2008 – Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

Journey Through Academia – Alumni Thoughts

Wilson Okello, Ph.D., IRT ’08, ’14 is a tenured professor at Pennsylvania State University.

To linger, or tarry, in my work has allowed me to think otherwise – to consider more deeply what I am doing and why. Slowing down, for me, has been an invitation to grapple with the entirety of my relationship to my subject matter, to academia, and with it: precarity, terror, refusals, hopes, rebellions, and dreams.

In this moment of shifting national and state policies – policies that call into question how we know and remember, how we live and be – pursuing lines of inquiry that seek to lift the collective “we” higher are often met with suspicion and ire. It takes work to remember, and resolve to do so intently. My hope is that we will remember the way water remembers, as the ancestor Toni Morrison reminded us – always trying to “get back” to valleys, banks, light, and the route of “our original place.”

Alumni Accolades, April 2025

Délice Williams, IRT ‘96
Williams has a new article in the winter issue of the journal Modern Language Studies, which was published on Jan 31, 2025. Williams is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Delaware.

Tiffany Joseph, IRT ’03
The release of Joseph’s newest book Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare is available via Hopkins Press, March 2025. Tiffany D. Joseph is an associate professor of sociology and international affairs at Northeastern University.

Read author commentary by Dr. Joseph.

Alumni Accolades, March 2024

Shani Mott, IRT ’97
Our deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of Dr. Mott who passed away earlier this month. Shani was a lecturer in Africana Studies and the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. An obituary is posted on the university’s website. To learn more about Dr. Mott’s legacy read the NYT article.

In Memoriam – Shani Mott, IRT ’97

Heather Moore Roberson, IRT ’01/’10
Heather is recognized by the PA Chamber for Black Owned Business in their compilation of 100 Black Trailblazers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

JT Roane, IRT ’08
Roane’s book Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place (New York: NYU Press, 2023) won the Pauli Murray Book Prize. Roane and other winners were honored at the 2024 AAIHS conference, hosted by The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia.

Aesha Mustafa, IRT ’16
Mustafa has been nominated for the 2024 Washtenaw Community College/Parkridge Black Business Community Impact Award. She is a co-owner of Integrative Empowerment Group, PLLC.

GJ Sevillano, IRT ’18
GJ is a recipient of the Philip Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award by The George Washington University. This is one of the university’s highest teaching honors and recognizes GJ’s work in the classroom and contributions to the educational process at the university.

On Process: Tenure and Beyond

David Sterling Brown, IRT ’08, Associate Professor of English at Trinity College in Connecticut

In 2009, thanks to IRT—and the exceptional guidance I received from my IRT advisor Leislie Godo-Solo—I was accepted into NYU’s English PhD program off the waitlist. Despite applying to about ten grad programs, NYU was the only one that accepted me and my low GRE score, which recalled the low 940 combined SAT score I had when my undergrad alma mater Trinity College (Connecticut) accepted me in 2001. And so, I quit my job as Teach For America’s Connecticut Recruitment Director and began commuting from Connecticut, my home state, to NYU for several years as I took grad classes and taught, and eventually finished drafting my dissertation during my 2013-14 Trinity College Ann Plato Predoctoral Fellowship. With my dissertation fully drafted by Spring 2014, I went on the academic job market that Fall and landed a job as Assistant Professor of English, of Shakespeare and critical race studies, at the University of Arizona.

2023 IRT Summer Workshop Overview

The IRT virtual Summer Workshop brought together current scholars, alumni and university deans, and representatives to acquire, question, and disseminate knowledge based on lived experiences, public policy, and research. IRT alumni served as summer faculty and engaged with scholars through a variety of sessions this July. IRT scholars learned more about each other through a series of seminars, presentations, and reflective sessions.