2002 Cohort – Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

IRT Alumni Committee Update

Dear IRT Alumni,

On behalf of the Alumni Committee, we extend a warm welcome to our robust alumni network of over 3,000 educators, scholars, and professionals. We are thrilled to have you as part of our passionate community of change-makers!

As alumni, you have a wealth of knowledge, experience, and expertise that can be invaluable to our IRT Scholars. We invite you to get involved in the alumni network and share your insights and perspectives with the next generation of educators and thought-leaders.

One way to get involved is to join the Alumni Committee. The Alumni Committee is a group of dedicated volunteers who work to strengthen the connection between our alumni. Committee members help to plan and organize events, provide mentorship to students, and advocate for the interests of alumni.

Associate Director & Manager of Programs Update, March 2023

Dear IRT Community,

As IRT enters the Spring season, we are continuing to advise scholars as they manage their graduate school acceptances and financial packages. We are encouraging them to savor the joy and acknowledge their efforts in this milestone. We are so very proud of them. As we well know, keeping up with coursework, working multiple jobs, participating in campus activities and applying to graduate schools is a fine balancing act.

We are also in the midst of reviewing applications for our next IRT scholar cohort who will begin their programming year with a 4 week virtual Summer Institute beginning in late June. By remaining virtual, all accepted scholars will have access to IRT faculty, College and University Consortium partners and all programming content. As with other organizations and institutions in service of diversifying the teaching profession, pivoting to increase opportunity and center equity remains the core of IRT’s work.

Alumni Accolades – January 2020

~1995 Cohort~

Dr. Tiffany M. Gill, IRT ’95 authored an article for the Washington Post entitled, How a black female fashion designer laid the groundwork for Ghana’s ‘Year of Return’ earlier this month. Gill is also the author of Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry (University of Illinois Press, 2010) which was awarded the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize by the Association of Black Women Historians.

Dr. Gill’s research has been supported by the American Association of University Women and the National Endowment of the Humanities. A recipient of the 2010 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate education, Dr. Gill was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians in 2015. In 2018, Diverse Issues in Higher Education recognized her as one of the top 25 women in higher education and serves as a consultant for the global beauty brand Sephora. Professor Gill is currently working on a book manuscript chronicling the promise and peril of African American international leisure travel since World War One.

Gill participated in the IRT Summer Workshop as faculty during 1998 – 2000. She is currently an associate professor of Africana studies and history at the University of Delaware. You can find her on social media @SableVictorian.

~2002 Cohort~

Laura Chavez-Moreno, IRT ’02/’10 is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. She will be joining UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/Chicano Studies as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2021.

Continue reading “Alumni Accolades – January 2020”

Alumni Accolades – June 2019

-2002 Cohort-

Congratulations to Women’s Studies Professor LaKisha Simmons, IRT ’02 who is the recipient of this year’s Black Celebratory Cornerstone Award! Selected annually by graduating students, the award recognizes faculty or staff who enhance the academic and social progress of African American students at the University of Michigan.

-2017 Cohort-

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, IRT ’17 was featured in a spring Ms. Magazine article written by Chivas Sandage, “Ms. Muse: What Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie’s Womanist Poems Tell Us About Love, Language and Race in America.” Mariahadessa is currently a PhD student at Brown University studying theatre and performance studies.

Tashal Brown, IRT ’14 and Eliana Castro, IRT ’15 contributed to the article, The Impossibility of Being “Perfect and White”: Black Girls’ Racialized and Gendered Schooling Experiences, first published in the American Educational Research Journal, May 2019. Read more on Eliana Castro by viewing her guest post.

Sara Mokuria, IRT ’05 was a guest presenter at Next City for an event in their online seminar series this past May. Sara Mokuria, is co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality and a Next City Vanguard and spoke about creating a world without police brutality.
Continue reading “Alumni Accolades – June 2019”