David W. Brown is the new executive director of community impact and civic engagement at Temple University in Philadelphia. Brown has been with the university for nearly 12 years, most recently serving as an associate professor and assistant dean for community and communication at the Klein College of Media and Communication. He also serves as executive director of the Civic Coalition to Save Lives, a broad-based group of civic, philanthropic, business, and community leaders who work together to reduce gun violence in Philadelphia.
Brown is a graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where he majored in journalism. He holds a master’s degree in theology from what is now the Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
Christina Baker was named to the Presidential Chair in African American Engagement at the University of California, Merced. She is an associate professor and chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program. Dr. Baker is the author of Contemporary Black Women Filmmakers and the Art of Resistance (Ohio State University Press, 2018).
Professor Baker is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine.
Dennis C. Sweet IV has joined the faculty of the School of Law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, as an assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic. He was a professor at Tougaloo College in Mississippi for more than a decade.
Sweet is a graduate of Tougaloo College. He earned a juris doctorate from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University and a master’s degree in litigation and dispute resolution from the George Washington University Law School.
Trena Warren has joined the faculty of Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, as an assistant professor of education and coordinator of data collection, analysis, and reporting in the Graduate School of Education. Dr. Warren comes to the university with more than 30 years of experience in K-12 education. Her areas of expertise include educational leadership, strategic planning, federal programs compliance, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and student support systems.
Dr. Warren earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Alcorn State University in Mississippi. She holds an educational specialist degree from the University of Mississippi and an educational doctorate from Belhaven University.
Tiffani Chidume is the inaugural associate dean for simulation and experiential learning for the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Chidume comes to her new role from the Auburn University College of Nursing, where she has been serving as an associate clinical professor and simulation center coordinator. Her expertise spans critical care nursing, healthcare simulation, and innovative educational technologies, with a particular focus on integrating virtual reality into nursing education.
Dr. Chidume earned both her bachelor’s degree in nursing and her doctor of nursing practice degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Prior to receiving a doctorate, she earned her master’s degree in nursing from Troy University in Alabama.
Avery Bargassé is a new assistant professor of musical theatre voice at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. A concert and recording artist, Bargassé has taught as an adjunct faculty member at the college. Among his many vocal credits include signing the theme song for HBO’s The Wire. For the past seven seasons, he has been a core chorister with the Cincinnati Opera.
Bargassé holds a bachelor of music degree in voice performance and a master of music degree in contemporary-commercial voice pedagogy from the Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia.
Jean Beaman was promoted to full professor of sociology, international studies, and Black, racial, and ethnic studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Prior to joining the CUNY faculty in 2024, Dr. Beaman taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Purdue University. Her research is ethnographic in nature and focuses on race/ethnicity, racism, global migration, and state violence in France, Western Europe, and the United States. She is the author of Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France (University of California Press, 2017).
Dr. Beaman earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in sociology, all from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Aimee J. Carlisle has joined the College of Law at the University of California, San Francisco, as the C. Keith Wingate Visiting Assistant Professor with the Center for Racial and Economic Justice. Before her new role, Carlisle worked for a decade as a public defender in Los Angeles and the Bronx. As a scholar, she studies the intersections of criminal law, constitutional law, and race.
Carlisle is an honors graduate of the University of California, Davis, where she majored in Spanish and linguistics with minors in Japanese and Middle East/South Asia studies. She earned her juris doctorate from the New York University School of Law.
