Keppel-Aleks is a professor in the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering department at U-M. Her scholarship aims to understand the impacts of global climate change on ecosystems and carbon cycling. Her research team focuses on advancing the use of remote sensing data to develop a predictive understanding of climate feedbacks and ecosystem health. Keppel-Aleks mentors a diverse group of students and postdoctoral scholars since climate change will have differential impacts on populations within and across geographies, and diverse perspectives can help define critical needs in Earth system research. She has received the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award (2024), the Raymond J. and Monica E. Schultz Outreach and Diversity Award (2023), and the Martin Luther King Spirit Award (2022) for her diversity related work at U-M.

Professor Mora’s principal research interests focus on the historical construction of race, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. His book Border Dilemmas explores how the first generations of Mexicans living in the United States grappled with the racial and national ideologies that circulated along the nineteenth-century border. He currently has two major research projects underway. The first explores the relationship between African Americans and Mexican Americans in the early-twentieth-century urban Midwest. He also is writing a history of the fictional character of Zorro from 1919 to the present. The iconic character serves as a means of tracing changing representations of Mexican Americans, historical memory, and U.S. regionalism.

Denise began her role as Director of the U-M ADVANCE Program in Fall 2023, after having previously served on the STRIDE Committee and as the Associate Director for Research in ADVANCE. She is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology. Her research program in experimental social psychology focuses on intergroup stereotyping, implicit bias, and the experiences of women and underrepresented minorities in science and engineering. She received the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award (2015), and the Sarah Goddard Power Award (2012) from the University of Michigan for her work on diversity-related issues.

Kyle is a faculty member at Michigan where he is George Willis Pack Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor. On campus, Kyle teaches in and coordinates the School’s environmental justice graduate specialization. He is founding Faculty Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment, Principal Investigator of the new Environmental Justice + Humanities Hub, co-Principal Investigator of the Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters, Faculty Associate of Native American Studies, Convener of the Secretariat for the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation, affiliate Professor of Philosophy, and Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Herbert Winful is a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the Joseph E. and Anne P. Rowe Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics. He received his BS from MIT and his PhD from the University of Southern California, both in electrical engineering. His many contributions to photonics and quantum electronics include pioneering work on nonlinear optical periodic structures, the nonlinear dynamics of coherently-coupled laser arrays, the physics of quantum tunneling time, polarization instabilities, and distributed-feedback fiber Raman lasers. He is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, the National Society of Black Physicists, and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many awards include the State of Michigan Teaching Excellence Award, the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize, the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence and Service Excellence Awards, the Harold R. Johnson Outreach and Diversity Award, the MLK Spirit Award, and the 2020 IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award.