Leadership Fellows Residency II

Dr. Sherrice Allen

Dr. Sherrice V. Allen is the director of the ADVANCE Insti- tutional Transformation Project at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. As the project director, she leads university wide initiatives to promote equitable institutional policies and practices to create inclusive and empowering culture for all faculty, especially women in STEM disciplines and to assist in their preparation leading to tenure, promotion and career advancement. Prior to joining the project, she served as an independent educational consultant with SVA1 Consulting, LLC, and as the STEM Partnership Coordinator for the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs at the Public School Forum of North Carolina.

 An experienced educator and researcher with 15+ years of experience, Dr. Allen held faculty appointments at Fayetteville State University, North Carolina Central University and Campbell University. She also served as an independent educational consultant with SVA1 Consulting, LLC, and as the STEM Partnership Coordinator for the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs at the Public School Forum of North Carolina. Dr. Allen’s dedication to excellence in teaching, service and research earned her several departmental and college honors and awards.

Dr. Allen has extensive experience in program management and partnership building. She served as the Co-Principal Investigator for the NIH-funded Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (FSU-RISE) grant, serving as the Assistant Director and Director of the program. In addition, she was the Principal Investigator of a National Science Foundation Research Ini- tiation Grant. Finally, she served as the Director of the Center for Promoting STEM Education and Research, (CPSER); funded by Title III. As a mentor, teacher and researcher, Dr. Allen is committed to engaging in efforts to diversify the STEM workforce at the undergraduate, graduate and faculty levels.

Dr. Allen received a Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Technology from East Carolina Uni- versity, a Master of Science degree in Biology from Fayetteville State University) and a Doc- tor of Philosophy degree in Microbiology from North Carolina State University. She also com- pleted the Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in Research and Education (SPIRE) Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellows program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Allen is also an alumna of the HERS Leadership Institute (2019) and the HERS Luce Program for Women in STEM Lead- ership. Currently, she serves on the NC ACE Women’s Network Executive Board and the External Advisory Board for the Department of Plant & Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University.

Dr. Goldie Byrd

Dr. Goldie S. Byrd recently is Professor of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Director of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity. At Wake, she leads the integrating Special Populations (ISP) for the Clinical Translation Science Institute and she co-leads the Outreach and Recruitment Core for the Alzheimer Disease Research Center (ADRC). Prior to this appointment, she served as Chair of Biology, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Endowed Professor of Biology at North Carolina A&T State University. Dr. Byrd also served as a biology professor at Tennessee State University and North Carolina Central University, and as adjunct professor of Genetics, in the School of Medicine, at Duke University.

Dr. Byrd conducts research on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans. She has contributed significantly to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented students in medicine and the biomedical sciences. While serving as dean, she co-founded the STEM Center of Excellence for Active Learning , the Center for Outreach in Alzheimer’s Aging and Community Health (Merck Foundation) and was a founding investigator to create the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL). Dr. Byrd received extensive NIH support to increase diversity in the Biomedical Science workforce, leading the Minority Biomedical Science Research in Scientific Initiative (RISE) for eight years. She also co-led the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program at A&T to increase women leadership and advancement in STEM careers.

Dr. Byrd has received numerous awards for her leadership, teaching, research, student and faculty mentoring, and community engagement. Such awards include the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), which was received at a White House ceremony from then President Barak Obama. This year Dr. Byrd received a Healthcare Pioneer for Black History Month, by the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission and Governor Roy Cooper.

Dr. Byrd has served on local, state and national boards for organizations such as the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer’s Association, the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences and the North Carolina COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee.

Dr. Tamara Floyd Smith

Dr. Tamara Floyd Smith is Associate Provost at Tuskegee University and has served as Associate/Assistant Provost since 2015. In this role, she has broad responsibility for University-level Academic Affairs including aspects of planning and implementation of both face-to-face and virtual instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tuskegee University and has instructed courses at all levels from freshman to doctoral since 2003. In addition to conducting traditional scientific research, she has also actively engaged in engineering education research with a focus on the relationship between belonging and student engagement. During her academic career, she has served as TU principal investigator for millions of dollars in grant funding from various agencies, published dozens of peer reviewed publications and jointly holds two U.S. patents. Recently, she served as a rotating program officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. In that role, she administered the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE), Scholarships in STEM (S-STEM) and Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Programs.

Dr. Floyd Smith completed requirements for her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Tuskegee University in 1996 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and 2001, respectively. She completed both the 2017- 2018 Senior Leadership Academy sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) and the American Academic Leadership Institute as well as the Opportunities for Underrepresented Scholars (OURS) Post Graduate Certificate Leadership Program in 2015. She is married with two children.

Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Hammond

Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, President, has been a member of the higher education community for over 30 years. Her professional career has included tenured and administrative positions in univer- sities throughout various regions of the United States: University of Louisiana Monroe, Califor- nia State University Dominguez Hills; Delaware State University; University of North Carolina Charlotte, Winston-Salem State University; and Coppin State University. Most recently, Dr. Jackson-Hammond completed her tenure as president of Central State University in Ohio.

She is a sought-after thought leader on accreditation, multicultural diversity and inclusion. Her academic discipline is Education and Higher Education Administration. Dr. Jackson-Hammond spent the majority of her career in administration serving as director of TRIO programs, academic dean, provost and president. Jackson-Hammond has served on many national boards including Thurgood Marshall College Fund; NCAA Division II Presidents Council; American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. She has appeared several times on Capitol Hill providing testimony regarding the status of 1890 Land-Grant institutions.

Dr. Jackson-Hammond is an ardent advocate for quality assurances and transparency in higher education and is committed to the advancement of college success, equity and integrity in higher education.

Dr. Ebony McGee

As a professor of diversity and STEM education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, Dr. Ebony McGee investigates what it means to be racially marginalized while minoritized in the context of learning and achieving in STEM higher education and in the STEM professions. Dr. McGee studies the racialized experiences and racial stereotypes that adversely affect the education and career trajectories of underrepresented groups of color. This involves exploring the social, material, and health costs of academic achievement and problematizing traditional forms of success in higher education, with an unapologetic focus on Black folk in these places and spaces. Her National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant investigates how marginalization undercuts success in STEM through psychological stress, interrupted STEM career trajectories, impostor phenomenon, and other debilitating race-related trauma for Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx doctoral students.

Education is Dr. McGee’s second career; She left a career in electrical engineering to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of Illinois at Chicago, a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Chicago, and a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University. With funding from seven NSF grants, Dr. McGee cofounded the Explorations in Diversifying Engineering Faculty Initiative or EDEFI (pronounced “edify”). She also cofounded the Institute in Critical Quantitative and Mixed Methodologies Training for Underrepresented Scholars (ICQCM), which aims to be a go-to resource for the development of quantitative and mixed-methods skillsets that challenge simplistic quantifications of race and marginalization. ICQCM receives support from the NSF, The Spencer Foundation, and the W. T. Grant Foundation.

Dr. McGee’s first solo-authored book is entitled Black, Brown, Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation: https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/black,-brown,-bruised

Furthermore, Dr. McGee’s research has been featured in prominent media outlets, including The Atlantic, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Reviews Cancer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Education Today, NPR’s Codeswitch, The Hechinger Report, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, US News & World Report, Inside Higher Education, Tennessean, Washington Monthly, and The UK Voice Online.

Visit the EDEFI website at

https://blackengineeringphd.org/

Visit the ICQCM website at

https://www.icqcm.org/

Dr. Loretta Moore

Dr. Loretta A. Moore serves as the Section Head for the Established Program to Stim- ulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) in the Office of Integrative Activities, Office of the Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She is on detail to NSF from Jackson State University (JSU), a Historically Black Uni- versity, where she is a Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Jackson State University (JSU).

Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Moore served as Vice President for Research and Federal Relations at JSU, where she increased the research competitiveness of JSU, and as Associate Vice President for Research and Scholarly Engagement, where she successfully enhanced the careers of JSU faculty members across all dis- ciplines through the Academy for Research and Scholarly Engagement. Dr. Moore also served as Interim Associate Dean for the College of Science, Engineering and Technology and as Chair of the Department of Computer Science, a position she held for thirteen years. She has also held positions at Auburn University, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, NASA Kennedy Space Center and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

In addition to her research contributions in Artificial Intelligence and Human Computer Interactions, she is recognized for her expertise in addressing issues related to barriers and bias in broadening the participation of underrepre- sented groups in the scientific enterprise. As a former NSF Principal Investigator at an Histor- ically Black University, her research portfolio included the JSU Advance project, focusing on advancing the careers of female faculty mem- bers in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and Social and Behavioral Science disciplines. Her achievements in lever- aging diversity and equity to advance a globally diverse STEM workforce and promoting institutional change for inclusive and equitable STEM environments contributed to her appointment to the congressionally mandated Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering. Her expertise in Computer Science led to her appointment to NSF’s Advisory Committee for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and an appointment to the U. S. Army Scientific Advisory Board.

Dr. Moore received her B.S. degree in Computer Science from Jackson State University and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Dr. Tonya Smith-Jackson

Tonya Smith-Jackson, PhD, CPE began her position as Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at NC A&T State University in May of 2019. She is a Professor and former chair of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at N.C. A&T. Between her position as department chair and Senior Vice Provost, she served as a program director at the National Science Foundation in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate (Information and Intelligent Systems Division/Cyber-Human Systems Program) and the Cultivating Cultures in Ethical STEM programs.

Dr. Smith-Jackson earned an interdisciplinary MS in Psychology and Industrial Engineering from NC State University and a PhD in Psychology/Ergonomics from NC State University. She earned a BA in psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill, and graduated from the inaugural class of the NC School of Science and Mathematics. She is a Fellow in two professional societies: The Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She is a professional development fellow of the AASC&U/AALI Becoming a Provost Academy, the Center for Advancement of STEM leadership, and the HERS Leadership Institute.  

Her faculty positions in academia include universities and community colleges in New York, North Carolina, Virginia and Germany.

Dr. Smith-Jackson has worked in the industry and government sectors as well, serving as a usability engineer for IBM and Ericsson Mobile Communications (now Sony-Ericsson), and as an expert witness in systems safety, usability and accident analysis litigation. She has served as a manager in county, state and federal government agencies, including the European Command (Germany), county public health and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

She has earned department, college, university, civil and community service awards for excellence and innovation in teaching, research, advising, diversity and inclusion, and outreach to communities. She has been awarded a university women’s leadership award; interdisciplinary collaboration awards; and a Command General’s Award for advancing women in the U.S. Army Command. Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her to the NC Board of Science, Technology and Innovation in 2020 and the Performance Management Advisory Committee in 2021.

She continues to champion HBCU-excellence, inclusion, equity, diversity and belonging.

Dr. David Sul

Dr. David Sul is the Owner and Principal of Sul & Associates International, a professional measurement and evaluation corporation located in Sonoma County, California. Dr. Sul is an educator, mathematician, statistician, evaluator and psychometrician. Dr. Sul applies Item Response Theory to develop multidimensional measurement scales and specializes in the design and development of culturally responsive and culturally specific evaluation and assessment models. He is a critical Indigenous scholar and practitioner and through his work and research, he seeks to address power dynamics that influence assessment and evaluation practices.

Dr. Sul teaches research methods, program evaluation, and organizational theory for the Masters in Public Administration program at Sonoma State University in California. He is a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), serves as the 2021 Chair of the AEA STEM Topical Interest Group (TIG), and is a member of the AEA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working. Dr. Sul is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Evaluators, an affiliate of the American Evaluation Association. Dr. Sul holds a doctorate in Education from the University of San Francisco, a master’s degree in Statistics from Utah State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from California State University at Northridge.

Dr. Orlando Taylor

Dr. Orlando L. Taylor is the Distinguished Senior Advisor to the President at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara California. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). Prior to these appointments, he was the Founding President of the Washington, DC campus of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and earlier a Graduate Professor at Howard University where he also served in several senior leadership positions, including Dean of the School of Communications, Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Research.

Dr. Taylor has been a national leader for many years on issues pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. He has been awarded over $50 million from federal agencies, foundations and philanthropists to support research, education and special initiatives that advance DEI in STEM and other fields that impact directly upon the education, health and related needs of diverse individuals, organizations and communities.

In addition to being a CASL PI, Dr. Taylor is currently the Principal Investigator for grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) designed to advance women in the STEM fields into leadership positions at the nation’s colleges and universities. He is the author of over 80 publications in journals, books and monographs within his discipline and in higher education, and is recognized by many as a national leader in graduate education.

Dr. Taylor has served as a leader and member of numerous national boards in higher education, including Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools, President of the Consortium of Social Science Association, and Board Chair for the Consortium for Higher Edu- cation Accreditation. In addition, he has served as member of the Advisory Council for the Geosciences Directorate at NSF and the Board of Directors of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) and the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

Dr. Taylor received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan and has been a recipient of that university’s distinguished alumni award. He is a Fellow and recipient of Honors from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He received his undergraduate degree from Hampton University and a master’s degree from Indiana University. He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Purdue University, Indiana University, The Ohio State University, Hope College, DePaul University, Denison University and Southern Connecticut State University.

Dr. Zakiya S. Wilson-Kennedy

Zakiya S. Wilson-Kennedy, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Research in Chemistry Education and the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusion within the College of Science at Louisiana State University (LSU). Formerly, she held administrative and/or faculty appointments at North Carolina A&T State University, LSU, and the University of Delaware. Dr. Wilson-Kennedy’s research investigates the persistence of individuals from all back- grounds in STEM higher education and careers, focusing on faculty and student recruitment, retention, and success. She has been principal investigator or co-investigator on over $30 million in extramural support with funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Education, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and other agencies. Her education research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Science Education and Technology and the Journal of Chemical Education. She was the primary editor of a recent book, Broadening Participation in STEM: Effective Methods, Practices, and Programs, within the Diversity in Higher Education Series published by Emerald, and coeditor of another book through ACS Publications entitled, Growing Diverse STEM Communities: Methodology, Impact, and Evidence.

Dr. Wilson-Kennedy served as the principal investigator for the 2014 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) organizational recognition for the LSU Office of Strategic Initiatives and has received additional honors for her work in broadening participation, diversity, and STEM education. She is a charter member of the Society of STEM Women of Color and the Metropolitan Baton Rouge Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. She is also a founding contributor to the American Chemical Society (ACS) Women Chemists of Color Initiative. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Jackson State University and her doctorate in computational inorganic chemistry from Louisiana State University.