Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Teaching) Archives

Margaret Phillips

Prof. Margaret Phillips is a paralegal educator, lawyer, writer and access to justice activist focused on developing experiential learning for paralegal students while promoting access to justice for under-served communities. She is currently the Director of the Paralegal Studies program at Daemen University in Buffalo, New York, and prior to that she taught Legal Research and Writing at the University of Buffalo School of law and was a civil litigator with experience in negligence, civil rights, and discrimination.

As an educator, Prof. Phillips is experienced in developing curriculum, presenting and teaching on topics ranging from social justice, legal ethics, legal research and writing, introduction to law, and legal research methods. She has presented to audiences including high school groups, paralegals, paralegal educators, practicing attorneys, and college students. She was recently selected to do a Tedx Buffalo talk “What if the Constitution Could Talk?”

As a writer, Prof. Phillis is the author of a college textbook on legal analysis and writing entitled: “A Practical Guide to Legal Research and Analysis for Paralegal and Legal Studies Students.” She also writes a regular column for the Bar Association for Erie County entitled “Spotlight on Paralegals.”

Her current scholarly focus is on access to justice effort locally, nationally, and internationally. As the program director for Paralegal Studies, she has been active in creating the Paralegal Clinic course as well as community-based short-term clinics such as expungement clinics to eradicate low-level marijuana related criminal convictions.

During her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Prof. Phillips intends to collaborate, develop and co-teach legal skills curriculum for paralegals and interns at the Human Rights Law Network, the legal clinics at the National Law University Delhi, and other paralegal organizations. The primary goal is to increase these organizations’ capacity, communication and collaboration to promote access to justice. The secondary goal is to form solid collaborations between the not-for-profits and law schools to enhance access to representation. Specifically, the training and teaching will support Human Rights Law Network in hosting more volunteers, enhance and grow legal clinics at NLU Delhi, and support community paralegal networks.

Anita Charles

Dr. Anita Charles is Director of Teacher Education and Senior Lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. In the past, she has taught a wide variety of ages and abilities, from first graders through adult learners, including more than ten years as a high school English teacher.

Dr. Charles has conducted many workshops on a wide range of topics, including autism, special education, digital literacies, and teaching methodologies.

As a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2016, Dr. Charles taught undergraduates and explored issues of literacy and inclusion in pre-K-12 schools. Subsequently, she engaged in research on inclusive education for children with disabilities in India.

Dr. Charles has a PhD from University of New Hampshire in the area of Adolescent Literacy. Her dissertation on digital, social, and academic literacies won two national awards. She holds an MEd from Harvard and a BA from Dartmouth College. She has published numerous articles as well as several book chapters. In 2019, she also appeared on a nationally televised ABC news special with Diane Sawyer entitled “Screentime.”

For her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Dr. Charles plans to present on topics related to teacher education, literacy, inclusion and diversity, and/or similar areas of expertise. Her philosophy is based in progressive theory, which promotes a student’s learning process as one of teacher-student interaction, discovery, and growth, through a recognition of social and cultural contexts. In India, a number of initiatives strive to improve educational opportunities, processes, and outcomes for all children. In addition to teaching, she hopes to assist a host institution in curriculum/program development, participate in meetings as an active member of the organization, engage in local community outreach, and give presentations or workshops.

Jamie Barber

Prof. Jamie Barber holds a position in the academic and professional writing program at the University at Buffalo where she also served as the interim director of the Journalism Certificate Program in 2021-2022. Prof. Barber’s work in the classroom aims to decenter concepts of “normal” in order to invite students to leverage their diverse backgrounds and abilities as they develop their writing skills. She recently taught a class titled “Writing for Change” in which students learned research and writing skills while trying to enact change on a real-world problem that intersected with their interests and identities. These writing students extended the impact of their writing and learning by creating multimodal “campaigns” to get the word out about their change-making ideas. Students created activist-centered zines, podcasts, infographics, and other documents that extended beyond text-based communication. Prof. Barber is currently co-designing a first-year writing course in which students will explore their language backgrounds while speculating on what linguistic justice might look like in academic and professional writing contexts.

Prof. Barber’s creative work often focuses on interactions between humans and the more-than-human world. Her essay “The Trouble with Cockroaches” explores tension between a “do-no-harm” attitude and a cockroach infestation. Her essay “Accepting Impermanence” speculates that ancient people may have advice for a new mother. Prof. Barber is also developing her journalism portfolio, recently writing about earthquake research for Temblor, and about the Buffalo, NY community for Buffalo Rising.

Prof. Barber’s Fulbright-Nehru project seeks to build a collaborative framework between students, educators, artists, designers, and scientists. She plans to work with the Science Gallery Bengaluru, an institution already engaged in powerful connections between the arts and the sciences, to build workshops that will connect students to this collaborative framework. Students will learn science while they engage in multimodal science communication projects.

Arpita Joardar

Dr. Arpita Joardar got her PhD in international business from the University of South Carolina. Currently, she is an associate professor of management and the director of the MBA program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has presented her research in national as well as international conferences and received recognitions like the FIU/AIB Best Theory Paper Award and nomination for the Carolyn Dexter Award. Her research has been published in various high-quality peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of International Management, International Business Review, and International Journal of Cross Cultural Management.

Dr. Joardar’s research draws from and integrates theories from multiple disciplines such as organizational behavior, strategy, economics, psychology, and cultural anthropology to examine international business phenomena. More recently, Dr. Joardar has been engaged in researching best practices for teaching in business programs. She draws from her more than 15 years of teaching experience in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs using multiple teaching modalities for identifying the most effective pedagogical tools for business faculty.

India’s growing demands of entrepreneurs means that it is essential to develop business programs that provide quality training on critical skills to navigate the challenges of a dynamic global business environment. Dr. Joardar is using her Fulbright-Nehru grant to work with the business academic community in India to develop curriculum that is designed for future management professionals interested in global business. In this regard, she is presenting her research and engaging in exchange of ideas with both faculty and students there. Dr. Joardar is also exploring opportunities for future collaboration in India. Besides, she is teaching management topics with international focus for courses on Cross-cultural Management and International Business. She is also helping the faculty in curriculum development and discussing research opportunities for collaboration. Similarly, she is exploring the possibility of mutually beneficial exchange programs between her home institution in the U.S. and her host in India.

Devan Barker

Dr. Devan Barker is currently a professor of history at Brigham Young University (BYU)-Idaho where he teaches courses in world history and philosophy. Dr. Barker received a bachelor’s in Italian and a master’s in organizational behavior from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His PhD was from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany where he studied intellectual history with an emphasis on the history of educational philosophy. Before pursuing his doctoral work, Dr. Barker was involved in starting and administering several private and charter schools, including a high school completion program in Mexico, a performing and fine arts school in Utah, Utah’s first charter school placed in a multimillion-dollar performing arts facility, and the national flagship school in the United States for Montessori education at the adolescent level. He has also worked in the corporate world for companies like Novell and PepsiCo.

Dr. Barker is a founding director of the Office of Instructional Development at BYU-Idaho where he oversaw faculty development and training programs for a decade while the school transitioned from a two-year college to a four-year university and tripled in size, adding over 700 new faculty. He continues his involvement in university pedagogy as a faculty fellow for the development office.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Barker has taught middle school, high school, undergraduate, and master’s students, has mentored several doctoral candidates, and has consulted with numerous other universities. He has presented workshops on a wide array of topics relevant to faculty development and has published articles and chapters on intellectual history as well as on university pedagogy.

The Fulbright-Nehru project involves partnering with an expert in the literature around university pedagogy and organizational change with a leading Indian university promoting educational reform. The goal is to support a university-wide culture shift from education-for-certification to knowledge production pursued as an end in the tradition of liberal arts institutions.

Audra Anjum

Dr. Audra Anjum is an instructional designer at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She earned a PhD in instructional technology and an MA in applied linguistics, both from Ohio University, and a BA in English from Wilmington College, Ohio. Dr. Anjum’s teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate courses at Ohio University and at institutions abroad. She has taught in many different teaching modalities across different types of learners. Over the past decade of her professional practice, Dr. Anjum’s work as an instructional designer has mainly centered around faculty development and course design. She has delivered several faculty development workshops both in the United States and India, as well as collaborated with over one 100 faculty members and subject-matter experts on all or parts of hundreds of courses, seminars, and other transformative learning experiences.

Dr. Anjum’s primary research focus is on investigating the individual differences and factors that influence instructors’ decisions to use technology in university settings, wherein the integration of enterprise-wide solutions is implicitly mandatory. The impetus to pursue this line of research mainly stems from her efforts to reframe current approaches to faculty support initiatives with greater empathy, by leveraging differences among instructors’ varying coping responses to workplace stressors (like the use of technology) rather than through instructional best practices and institutional mandates. She is also involved in capacity-building efforts for promoting teacher training at Ohio University wherein she frequently collaborates with both pre- and in-service instructors across a wide range of disciplines who are interested in contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning within their areas of expertise.

Dr. Anjum’s Fulbright-Nehru project is facilitating a capacity-building program for instructional design and faculty development at the JSS Medical College in Mysuru, India. She is carrying this out in collaboration with the faculty and administration. She is also teaching classes and opening up a series of professional development opportunities to enhance teaching practices and student engagement, with specific focus on topics such as technology use, accessibility and inclusivity, active learning strategies, and multimedia development.

Holly Wise

Ms. Holly Wise is the program operations manager at the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network and an adjunct lecturer at Kent State University and Tri-C Community College. Formerly a journalism lecturer at Texas State University in San Marcos, where she taught advanced news-writing and multimedia courses, and introduced a solutions journalism course, Ms. Wise now works solely to advance the practice of solutions journalism in newsrooms, journalism schools, and organizations that support journalism. She was a recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Teaching Award in 2018 and taught solutions journalism at Mt. Carmel College, Bengaluru, during 2018–2019. Ms. Wise is also the founder of VoiceBox Media, which conducts rigorous analysis of how people solve social problems within their communities. She is a frequent speaker at national journalism conferences and also delivers guest lectures at universities in the United States and Canada.

Ms. Wise was the part-time director of journalism school engagement at the Solutions Journalism Network and during this stint, she consulted with journalism professors and lecturers on creating solutions journalism curriculum for their respective schools. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s degree in mass communication from Murray State University.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Wise is teaching students and local journalists the practice of reporting on climate-related problems through a solutions journalism lens. She is also facilitating trainings for journalists who are already part of her extensive network in India. Further, by collaborating with the faculty at Christ, she is modifying the news-writing curriculum so as to incorporate solutions journalism modules into in it; she is also implementing a module of solutions journalism lectures and assignments designed for journalism professors. Besides, she is planning to co-host a regional conference for journalists in order to learn about their experiences in covering climate through a solutions journalism framework.

Jyotika Ramaprasad

Dr. Jyotika Ramaprasad is professor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami, Florida. Her major teaching areas are: communication and global social change; cultures and communication; media literacy; communication theory; participatory action research; and quantitative research methods. She is trained in dialogic pedagogy and is now under training to teach a course on collaborative learning across cultures. Her current research is in international communication, social change communication, and journalism studies.

Dr. Ramaprasad has been involved in curriculum development in East and Southern Africa and South Asia. Her work in Europe involves teaching in Austria and working in North Macedonia with the Romas and healthcare providers to facilitate social change towards more positive interactions. Her health-related social change communication work has been implemented in Uganda, and health is the focus of her current project with migrants in Florida. Besides, Dr. Ramaprasad’s environmental projects have been implemented in Vietnam (on flood preparedness) and Miami (on artificial coral reef development and testing).

Dr. Ramaprasad’s research has been published in reputed journals like Social Marketing Quarterly, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, International Communication Research Journal, Asian Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Journal of Advertising, and Digital Journalism. She has also edited two books, one of which received the 2020 Best Book Award of the International Journal of Press/Politics. She is on the editorial board of publications like Journalism and Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, and International Communication Research Journal. Dr. Ramaprasad has also served as vice dean for graduate studies at the University of Miami and as associate and interim dean at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Dr. Ramaprasad’s Fulbright-Nehru project is involved in teaching social change communication in instructional settings and through experiential engagement in a community social issue to enable participatory learning and outreach. The goal is to guide ethical corporate social responsibility among MICA’s business students and to localize solutions and creative communication through research-based understanding of community culture and communication practices.

Mary (Dyan) McGuire

Dr. Mary (Dyan) McGuire is the director of the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) programs at Saint Louis University (SLU). She also founded and directs the CCJ BA and JD program at SLU. She holds a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and a PhD in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Prior to entering academia, she worked as a judicial clerk for the first female justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. She has also worked as an assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri and as an associate with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal.

Dr. McGuire is a committed educator. She has received numerous teaching prizes, including the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award and was recently named the Reichmann Professor for Excellence in Teaching at SLU. She has been spearheading efforts at inclusive, multicultural education at SLU and has developed a number of classes on the subject, including “Multiculturalism for CJ Professionals”. Her research interests involve the intersection of law and practice, systemic race and gender bias as well as violence that impacts women. Her work has been published extensively in peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Criminal Justice and Law, Gender Issues, and Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.

Dr. McGuire’s Fulbright-Nehru project is designed to expand students’ understanding of the problem of gender bias as manifested in social structures like the legal system and social arrangements like patriarchy and how these circumstances facilitate acts of violence and oppression against women and girls. As part of the project, she is teaching three classes at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata: “Women’s Rights and International Law”; Understanding Serial Killers through Criminology”; and “Violence Against Women”. All three classes focus on gender equity, violence against women, and/or the social construction of crime, and is intended to expand, especially in the context of domestic and international legal systems, her students’ understanding of social forces influencing the lived experiences of women and girls.

Christine Farias

Dr. Christine Farias has a PhD in environmental economics from Texas Tech University and is an associate professor of economics in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, where she teaches regular and honors courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, environmental economics, and labor economics using a human values, poverty, ecological, and global sustainability lens. Dr. Farias also co-directs a multi-year project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that aims to bring poverty-focused humanities texts into her college classrooms across the curriculum. As the faculty advisor to the Economics Equality and Environment Student Academic Club, she also guides an interdisciplinary group of student officers to be leaders by creating awareness about local and global issues focusing on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Her specific areas of interest are: ecological economics; poverty; deforestation and land use; sustainability; and action learning pedagogy. Her research focuses on the tensions arising out of sustainability and traditional economic perspectives and explores the dynamics between them. In addition to her sustainability-related publications, she has written on pedagogical issues based on her teaching innovations and experiences in the classroom. She has publications in several peer-reviewed journals focusing on themes mostly connected with sustainability and has presented her research at various domestic and international conferences.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Farias is teaching environmental, ecological, and labor economics in the context of business and sustainable development; she is also involved in mentor–student research projects, developing curriculum, and collaborating on research with the host faculty. Besides, she is designing experiential learning opportunities for students to explore opportunities of collaborations and partnerships with colleagues at her host institution as part of enhancing the economics program at her home institution.