Profiles

Josh Cerretti

Department of History / Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Josh Cerretti teaches for social justice in honor of the insurgent movements of young people that brought the critical study of gender, race, and sexuality into the academy. Dr. Cerretti has always strived to be an activist-scholar, linking his organizing against state violence to his research on it, connecting his commitment to a curriculum that decenters whiteness to solidarity work with local communities of color, and turning his gratitude for public education into a staunch defense of public education for all. He brings the conflicts between historical injustices and the movements that confronted them to life in the classroom in order to give his students a usable past on which to build the future they seek to bring into being.

Brett Coleman

Department Human Services / Health & Community Studies

Brett Coleman challenges students in human services work where his scholarly interests in race, the non-profit industrial complex, and community-based interventions meet the classroom. He focuses on identifying people on the margins of society and centers their voices. He provides real life examples of social justice work through a focus on community organizing and in sharing his own experiences. Through challenging articles that reframe the human services sector, Dr. Coleman brings to light ideas that often do not get attention in other approaches to social work. Employing various strategies, Dr. Coleman:

• Encourages students to share perspectives, offering challenges but not answers

• Offers various world views to address issues

• Shares his experience with community organizing, providing context and complexity

• Tasks students with difficult readings, methods for processing them, and the challenge of presenting them to the class

• Empowers students to select relevant essay topics tied to frameworks, question their own motivations for wanting to help people, and examine the power dynamics that exist in any situation

Kate Darby

Department of Environmental Studies

Kate Darby brings a strong social justice orientation to environmental studies, recasting environmental issues as social and environmental justice issues. Dr. Darby has critically re-examined notions of nature, environmental knowledge, and the science of ecology through an inclusive approach. Dr. Darby facilitates community learning around environmental justice by hosting reading groups, supporting students in offering co-curricular environmental justice events, and moving forward a new Huxley minor in Environmental Justice.

Hugo Garcia

Department of Modern and Classical Languages

Hugo Garcia arms students with tools that help them become informed citizens for the future. He links their academic education to current social struggles, transforming the classroom into a vibrant space for inclusion, acceptance, equity, and mutual understanding. He uses the classroom not only as a space for instruction but also for civil discussion and social justice. Dr. Garcia presents patterns and tendencies of oppression historically present in many different political conditions and encourages students to consider the significance of this in their lives.

Korry Harvey

Department of Communication Studies

Korry Harvey applies an innovative and inspiring social justice approach to his courses, teaching students how to advocate for those who do not have agency of their own and engage in dialogue with the campus community. Professor Harvey is a recipient of Western’s campus-wide Diversity Achievement Award and Phillip E. Sharpe Community Engagement Award, as well as the Scott Silver Teaching Award, the Washington Education Association’s Cultural Education Award, and a Whatcom Human Rights Award.

Marco Hatch

Department of Environmental Sciences

Marco Hatch is an accomplished scholar and social justice advocate for Native American students, providing Native communities' youth greater access to STEM opportunities while respecting coast Salish tribal people, landscapes, and seascapes. Dr. Hatch's work includes helping Native American students make the transition to graduate school in the geosciences, specifically connecting Northwest Indian College students to Western’s Huxley College of the Environment. His work focuses on a partnership between NWIC and Western called Partnerships in Geoscience Education, funded by a five-year $1.65 million National Science Foundation grant. This partnership also provides funding for NWIC graduates to pursue a master’s degree in Environmental Science.

Dr. Hatch’s research and teaching focuses on a developmental model called the Coastal Almanac that will put in place a structure for Pacific Northwest coastal communities and tribal nations to collect, analyze, and archive data to help answer scientific questions important to them. Dr. Hatch is also a mentor for the SACNAS club here at Western as well as a mentor for NASU (Native American Student Union). Prior to his work at Western Washington University, Dr. Hatch served as the Director of the National Indian Center for Marine Environmental Research and Education at Northwest Indian College. Dr. Hatch is a member of the Samish Indian Nation who studies marine ecology and indigenous knowledge.

Nini Hayes

Department of Environmental Studies

Nini Hayes, with a Ph.D. in social justice education and educational change, has extensive experience as an anti-bias school teacher and outdoor environmental educator. Combining these areas of expertise, Dr. Hayes transforms the curricula into one that is responsive to the demands of social justice, addressing the needs of environmental educators who are more diverse themselves. Dr. Hayes challenges students, producing transformative results for justice in Environmental Education.

Nabil Kamel

Department of Environmental Studies

Nabil Kamel teaches in the Geography and Urban Planning and Sustainable Development majors, and has been a singular force in the department and college in moving the university ahead on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Dr. Kamel played a key role in leading a committee charged with developing a Diversity and Inclusion plan for Huxley College. His intellectual focus is strongly justice and empowerment in orientation. He brings this work alive in urban geography and planning. He pushes students to integrate their thinking far beyond any shallow version of environmental planning, with justice as a guiding framework in his entire approach. In his teaching, he:

• Pushes students to integrate their thinking far beyond any shallow version of environmental learning

• Holds students to a high level of critical thinking regardless of the topic

• Uses justice as a guiding framework in everything he teaches

• Uses a radically participatory approach to theory and practice in planning

Michael Karlberg

Department of Communication Studies

Michael Karlberg brings an interdisciplinary approach to his research and teaching, prompting students to develop deep insights about a wide variety of ethical issues in today’s culture. His reliance on seminars helps students take responsibility for their learning and facilitates a collective comprehension that translates to meaningful community engagement. He has developed a new course for both the Communication Studies department and Honors Program entitled “Nonviolent Social Change -- Theory and Practice” which explores the philosophical and practical applications of nonviolent collective action on a variety of social justice issues. See Honors course description. Keep an eye out for Dr. Karlberg’s new project, Truth and Reconciliation in Bellingham and Whatcom County: Constructing an Online Public Memory of Racial Policy and Practice, which will be published next year and is supported by a Faculty Senate Diversity and Social Justice grant.

Monique Kerman

Department of Art and Art History

Dr. Kerman joined the Art and Art History Department full time in 2015, as the only faculty in the department specializing in African art history and visual culture. Although WWU students come from backgrounds with varying degrees of relationship to Africa and its diaspora, Dr. Kerman always starts her courses with an assessment of how people of African descent and their art are perceived here (in Bellingham, WA, USA) and now (the current year).

In writing the syllabi for courses on the art of Africa and its diaspora, she aims to raise awareness of the structural racism in Western academic traditions, including art history. Her classes are constructed around the sources of authoritative knowledge within the original context of the art works—whether that is oral history, or a creation myth, or an artist’s workshop, or descriptions of the works provided by the artists themselves. Since the beginnings of colonialism, American (and other non-African) students had to rely primarily upon research and writing done by European and American figures, from within academia and without. In particular, most of the accessible images of Africans and others of African descent were created and disseminated by Europeans and Americans.

In the effort towards decolonizing African art history, class readings are written by scholars of African descent whenever possible and interviews with the artists are included whenever available, so that their voices are privileged over any others. In this way, Dr. Kerman seeks to shift the Eurocentric perspective embedded in art history as a discipline and in the teaching of African art and culture more specifically.

Bridget Kelley

Department of Special Education

Bridget Kelley encourages social justice thinking throughout her teaching in Special Education. She goes deeper than only discussing the social justice issues in educating those with special needs by teaching a wider variety of social justice issues that her students may encounter. Dr. Kelley challenges students to examine issues of injustice in their personal lives and provides opportunities for students to go out in the community to learn about social justice.

Bill Lonneman

Department of Health & Community Studies

Bill Lonneman’s approach to educating nurses revolves around social justice, partnering with others to provide the best learning opportunities. Guest speakers contribute valuable perspectives on local topics such as the Lummi Nation and Healthcare, LGBTQ and the Queer Youth Project, ableism and disabilities, migrant worker health, and unequal treatment in the healthcare system. Dr. Lonneman has also helped improve palliative care competencies at Western.

Rebekah Paci-Green

Department of Environmental Studies

Rebekah Paci-Green brings a systems-level view of social justice to her Environmental Studies courses, the Disaster Risk Reduction minor, and in taking students overseas for research and response efforts. Her approach to DRR demonstrates that it can be an equalizing force used to strengthen community-level resources, social interconnections, institutions, and mobility of resources across class lines, enabling communities through increased resilience.

Tara Perry

Department of Communication Studies

Tara Perry believes that culturally relevant teaching from a communication perspective prepares both teachers and students to question the structural inequalities, racism, and injustices present in our society. Dr. Perry's research, teaching, and service align with social justice and difference (e.g. anti-racism, homelessness, feminism). She is one of the original/founding members of the Faculty Senate Social Justice & Equity Committee. Dr. Perry continues to participate in social justice and equity work and both contributes to and participates in professional development on related topics. Dr. Perry integrates social justice methods into every course she teaches. From research writing to case studies, community-based learning to social action projects, she ensures her students have opportunities to explore social justice issues. She created a social justice movement titled #endhomelessness and continues to share it. See instructor site and media mention for her activism (https://taraperrywwu.wordpress.com/media-mentions/) In all her courses, she:

• Includes readings, videos, and current topics related to social justice, equity, and diversity

• Asks to critcally examine the authors' perspectives in various readings and research

• Seeks to develop sensitive interactions with diverse populations Incorporates the roles of privilege and power in society as it pertains to marginalized groups

• Engages students in teamwork, service-learning, reflection, reading, and class discussion

• Involves her students in international teaching and learning (e.g. international filmmaking, Black History Month).

Kate Trueblood

Department of English

Kate Trueblood actualizes Western’s stated goals of community outreach to veterans, through curricular relevance. In Professor Trueblood’s classes, conversation is fostered across the divide between Main Street and the military. While initial registration is reserved for actively deployed military and vets, her course on The Literature of War and Homecoming attracts military family members as well as conventional students.

Glenn Tsunokai

Department of Sociology

Glenn Tsunokai teaches a course on race and ethnic relations, presenting course material in an engaging and unique way. By keeping up to date on current events in the world, he tailors his lectures to include such relevant events. Dr. Tsunokai teaching makes students aware of prejudice, changing their views on racism. Because of him, students have found passion seeking social justice for minorities and people of color.

Verónica Vélez

Secondary Education

Verónica Vélez an educator who exemplifies teaching to engage social justice. In its first four years, the Education and Social Justice minor of which she is Founding Director grew from 25 students to over 300. Dr. Vélez has rooted her teaching in a critical education framework coupled with community engagement and empowerment. She engages her students through a critical, compassionate pedagogy, providing cultural affirmation, political empowerment, student-centered advocacy, and deep compassion. Her commitment and energy in promoting equity, justice, and community engagement are nothing short of inspiring.

Jill MacIntyre Witt

Department of Environmental Science

Jill MacIntyre Witt puts a climate justice lens over all topics covered in her Environmental Studies class. Climate justice involves social, racial, economic and environmental justice (see climatejusticenow.earth). She brings in guest speakers to talk first-hand about social justice issues in relation to sustainability. Jill assigned the book The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, which brings a social justice context to sustainability and the materials-based economy. She also showed short videos to create discussion around white privilege. Jill offered many opportunities for extra credit that involved not just outdoor work parties with LEAD, but also for attending lectures on social and racial justice topics like the Flint Water Crisis community presentation.

Jane Wong

Department of English

Jane Wong is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. She seeks to alter the Western literary canon, which perpetuates a majority white, male literary lineage. The vast majority of her course texts are by writers of color and engage frameworks based on social justice and equity. She fosters strong poetic communities based on encouragement, reflection, social justice, and real-world stakes and focuses on writing as a safe means toward visibility and inclusion.

Cameron Wuhr

Student Outreach Services

Cameron Wuhr implements inquiry based learning, applied learning, and experiential learning techniques to engage students in critical conversations about social justice issues in education. His approach challenges students to discover personal and social responsibility to advocate for social justice. He asks students to wrestle with challenging and locally relevant topics like cultural competence, intersectionalities, and microaggressions, as well as more underlying topics like white fragility and DACA.