2009 Cohort – Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

Alumni Accolades, June 2022

Karina Fernández Montilla, IRT ‘06 is a recipient of the 2022 Dr. Sue Estler University of Maine Higher Education Distinguished Alumnx Award. This award is given by the University of Maine Higher Education graduate programs in honor of Dr. Suzanne E. Estler, Associate Professor, Emeritus of Higher Education. Karina is Assistant Dean of Advising and Director of the James Baldwin Scholars Program at Hampshire College.

Teresa Gonzales, IRT ‘06 will be joining the sociology department at Loyola University Chicago this fall.

Heather Moore Roberson, IRT ’07 was appointed Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Allegheny College. Congratulations!

Alumni Accolades, June 2021

Daniel Peña, IRT ‘09 moderated a special virtual Fulbright event, Roger Rosenblatt: The Writing Life, on May 14^th. The event highlighted the literary career of Roger Rosenblatt, writer, author, professor, Emmy Award winner, Peabody Award winner, and 1965 Fulbright U.S. Student to Ireland.

Peña is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston- Downtown and author of Bang: A Novel. He received an MFA from Cornell University. More information on Peña is available on his website.

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”