Public Voices Fellowship
August 18, 2020 9:11 AM

Dear colleagues:

I am delighted to announce the second cohort for the system-wide Public Voices Fellowship. The national Public Voices Fellowship is a unique opportunity led by The OpEd Project and designed for tenure-system faculty. The program is part of a national initiative to help faculty amplify their expertise in ways that can contribute to public conversations about pressing issues. The 20 faculty in this second cohort will attend four sessions held during the 2020-21 academic year and will be paired with a journalism mentor that provides one-on-one editing and coaching, with the goal of publishing two op-ed pieces during the program.

We received more than 40 nominations from across our three universities for the program and the selection process was very competitive. Diversity of background and experiences as well as university representation were factors in the selection process. 

Please join me in congratulating the following faculty who were selected for the 2020-21 program.

Chicago
• Benét DeBerry-Spence, Department of Marketing
• Anna Guevarra, Global Asian Studies Program 
• Young Richard Kim, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies 
• Maria Krysan, Department of Sociology
• P. Zitlali Morales, Department of Curriculum and Instruction 
• Nadine Naber, Gender and Women’s Studies Program; Global Asian Studies Program 
• Angela Odoms-Young, Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition 
• Sandra Sufian, Department of Health Humanities and History, Disability Studies 

Springfield
• Sharon Graf, Department of Sociology and Anthropology 
• Shipra Gupta, Department of Business Administration 
• Hanfu Mi, Department of Literacy Education and Linguistics

Urbana-Champaign
• Jan Erkert, Department of Dance
• Margareth Etienne, Graduate and International Program, College of Law 
• Karen Flynn, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies; Department of African American Studies
• Alexandra Harmon-Threat, Department of Entomology 
• Mary Pat McGuire, Department of Landscape Architecture 
• Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Department of Latina/Latino Studies; Media and Cinema Studies 
• Colleen Murphy, College of Law 
• Leslie Reagan, Department of History 
• Kim Selting, Veterinary Clinical Medicine

Thank you to all who participated in the process, either as nominators or as candidates. We are fortunate to be part of a community with so many dedicated faculty who are interested in furthering their skills as well as making their voices heard. My office plans to host the Public Voices Fellowship program annually, and I strongly encourage the many talented individuals who were not selected this year to apply again in the future.

Sincerely,

Barb Wilson
Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs