Project Team

Facilitator: Dr. David E. Jones

A leading voice for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, Dr. David E. Jones is a nationally recognized diversity consultant, strategist and executive. He has delivered more than 150 educational sessions, workshops or keynotes at conferences, colleges/universities, corporations and non-profit organizations, nationwide. Currently, Dr. Jones serves as the Chief Diversity Officer and Director of Talent Management at William Paterson University and on the teaching faculty for the Equity Institute at the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center. His career has also included serving in higher education leadership roles at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, City University of New York, University of Massachusetts Lowell, New York University and University of South Florida. Dr. Jones holds a doctorate of education in organizational leadership and communication from Northeastern University, a master of education in college student affairs from the University of South Florida and a bachelor of science in communications from Eastern Connecticut State University.

Dr. Jones has maintained an active leadership role with the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), presenting regularly at regional and national conferences and previously serving on the NASPA Region II Board as the Representative for the Professional Standards Division and Co-Chair for Strategic Initiatives. He currently serves NASPA as a leadership team member and faculty for the African American Male Summit and co-director and co-founder for the NASPA Ujima Institute. His work is highly regarded and as a result, he has been the recipient of several regional and national awards such as the NASPA Doris Ching Award for Excellence as a Student Affairs Professional, Social Justice Educator Award for ACPA’s Commission for Social Justice Educators, Mid-Level Professional Award for NASPA’s African American Knowledge Community and NASPA Region I’s Network for Educational Equity & Ethnic Diversity Award. Dr. Jones has appeared on media outlets such as the Big Ten Network, Higher Ed Live Network Student Affairs Live show and Inclusion in Progress Podcast.

Concurrent to professional engagements, David remains actively engaged in his community. He currently provides township leadership for West Orange, New Jersey where he serves as a Commissioner for the West Orange Human Relations Commission and a member of the West Orange School District Diversity, Equity and Access Committee. David is the Diversity Council Chairperson for the Parent Teacher Association executive board at his children’s school and Member-At-Large for the Board of Trustees at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Montclair, New Jersey. David also dedicates his time to his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, as a mentor for the Alpha G.E.N.T.S. mentoring program for the Kappa Xi Lambda Chapter (Wall Street Alphas) in New York City. A native of Brooklyn, New York, David lives in a suburb of New York City with his wife, Dr. Stephanie Laudone Jones, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York Borough of Manhattan Community College and their three children, Jacob, Sophia and Natalia. To learn more about Dr. Jones, visit www.davidearljones.com.

Invited Speaker: Dr. Victor Ray

Victor Ray is an assistant professor in the Departments Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. His research applies critical race theory to classic sociological questions. Victor's work is published in leading academic and popular outlets such as the American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, Harvard Business Review, and The Washington Post.

Team Member: Dr. Jeanne Kimpel

Dr. Jeanne Kimpel is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. She is also a Co-Director of the Dr. Joan Reidy Merlo Community Research Institute where her recent work has included evaluating a grant to serve the needs of at-risk youth in Uniondale. She was the Principal Investigator of a mixed- method study which examined the impact of community revitalization in a Long Island community. Dr. Kimpel has been teaching courses on racial disparities and inequality for fifteen years with the intent of providing students with critical thinking and research skills needed to investigate the mechanisms which have generated racial, ethnic and gender inequalities. Her work contributes to scholarship in the areas of residential segregation, health disparities, and racial and gender inequality.

Team Member: Dr. Michael L. Rosino

Dr. Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy College. His research and teaching focus on racial politics, media, social movements, crime, law and deviance, and human rights. His work emphasizes social change, policy, and community and civic engagement. He has published widely on the connections between racial oppression, struggles for racial equality, political conflicts, debates over public policy, and everyday social life in various scholarly and public outlets. His current research examines how activists within progressive grassroots political organizations engage with racial and political inequality through their identities, habits, and political strategies. The project illuminates the possibilities and barriers for building a racially just and inclusive grassroots democracy and advances new understandings of racial politics grounded in everyday social life.

Team Member: Dr. Max Renner

Dr. Max M. Renner is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and New Media and Moloy College. Drawing on both Communication and Architecture, his research takes a rhetorical approach to the study of space and place, materiality, and urban life. His research interests are all animated by a concern with the material and discursive experiences of space and place. His research on spatial practices and identity formation has appeared in the Journal of Media and Religion and Communication Education. Dr. Renner firmly believes that our academic lives should be both collaborative and public facing. In this endeavor, he has helped write nationally funded and state-wide grants, developed public exhibitions at national institutions, and redeveloped project websites with the interdisciplinary team working on the Virtual Martin Luther King Project (VMLK). This project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a digital humanities project that offers a recreation of Martin Luther King’s “Fill Up the Jails” speech, of which there is no known recording. This project invites audiences to experience public address in a virtually redesigned architectural model of the original sanctuary and allowing scholars to observe transformative moments that we have previously only been able to theorize.

Team Member: Dr. Matt Applegate

Dr. Matt Applegate is an Associate Professor of English & Digital Humanities at Molloy College. He specializes in critical theory, digital humanities, digital literacy, spatial humanities, and the political economy of media. He is the author of Guerrilla Theory: Political Concepts, Critical Digital Humanities, published by Northwestern University Press. He is also the co-creator of The Digital Manifesto Archive. See a full list of his digital projects here. You can find his work (in print or forthcoming) in Debates in the Digital Humanities, Cultural Politics, Theory & Event, Amodern, Cultural Critique, Telos, and Borderlands.