Breaking the M.O.L.D. Launches Third Cohort for Leaders of Color and Women in Higher Ed

The Mellon Foundation-funded initiative prepares underrepresented arts and humanities faculty for leadership roles.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Nine faculty members from UMD’s College of Arts and Humanities are part of this year’s Breaking the M.O.L.D. program, a professional development initiative supported by a $3 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The initiative is designed to create a pipeline to senior leadership in higher education for faculty members of color and women from the arts and humanities, as well as others with a proven record of promoting diversity within the academy. 

UMD’s third cohort—the largest yet—is in addition to cohorts at partner institutions Morgan State University (MSU) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). 

Participants at UMD include: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, associate professor of English and the director of the MFA program in creative writing; Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Brin professor of new performance, theatre scholarship and performance studies; Adriane Fang, associate professor of dance and associate director of the International Program for Creative Collaboration and Research; Christina Handhardt, associate professor of American studies; Chad Infante, assistant professor of English and comparative literature; Thayse Lima, associate professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and faculty fellow for diversity, equity and inclusion in the College of Arts and Humanities; Bayley Marquez, assistant professor of American studies; Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, assistant professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and Randy Ontiveros, director of Honors Humanities and associate professor of English and comparative literature. 

Programming for this year’s initiative will include joint cohort meetings at partner universities, where participants will learn about the essential skills needed to succeed in higher education leadership and within various institutional administrative structures, as well as hear from prominent guest speakers from the region and around the country. 

They will use values-based frameworks to measure the impact of their work, and will have the opportunity to “shadow” senior leaders. Participants will also meet on their individual campuses to learn more about their own organizations, and to examine how the perspectives of leaders from humanities and the arts can make a unique difference at colleges and universities. 

Co-principal investigator (PI) Psyche Williams-Forson, professor and chair of American studies at UMD, said this year’s program will focus on highlighting how participants already possess the skills and values needed to succeed in leadership and that arming them with more knowledge about the university will strengthen their ability to “hit the ground running.” 

“We want them to know that the institution has multiple sites of intervention, and that leadership is a broad enterprise—wide enough to encompass their values and goals,” she said. “We want them to think about their work as something that is not limited to a department or a classroom of students but to the mission and vision of the campus as a whole.”

In addition to Williams-Forson, at UMD participants will work with co-principal investigator Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and former dean of the College of Arts and Humanities; as well as with faculty leaders-in-residence Marisa Parham, professor of English; and Ruth Enid Zambrana, Distinguished University Professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 

Already, several faculty participants from the first two UMD cohorts have moved into new leadership roles or received awards to help them advance. From cohort one, Professor of English GerShun Avilez will soon become the next dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. From cohort two, Associate Professor of American Studies La Marr Jurelle Bruce received a prestigious Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship for 2024–25; and Perla Guerrero, also an associate professor of American studies, was among 57 faculty and staff across UMD to represent the College of Arts and Humanities as a recipient of the Do Good Innovator Award. 

Image info: (top row, left to right)  Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Adriane Fang; (middle row, left to right) Christina Handhardt, Chad Infante, Thayse Lima; (bottom row, left to right) Bayley Marquez, Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, Randy Ontiveros.