Hired Two Tenure Track Faculty to Start August 2021

We are excited to share that we have hired two tenure track faculty with experience and expertise in the area of racial justice. They will be provided funding and resources to facilitate their research and scholarly agendas through their affiliation with the School of Social Welfare's Toni Johnson Center for Racial and Social Justice. Please take a moment to read more about these remarkable individuals below, we are humbled and honored that they have decided to join our team.

Dr. e alexander

Dr. e alexander (they/them/theirs) is a recent graduate from The Ohio State University's Higher Education and Student Affairs program. Their professional career has combined education, human services, and racial justice work, and has given particular attention to strengths- and culture-based practices in college administration and the professoriate. Dr. alexander received their Master of Social Work from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Child and Family concentration, with an interest in community development and social policy through anti-colonial praxes. Dr. alexander’s current scholarship explores relationships among neocolonial subjectivity and subjection on college campuses, community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) in higher education, and intersectional organizational violence in academia’s operations. They engage their praxes and scholarship through a social work framework, and encourage education colleagues to do the same in support of minoritized groups. Dr. alexander has also trained as a scholar in advanced qualitative methods, and enjoys teaching others about liberatory practices in research design and praxeology.

Dr. alexander has presented their scholarship through the American Educational Research Association, the American College Personnel Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and local organizations. Their work is also featured in Remixed and Reimagined: Innovations in Religion, Spirituality, and (Inter)Faith in Higher Education (Myers Education Press); the International Journal of Open Education Resources, Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education: Contesting Knowledge, Honoring Voice, and Innovating Practice (Stylus), and the podcast Blacktivism in the Academy. They have forthcoming works in Radically Dreaming: Illuminating Freirean Praxis and Emerging from Dark Times (DIO Press) and Critical Pedagogy for Healing: A Soul Revival of Teaching and Learning (Bloomsbury). Last, Dr. alexander is the co-editor of the forthcoming book, Advancing Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed-Methods (Routledge) alongside Dr. Penny Pasque. 

In their free time, Dr. alexander enjoys being in nature, exploring culture-informed wellness practices, cooking, the arts, volunteering, and playing games (video, board, card, and trivia).

Dr. Melissa "Missy" Miera Holder

Dr. Melissa “Missy” Miera Holder (she/her/hers), a citizen of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, has been a faculty member at Haskell Indian Nations University for 15 years, where she oversaw the social work program. Dr. Holder, who has also served in numerous administrative positions and helped to lead several grant projects working to empower Native American families and students at Haskell, research focuses on Indigenous resilience as the foundational underpinnings of community and social health. More specifically, Dr. Holder’s research interest includes the impacts of historical trauma on intimate violence among Indigenous women, as well as the cultural integrity and competence of institutions of higher education serving Indigenous populations.