The Office of Academic Affairs is pleased to announce the appointment of two Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Fellows: Dr. Dianne McAdams-Jones and Dr. Erika Johnson. These appointments are part of Utah Valley University’s commitment to attract and retain diverse faculty, students, and staff.

Dr. Dianne McAdams-Jones will be working with others on campus to support diversity in the classroom, develop training in curricular diversity, promote culturally relevant pedagogies, develop assessments, and ongoing evaluation tools.

Dianne was born a sharecropper’s daughter in South Carolina. In 1973, she became a first-generation baccalaureate in nursing science at Tuskegee University in Alabama. After completing a graduate program in education management at Tuskegee University, she served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps for eight years, entering as a captain and exiting as a major. After a seven-year childbearing hiatus, she reentered the workforce and completed a graduate degree in nursing science with a nurse educator certificate and Ed.D. in health professions at the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, followed by the completion of a nursing education post-doctorate from Teachers College of Columbia University in 2018. She is credentialed by the Society of Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) as a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) and as a Harvard-educated Simulation Course Instructor. Dianne is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and received the inaugural UVU Black Academic Excellence Award in February 2022. "Following the legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,” Dianne says, “it is my hope we will learn from each other and work together for ‘all of us.’”

Dr. Erika Johnson will assist the development and maintenance of best practices in faculty recruitment, onboarding, mentoring, and other programming that advances diversity efforts in faculty affairs.

Erika is a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Panama to provide greater opportunities for their children. Dr. Johnson made good on their dream as she went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English & American literature, a bachelor’s in criminal justice, and a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies from The University of Texas at El Paso. During her graduate studies, Erika’s work as a writing tutor and as a police records specialist for the El Paso Police department inspired her to pursue the study of rhetoric. She would go on to earn her doctoral degree in rhetoric and a graduate certificate in Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies from Texas Woman’s University. She is an accomplished writing tutor and a published assistant professor who has taught composition, British literature, and digital rhetoric at community colleges and universities in Texas, California, and presently, Utah. As a member of the UVU Department of Literacies and Composition's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committee, Dr. Johnson helps to educate faculty, staff, and students on recognizing and addressing microaggressions in the classroom, honoring multilingualism, and adding to the department’s DEI lexicon. Her womanist, critical pedagogy is applied to her research in visual rhetoric, gender studies, marginalization in the teaching of basic writing, and multiple literacies with specific attention to digital literacies. Last, but not least, Erika loves all things sci-fi.

 

Wayne Vaught
Provost and Senior Vice President
Academic Affairs