‘I Want To Be Able To Change Things at Scale’

In his work as an educator and an advocate for social justice, Dean’s Medal Award Winner Jae Williams harnesses the power of story

According to Jae Williams (EdD, ’22), it was music that taught him how to tell stories—and stories that taught him how to teach. From Marvin Gaye to Jay-Z, the educator, podcaster, and social justice advocate says, the narratives of suffering and hope that emerged in the music he loved got into his bones. Now, he says, the storytelling instincts he first encountered while listening to those songs form the foundation of his pedagogy and his activism.

“Stories are what make us human,” says Williams, who this year was awarded the prestigious Dean’s Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Work. “In my classes, I try to connect any complex concept to a practical story of how people engage. It’s very difficult for us to remember things that are not connected to story.”

Williams has taught digital storytelling at Berklee College of Music and at Emerson College (both in Boston), worked as a video production instructor at institutions including the Cambridge Center for the Arts, and served as a film and creative-writing mentor at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.

Recently, he began two new projects that combine his passion for storytelling and teaching with his pursuit of equity and inclusion as an advocate for social justice.

In June, he launched a podcast, “Dr. Jae’s Office Hours,” in which he invites experts in diverse fields to discuss their work, an approach that has yielded an eclectic range of topics reflecting the unusual breadth of his own interests and experience. Recent episode titles include “Be UNAFRAID to Ruffle Feathers” with Dr. Sylvia Spears, vice president for administration and innovation and distinguished professor of educational equity and social justice at College Unbound; “How to Balance Professionalism and Authenticity,” featuring advice from author and educator Dr. Marcus Broadhead; and “The Process of a Creative Producer,” with Nerissa Williams Scott, creative producer and CEO of That Child Got Talent Entertainment.

“Dr. Jae’s Office Hours is a podcast highlighting the work and stories of this generation’s creative thinkers, leaders, and dreamers,” Williams says. “And it’s a personal and professional-development podcast for college students of color—because I felt like it’s almost impossible to be what you can’t see. And I’m a product of that. I’m a product of being able to see all the different things that I wanted to explore, but not seeing anybody that looked like me doing them.”

The Creative Café Collective

Williams is also the originator of the Creative Café Collective, a media production company that creates educational content for higher education and students of color. The goal of the Collective, Williams says, is to make higher education a more welcoming space for students of all backgrounds—but especially those who have been traditionally underrepresented.

“The Creative Café Collective is a student retention, belonging, and inclusion program for students of color,” Williams says. “It’s open to all students, but it centers students of color at these predominantly white institutions to give them an opportunity to feel special, and to feel like once they graduate, they have a network of people that actually care and actually want to help them succeed and thrive in their career paths.”

Williams’ own career has reflected the range of his talents, with an emphasis on finding frames and narratives to express individual, community, and institutional stories in compelling ways.

He served as senior communications coordinator at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass., as associate director of content strategy at Emerson College, and as director of special projects at Emerson’s Social Justice Center. He also serves on the boards of multiple nonprofits, and he has won awards that include Emerson’s Young Alumni Achievement Award and three Independent Music Video Director of the Month awards from MTV.

Educational Inspiration

Williams traces his interest in education to a classroom at the Perkins School, where in the summer of 2013 he signed on to help blind students learn to create and direct films. When parents came to see the final presentations, Williams says, watching them and his students shed tears of pride and accomplishment was an indescribable feeling.

“They were literally crying, showing their parents,” Williams says. “And the parents were emotional. And we just had so much fun! That was the first time that I realized teaching is what I love to do. I’ve gone on to teach in a lot of different capacities, but it was in that classroom, teaching those students, with those abilities, the power of storytelling—but more importantly, the power to witness someone discovering themselves, or something new. To me, that is what drives my passion for education. Those students changed my life.”

Stirred by his new-found passion for education, Williams decided that if he wanted to have a significant impact, he would need to deepen his understanding both of his topic and of the world of academia.

“I want to be able to change things at scale,” Williams says. “Not just in a micro-moment in the conference room, or in the break room, or in the hallway, or in the elevator. And the only way I can do this at scale is if I have the language. And so if I can get the language of how [scholars] speak, and blend that with how I speak, then—then—I can make an impact in the way that I believe I was gifted to make.”

Opening doors to those kinds of breakthroughs for others has become an essential part of Williams’ work. His doctoral thesis, America’s Empathy Deficit: Our Bloody Heirloom and the Invisible Backpack, explores the college experience of Black male visual performing-arts students at a pseudonymous institution of higher education in the Northeast. Written as an open letter to his undergraduate alma mater, which he calls Storytelling University, Williams details the obstacles faced by students of color and offers proposals for how to mitigate those challenges.

‘We must face our truths’

In his speech at Northeastern’s 2022 commencement ceremony, Williams drew upon his thesis and his personal experience to instruct and inspire.

“We must face our truths—even our ugly truths—about ourselves and this country,” he told his fellow graduates, urging them to stand up for the disempowered in any way that they could. “If you cannot be the poet, be the poem. If you cannot be on the front lines, then speak up from behind the scenes. If you cannot offer the seat at the table, then ask who is not at the table and why.”

In the video of Williams delivering his speech, there is a moment near the beginning when his voice wavers, and he pauses to compose himself. He blows out a ragged breath, and then he smiles.

“I’m gonna get through this, y’all,” he says. “I’m gonna get through it.”

The palpable emotion of that moment, Williams says, arose from his awareness that the honor he had earned was in fact becoming a reality. Until that moment, he hadn’t really believed it.

“Entering the doctoral program at the College of Professional Studies,” Williams says, “I had a severe case of imposter syndrome. Being a man of color, being a Black man, with body art, hip-hop, all of these things, the world has told me that education is not for me.”

‘Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself’

Support from faculty helped.

“I had amazing professors like [Associate Teaching Professor] Wendy Crocker, and my dissertation supervisor, [Associate Teaching Professor] Lindsay Portnoy, and my third reader, [Associate Teaching Professor] Melissa Parenti,” Williams says. “They just encouraged me and said, you know, be yourself, continue to be yourself, don’t be afraid. Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself.”

But standing at the podium brought to mind some troubling things too, Williams says, about ways the academic establishment had made him feel he didn’t belong.

“When I got up on that stage, and I saw all these people,” Williams says, “it was so overwhelming, because I’m like, you guys don’t even know what it took for me to get to this point.”

Having completed his thesis—and earned the highest honor CPS confers upon a doctoral graduate—Williams is now focused on unifying two essential strands of the passions in his life.

“In terms of storytelling and my education journey, I’m really trying to make them into one cohesive thing,” he says. “When my students see me, and they see me with my shorts, or my Jordans, or my Chuck Taylors and my tattoos and my hat, they’re like, ‘Wow, now I’ve actually seen somebody that looks completely different but is operating at the same exact level.’ So now when they see a bald Black guy with a beard and tattoos, they’re not thinking he’s a threat. They’re not thinking he’s a basketball player only, or he’s some rapper. They’re thinking, ‘I met Dr. Jae, and he taught me something.’”

Northeastern Grad Student Puts Together Art Auction for Ukraine

Daria Koshkina, a Northeastern graduate student working toward her master’s degree in digital media with a concentration in 3D at the College of Professional Studies, curated an online auction, The Art Auction for Ukraine, in collaboration with Boston Cyberarts, Digital Silver Imaging and BarabásiLab at Northeastern.

The auction showcases artwork of Ukrainian artists and will benefit two non-profit organizations that provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians.

A Journalist Reborn

When his industry—and a brilliant career—suddenly collapsed, Ian Thomsen MPS’21 launched a personal reinvention for the digital age

“This is the tale of an old man who dreams of telling a new story.”

So begins Ian Thomsen’s master’s thesis, in which the 2021 College of Professional Studies (CPS) graduate recounts his journey to spectacular professional success—followed by the equally spectacular implosion of his industry and career. Among the most successful sportswriters of his generation, Thomsen saw his working life shattered by the advent of online media and its decimating effect on the print-news industry.

As magazines and newspapers trimmed budgets and staff and his own assignments grew sparse, Thomsen says, “I realized that the page had turned. The instruction manual for a career as I had known it was out of print—in fact, it wasn’t even being printed any longer. I needed to learn the systems of a new era. And the new instruction manual is digital.”

Thomsen became a student of that new manual in 2018, when he enrolled in CPS’s Digital Media graduate program and embarked on a personal reinvention for the digital age. Three years later, with new skills, a new appreciation for interaction with his readers, and a new online newsletter, the self-declared “refugee of the bygone print-media industry” is ready for the next chapter.

Choosing journalism

Thomsen’s rise in what is now often called “traditional” or “legacy” media was nothing short of meteoric. The son of immigrants and the first in his family to attend college, he remembers sitting at the kitchen table at his parents’ home in Mobile, Alabama, circa 1978, working on college applications and discussing career possibilities with his mom. He had written for his high school newspaper, and reporting appealed to him.

“At the time,” he says, “it was the only thing I could think of that I might be qualified to do.”

Thomsen turned out to be very qualified and, as he tells it, very lucky. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, he joined the student newspaper. In his junior year, he won an internship on the sports desk at the Boston Globe. That experience would change his life. At the Globe, he found himself working alongside writers whose names had already become legend in the industry—reporters and columnists like Peter Gammons, Bob Ryan, Will McDonough and Leigh Montville. 

“They were all so generous,” Thomsen says. “Not only were they the best, but they didn’t act like it.”

For an ambitious young journalist, the internship became a kind of master class. 

“I wanted to be a storyteller the way they were,” Thomsen says of his models and mentors. “So, I studied them. Bob Ryan would have a half hour to write his game stories. He’d be writing them during the game, and the colorful analogies and the ways he would describe a play would just create this powerful imagery in your mind.” 

But effective journalistic storytelling, Thomsen learned, involved a lot more than just finding strong images. In watching the seasoned writers work, and reading the articles they produced, he realized that it was a process of “training your mind to see something happening, breaking down the elements, moving those elements around, throwing out what was unnecessary and being able to put it back together again to tell a story efficiently, to instantly see a story and reframe facts in a way that someone else might not.” 

“I still don’t know if I know how to do that,” Thomsen says. “But I knew they did and I really wanted to learn how to do it.”

When the internship ended, Thomsen applied for a position at the Globe as a staff writer. He got the job, and in his third year at the paper—seven years after that kitchen-table conversation with his mom—an article he had written on the death of a high school football player in a small Pennsylvania coal mining town was named national sports story of the year by the Associated Press Sports Editors. After that, more doors began to open.

‘The best job in the business’

Thomsen spent six years at the Globe, honing his skills and style on story after story of games and events that would enter sports lore. He wrote about Doug Flutie’s famous 1984 Hail Mary touchdown pass, about the epic 1986 World Series clash between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox, about two Super Bowls, all three of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird NBA Finals, and the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. He loved the work. But he didn’t see a clear path to advancement—writers and editors at the Globe, he says, tended to stay at their jobs for decades—so he began to look for new opportunities. 

After a stint at the innovative but short-lived The National Sports Daily, Thomsen landed at The International Herald Tribune, a position he says colleagues have agreed may have been “the best job that ever existed in the business [of sportswriting].” Based in Paris, where Thomsen lived with his wife and soon a daughter, and then in London, where his son was born, the job essentially meant he could write about whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. The freedom was ideal, but it also carried a certain amount of pressure.

“I remember being very scared of it,” Thomsen says, “because I was going to be writing a lot about things I didn’t know anything about such as soccer and rugby and all these other things I hadn’t covered.”

His nerves soon settled, and before long he was covering continental contests such as cricket, soccer and rugby with panache. He also wrote about sports he knew better, like tennis at the French Open and Wimbledon, basketball in the European leagues, and international track and field—along with U.S. stories that echoed around the world, such as the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan figure-skating scandal.

In conversations with the Herald Tribune’s executive editor, John Vinocur (now a Wall Street Journal columnist), Thomsen also learned a lesson he applied later, when he began his studies at Northeastern: “John said, ‘What you want to do is write a story so that people who know nothing about rugby will be able to read it and understand it and be inspired by it—but then also people who know everything about rugby will be able to read it and like it and be inspired by it.’ You have to try to find a universal element to every story that would cut across culture or language or perspective or expertise. It’s a really hard thing to pull off. But when you force yourself to think like that every single time, it really trains you.”

In 1997, Thomsen landed a job at the era’s pinnacle of sports writing: Sports Illustrated. For someone with his training and aspirations, it was a dream come true. The magazine had built its reputation on taking sports seriously—publishing deeply reported, long-form articles that went beyond scores and sensationalism into the personalities and narrative arcs of teams and individual athletes. Those were exactly the kinds of stories Thomsen wanted to tell, and he wrote them at Sports Illustrated for 17 years. Many ended up on the cover. He started out reporting on European events—the 1998 World Cup in France was one—but soon was spending most of his time on the basketball beat in the U.S., where he reveled in becoming an NBA insider, getting to know players and coaches and writing about a game he loves (although also one, he notes, that despite his passion and 6-foot-6-inch frame, he has never really played). 

It was during Thomsen’s years at Sports Illustrated that the digital tide began to rise and print publications of all kinds began to founder. In 2000, Google Ads went online. In 2006, Facebook opened its membership to the public. Twitter launched the same year. Between 2008 and 2014, according to the Pew Research Center, 24,000 newsroom jobs were lost in the U.S. By 2020, an additional 5,000 were gone. From 2008 to 2019, according to Statistica.com, aggregate yearly revenue of U.S. periodical publishers fell from about $42.5 billion to about $26.2 billion. In a related article, USA Today concluded that such figures “illustrate how the press is staggering as it continues its quest for financial sustainability in the digital age.”

Sports Illustrated was no exception. In 2014, Thomsen was laid off, along with eight of his colleagues. 

“I could see it coming,” he says. “The industry was dying.”

Ian Thomsen 2.0

In the years that followed, Thomsen worked as a special contributor to NBA.com, taught a Sports Journalism class at Boston University, and wrote a critically acclaimed book on LeBron James, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, called The Soul of Basketball. But when he was laid off again in 2017, this time by NBA.com, he realized that using the same old tools to repair his professional prospects just wasn’t going to work.

“My story was representative of what happened to many journalists in the print media industry,” Thomsen wrote in his master’s thesis. “I was left with two takeaways. The first was a feeling of vulnerability, as though after a successful career the ground had vanished under my feet. The second was a new sense of mission and purpose to reinvent myself.”

Thomsen’s exploration of the digital universe started in the communications office at Northeastern. In August of 2018, he accepted a job writing for [email protected]. A month later, he was enrolled as a Digital Media student in the College of Professional Studies. Soon he was learning an entirely new playbook—one that involved search engine optimization, digital strategy, interactive marketing, branding research, and techniques for harnessing the power of social media. 

“Getting a digital media degree at Northeastern,” Thomsen says, “was basically to learn everything I didn’t know anything about and that I had not been trained to understand. In my old world, the print-media world, it was a one-way street. You would write something, and it would be printed, and there was no back-and-forth with the reader. Now, everything depends on that back-and-forth. So there was a lot for me to learn.”

As an older student, Thomsen says he was at first a little self-conscious—but as he got to know his classmates, the feeling soon passed.

“I was by far the oldest person in every class,” he says. “But everything felt perfectly equitable. All of my classmates were just very welcoming and generous. After my initial uncertainty, we were all just students in the class trying to figure it out.”

According to Professor James Gardner, who advised Thomsen on his thesis and with whom Thomsen took “Social Media and Brand Strategy Implementation,” Thomsen’s many years of practical experience simply meant he brought another critical lens to the class.

“Ian has seen the arc of traditional media from its complete and utter heyday,” Gardner says. “He was at the pinnacle of the pinnacle. And then obviously he saw it go sideways as digital disrupted the world of print publications. A lot of my students are young enough that they don’t really have a recollection of how things used to be in a non-streaming entertainment world. It makes it challenging for them to appreciate just how significant that change was. We talked about that in the class a lot.”

Thomsen also became a sought-after partner for group projects and exercises. 

“He was in a position to bring a lot of value to discussions around things like storytelling in content marketing—which is a big part of what we talk about in the course,” Gardner says. “You’re not going to find someone that knows more about storytelling than Ian.”

That knowledge, in fact, became the seed for Thomsen’s master’s thesis—and for his current extracurricular venture: a sports newsletter with a twist. 

The Word of Eugene

While his day-job at Northeastern remains his primary focus, Thomsen has carried forward an idea that germinated in his thesis work with Gardner. To breathe life into it, he decided he needed an unconventional approach. So, he invented an alter-ego.

“Eugene is a fictional character,” Thomsen says of his newsletter’s narrator. “And he’s going to start out as a bit of a mystery. He’s the father to a large number of kids that he and his wife are raising, so he doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands. And he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”

In part from a sense of paternal responsibility and in part simply to have his say, Eugene has invented a religion—based on sports.

“He sees this very polarized world,” Thomsen says of his creation, “and sees that sports actually should serve as a model for fixing our world.”

In the blunt voice of Eugene, Thomsen writes a weekly column celebrating the best aspects of humanity. He applies the sports news of the day to lessons of selflessness and teamwork—the kinds of things preached by coaches everywhere. 

“Sports is a window,” Thomsen says. “It’s a window into the imagination of people, the inspiration, the ambition—and to building communities. If you’re playing a team sport, you have to build a community, because you have to work with your teammates. If you are pursuing something for yourself, but doing it at the expense of others, you’re making the world worse. But if you’re trying to build a sense of teamwork, and fulfilling yourself in a way that helps others fulfill themselves, then you’re making the world a better place. That’s Eugene’s message.”

Leavening that message is material gathered in the course of Thomsen’s first career—anecdotes and insight from his decades on the sports beat. Using the digital tools he acquired at CPS—many of which he also uses at work daily—Thomsen’s goal is to make the hard-won lessons of a successful print journalist relevant in the age of Facebook, Twitter, streaming games and online news.

If anyone can do it, Gardner says, it’s Thomsen.

“As long as he consistently delivers high quality content,” Gardner says, “I can imagine his subscription audience growing—which in some ways is a very elegant solution. It could become like a flywheel, where the audience loves what he’s doing so much that the audience grows, and the conversion of non-paying subscribers to paying subscribers increases, because you’re doing something that people really find valuable. That’s the promise of his thesis: He’s going to thread that needle and then finds an opportunity to do what he loves, continue working in a field where he’s exceptionally talented, create a livelihood, and serve the public interest by bringing interesting stories to the forefront where they should be.”

For Thomsen, the goal remains the same as it has been his entire career.

“For me,” he says, “it’s really an exercise in having fun and trying to offer people something that they wouldn’t get otherwise. When you realize that the world’s changing, you only have two choices. You can let it move on without you, or you can run alongside, jump on, and try to figure it out.”

Graduation 2021

College honors master’s and doctoral graduates, citing ‘ingenuity and resilience’, with ceremonies that emphasize service, perseverance and experiential learning.

Doctoral Hooding

The words of Brent Musson, (Doctor of Law and Policy ’20), captured the mood at the Doctoral Hooding and Graduation Ceremony of the College of Professional Studies in Matthews Arena Sept. 9—and at the Master’s Graduation Ceremony in the same location the following day: “Humanity at its best,” the 2020 Dean’s Medal recipient said in his remarks to the successful doctoral candidates, “is humanity in gratitude.”

Gratitude was in abundance both days as faculty, administrators, students and their families—as well as friends of the College worldwide via livestream—celebrated the graduates’ achievements in the face of extraordinary challenges. Speakers at the ceremonies praised the degree recipients for their perseverance in scholarship despite a global pandemic, their passionate commitment to learning and their determination to address real-world problems in their project-based learning and research.

‘Both humility and pride’

In his opening remarks on Sept. 9, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan, Ph.D., welcomed the College of Professional Studies (CPS) community, expressed his faith in the graduates’ future success and his pride in their accomplishments and celebrated their membership in Northeastern’s “powerful knowledge network” dedicated to the dream of a more just and equitable society. He was followed at the podium by Interim Dean of CPS Dr. David Fields, who noted the unusual degree to which CPS students break down the barriers between work and learning.

“Our doctoral students are already fulltime professionals and leaders in their fields,” Dr. Fields observed. “In true Northeastern fashion, they are researching what they live, and living what they research, every day.”

Dr. Fields went on to explain the significance of the hooding ceremony—so-called because doctoral students traditionally have the hoods of their academic regalia lifted over their heads by faculty.

“The symbolism of the hooding ceremony at our doctoral commencement honors both the doctoral candidate’s work and the network of relationships that make that work possible,” Fields said. “[It] embodies both humility and pride, on both sides of the relationship, as faculty members welcome a new peer into their community.”

Faculty speaker Dr. Mounira Morris (B.S. ’91, M.S. ’95), assistant teaching professor and the co-lead for the Master of Education in Higher Education Administration program, offered her congratulations to the graduates and acknowledged the special challenges that had arisen during their studies, including the pandemic and the persistence of racial injustice. She quoted James Baldwin, noting his achievements as a playwright, novelist and civil rights activist: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

“To me,” Dr. Morris said, “this means that at times we will collectively endure hardship; however, we can use these experiences, especially as doctors, to offer wisdom, hope, and a better path forward.”

A longtime leader in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—and currently working with colleagues at Northeastern to develop a new academic credential in DEI—Dr. Morris emphasized the power for good inherent in the attainment of an advanced degree, encouraging the graduates to find creative solutions to the challenges in their professions, communities and personal lives.

“We, as faculty,” she said, “ask that you take your research, and go out and change your world, your profession, your workplace and make it just a little bit better than before. We, as faculty, believe you can persevere and persist.  We know you can.”

Intellectual explorers

Dr. Musson, whose acceptance of the 2020 Dean’s Medal had been previously postponed due to Covid-19 precautions, suggested in his remarks that the attitude of an academic researcher is “not that of an author or maker, but rather that of an explorer.” He praised the selflessness and commitment of his peers and made a critical distinction between an undergraduate education—which, he said, “teaches a student how to learn”—and a graduate education, in which students learn “to use tools … to solve other people’s problems” and to create value, going “from inward-facing to outward-facing.”

He noted that, soon after a doctoral candidate’s academic journey begins, “we become acutely aware of what we’re signing up for; to spend the next few years engaged in the most rigorous intellectual exercise of our lives, to extract a single, pure, tiny drop of insight to ever-so-slightly raise the sea level of the ocean of human knowledge.”

And he described a moment of inspiration in what he termed a spiritual awakening: a street soccer game he had observed in West Africa more than a decade earlier, where, when a beautiful goal was scored, both teams celebrated. Drawing a parallel between the players’ selfless joy and the academic community he had found at Northeastern, Dr. Musson said, “These happy boys had purpose; and that purpose made them work together, against all odds to orchestrate a moment of greatness—a moment of pure, unselfish greatness.

“I’ve never circled a soccer field making wings with my arms,” he continued, “but research has made me part of our team, and this humbling honor is our winning goal.”

As Dr. Musson finished his speech, the audience rose to deliver a sustained standing ovation.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Dr. Madigan returned to the stage to offer closing remarks, praising the successful doctoral candidates for their “drive, dedication and sense of purpose.”

“The world is ever changing,” he said, “but you are prepared to meet—and conquer—its challenges.”

Master’s Ceremony

‘A day full of promise’

The following afternoon, Dr. Madigan returned to welcome master’s graduates to the arena on “a day full of promise.” He praised their “clear-eyed determination, discipline and hard work,” and offered special recognition to the faculty who, he said, by guiding the graduates to success, “have strengthened a legacy of knowledge and helped shape the future in scores of fields of professional endeavor.”

Following Dr. Madigan’s remarks, Dr. Fields spoke, celebrating the graduates’ global engagement and their cultivation of “the cultural competencies needed for a lifetime of contribution in a fast-paced, diverse, global society.” He went on to emphasize the benefits of their embrace of experiential learning, noting that in so doing, they had “addressed pressing, real-world problems” and become “well-prepared to lead from experience in the workplace.”

Dr. Fiona Creed, associate teaching professor and faculty director of the Global Studies and International Relations program, next introduced student speaker Ebony Small, ’21.

Reflecting on a year of adversity, Small observed “the pandemic itself could neither make nor break us” and asked graduates to consider the ways in which the challenges of the past 18 months had taught them to know their own courage, ambition, and steadfastness.

“We did not make it to this moment merely because we just-so-happened to survive a global pandemic,” Small said. “No, we made it here because we made the choice to value education and then fiercely pursued it. My dear friends and colleagues, despite the unexpected challenges of this year, we thrived. We grew. We changed.”

“This,” she concluded, “is what it looks like to turn a choice into a change. This is what it looks like to champion growth. Congratulations.”

From humble roots to world-renowned

Following an introduction by Dr. Earlene Avalon, associate professor and lead faculty for Health Administration and Health Sciences, graduation speaker Carl H. Whittaker, a philanthropist whose life path has spanned business, engineering and music, addressed the community.

A director of the Herb and Maxine Jacobs Foundation—which supports the College’s “A2M” or “Associates to Masters” program, offering an accelerated pathway from a community college associate’s degree to a bachelor’s at the College of Professional Studies and a master’s degree in Biotechnology at Northeastern’s College of Science—Whittaker began by invoking Northeastern’s origins as a vocational school offering evening classes, run by the YMCA.

“We all know that Northeastern is now a world-renowned university, highly ranked in many fields,” Whittaker said. “But inside this world-class institution is still the legacy of that 1898 night school.”

Whittaker linked this history with Northeastern’s emphasis on internship experiences, co-ops, and other programs that connect students to “great employers and great jobs.” He applauded the graduates for their effort and creativity in juggling jobs, families, and studies, urged them to embrace the role of mentor for other aspiring scholars, and invited them to fight income inequality—as his foundation does in part by supporting scholarships at Northeastern.

“I am inviting each of you to join my fight against economic inequality by encouraging at least one or two others to join you in earning an advanced degree,” Whittaker said. “Just be ready when you see a family member or neighbor who would value your guidance. Your friendly support might be thing that leads someone to a more prosperous and fulfilling life.”

The Doctoral Hooding and Master’s Ceremony were livestreamed from Matthews Arena. Click the links below to view recordings of the ceremonies.

Watch the Ceremonies

The Doctoral Hooding and Master’s Ceremony were livestreamed from Matthews Arena. Click the links below to view the graduation pages and watch recordings of the ceremonies.

Doctoral Hooding

Master’s Ceremony

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The Pandemic Made the CPS Class of 2021 Double Down and Remain Focused

The pandemic was remembered at the College of Professional Studies’ master’s degree graduation ceremony on Friday as a unifying force that bred a kind of resilience and flexibility that allowed students to bend, but not break, under the pressure of a global health crisis.

“I Know He Would be So Proud” – Scholarship Donors Connect with Students

Written by Stephanie Krzyzewski

“Always, always be grateful to those who helped you.” These are the closing words of Marisa Lemus-Reynoso (Biotechnology, Class of 2023) as she addressed a crowded Raytheon Amphitheater at the annual College of Professional Studies undergraduate scholarship reception on the evening of August 19, 2021 on Northeastern’s Boston campus.

Marissa has good reason to be thankful, as do the dozens of other students in the room. A few weeks ago, they received the news that they would be receiving additional financial aid for the 2021-2022 academic year thanks to philanthropic contributions made by alumni and friends of Northeastern.

The College of Professional Studies has more than 50 scholarship funds established and supported through philanthropy throughout the past 40 years. For the upcoming academic year, this translates to approximately $400,000 in scholarship funding being awarded to more than 200 undergraduate students. Each summer the College hosts an event on campus to celebrate scholarship recipients and recognize their generous benefactors.

Marissa Lemus-Reynoso is receiving two scholarship this year – the Charles E. and Gail A. Evirs, Jr. Scholarship and the David R. Johnson Memorial Scholarship – and her benefactors were in the room on August 19 to hear her personal story and support her academic journey.

Nancy Johnson, who spoke just before Marissa, established the David R. Johnson Memorial Scholarship in memory of her late husband in 2019 along with her sister and brother-in-law, Joan and Pete Johnson. Dave, who earned his business degree from Northeastern in 1976, passed away in June 2018, and establishing the scholarship was a way for his family to find solace in his loss.

It was a special moment when Nancy introduced Marissa and invited her to take the stage, giving her an elbow-bump by way of welcome. Nancy had just finished sharing the story of Dave’s academic and professional journey, and you could hear her voice crack with emotion as she said, “Receiving this scholarship means Marissa’s life will forever be connected to Dave’s legacy, and I know he would be so proud of her if he’d had the chance to meet her.”

That sentiment is a tidy way to describe the purpose of this annual event – celebrating the impact of scholarships and the ability they have to transform lives and to foster lifelong connections among the Northeastern community.

College of Professional Studies Undergraduate Scholarship Program

Learn more about undergraduate scholarships at the College of Professional Studies and view photos and video from the 2021 annual reception event.

Read more

If you have any questions about the undergraduate scholarship program at the College of Professional Studies, please contact Stephanie Krzyzewski, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Funds, at [email protected].

How Getting Involved and Leadership Roles in Student and Campus Organizations Led to the Right Graduate School Fit

Danzel Jones graduated in May 2021 with a Master of Professional Studies degree in Digital Media  with a concentration in Digital Video. When you count up all the organizations, initiatives and groups that Danzel Jones was involved with during graduate school, you can’t help but be in awe of how he was able to finish his degree in such a timely manner.

While in graduate school, Danzel was President of the Graduate Student of Color Collective.  He is the Graduate Program and Events Assistant at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute assisting with existing and new programming initiatives as well as the operations of the Center. He has also served as one of six student members of Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies Council for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Initiatives.

Also, he was honored in April as the Northeastern University Student Leader of the Year during the Student Life Awards given by the Northeastern Center for Student Involvement. In addition, he started Spotlight Media, his own photography and videography business; he has created and posted numerous videos on YouTube. Outside of school and work, his faith is very important to him, and he is very active at the Rehoboth Lighthouse Full Gospel Church Inc. and with the Northeastern University Unity Gospel Ensemble.

Danzel is also cofounder and cofacilitator of Conscious Connections, an interfaith initiative for faculty and staff through the Spirituality Center.

For Danzel, it took time to find the right program, the right fit, timing to join organizations, get involved, work within and then eventually lead these organizations. He also found a way to balance his outside activities and his academics and encourages others to do the same.

“I always made the distinction between quitting and throwing in the towel and I never threw in the towel, said Danzel.  Whenever I speak to high school and college students, I make the point of saying — to never throw in the towel.”

When asked why he selected Northeastern, he says that the program didn’t require the GRE (a standardized test for admission to graduate school) and the hands-on and the collaborative approach to learning were key factors in his decision.  Danzel also realized that digital media was always his first and foremost interest.

Danzel’s focus on digital media started at the Humanities and Leadership Development campus of Lawrence High School in Massachusetts, where he took production classes. From there, he went on to receive his Associate in Arts degree in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Communication from Middlesex Community College and his Bachelor of Arts in Communication degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst. Before Northeastern, he studied for his master’s degree in Public Administration in West Virginia.

“Some of the work I’m most proud of is expanding BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) outreach and beginning to establish chapters on regional campuses, connecting with international students and to all students who don’t identify as white,” said Danzel. “I helped students engage during the global pandemic, and conduct conversations in a virtual space, which enabled people to vent about a wide range of issues including family, work and classes.”

Danzel’s thesis advisor and many of his classes were with Lecturer, Gary Greenbaum – who helped shape his capstone and thesis.

 “I did a documentary on John D O’Bryant, the first African American to be appointed a Vice President of Student Affairs at Northeastern University and interviewed O’Bryant’s son, Dr. Richard O’Bryant and got his approval for the piece.  Some of the classes that were so meaningful to me were about casting calls, and budgeting, as well as grants you can apply for to fund your project.”

What’s next for Danzel? In addition to his work at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute, Danzel is helping a friend campaign for a School Committee seat in Haverhill, MA, designing the campaign website and photographing events.

After that, maybe it’s divinity school or a doctoral degree; for certain, Danzel will be using digital media to express his ideas.  

Finding a niche in the news business

PR professional and entrepreneur Victor Aimi brings the tools of journalism to bear on brand-building—even as he hones his digital skills at Northeastern.

To illustrate the speed of the advertising industry’s shift from traditional to digital media, Victor Aimi (CPS ’22) refers to a line from Ernest Hemingway: “Like the famous quote about bankruptcy,” Aimi says, “it happened gradually, then all at once!”

In 2013, while working as director of public relations for Latin America at Microsoft, Aimi had a front-row seat as that shift accelerated. One day, while checking traffic on the tech giant’s in-house news site, he noticed that a top “referrer” the prior month had been the mobile version of Facebook. That meant a lot of people were linking to Microsoft’s site through an article it had posted on the social media platform. Not only that, but they were doing it from their phones.

“We’re thinking, what’s going on?” Aimi says. “What are these people doing on Facebook on their mobile phones? We were shocked by all this traffic coming from mobile.”

The surge in clicks was startling, and it gave Aimi an idea. Traditionally, companies’ PR departments have pitched story ideas to reporters assigned to an industry beat. An article about a new product or trend that appears in a trade journal or popular publication can draw attention, bolster a business’s credibility, and boost sales. But the activity Aimi was seeing suggested that a different model might be possible.

“The ‘aha’ moment was, oh wait, we have more traffic now on our own news site than some of the trade media we work with,” Aimi says. “If a reporter isn’t interested in writing about a particular topic, this could be an opportunity for us to just tell the story the way we want to tell it.”

Two years later, in a partnership that included several accomplished journalists, Aimi launched Verb Company, a business designed to capitalize on the opportunity he had recognized. By providing tech companies with deeply researched content that matters to their customers, Verb helps firms establish expertise and credibility. The company focuses primarily on the Latin American market, where the Spanish-speaking Aimi, a native Argentine, has years of professional expertise—and where some of his partners and employees have been working for years as reporters. Through customized news articles, intelligence reports and social media posts in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Verb helps clients position themselves as trusted resources and thought leaders.

The key, Aimi says, is to honor a long-venerated journalistic principle: accuracy.

“Customers have to know the information is true,” he says. “Everything marketing companies do has the goal of creating trust in prospective customers. If they are inaccurate, they get in trouble; they fail at the goal—or it results in a communications crisis. You know when you see some company on the news, in big trouble because they posted something silly online? It’s often really because nobody has thought in depth about what they were doing. That’s the value we provide.”

The company’s founding was timely in more ways than one. As advertising has moved online, traditional media such as newspapers have suffered, many have closed, and others have been forced to lay off workers. This has not only created a demand for trusted sources of information but has expanded the pool of talented, experienced journalists seeking employment. When one of Aimi’s founding partners, a onetime Wall Street Journal editor, reached out to former colleagues, he found several seasoned reporters with deep experience in Latin American markets available to work for the new venture. Soon they were onboard, producing articles, white papers, e-books, charts, art and social-media content to the highest journalistic standard for an array of customers.

“We run a newsroom, essentially,” Aimi says.

They also do most of it remotely, an approach—unusual when they started—that made their business resilient when the pandemic hit. In a recent blog post on Verb’s website, Aimi cites the unexpected benefit of having opted out of a traditional office-based work structure: 

“Surely, we said [at the beginning], it would be better if we could all be in the same office. Right? Covid-19 answered that question with a resounding ‘no’.”

In 2017, with his company growing, Aimi attended a conference of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). It was there, he says, that he learned of Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies (CPS) from Associate Teaching Professor Carl Zangerl, the Faculty Director for Graduate Communication and Human Resources programs. In a break-out session for professionals who had earned a certificate of accreditation from the Society, Zangerl encouraged attendees to apply to CPS, mentioning that professional experience could count toward a degree. That piqued Aimi’s interest—both because it meant a saving on tuition and because it meant he wouldn’t have to take classes in topics where he already had extensive practical experience.

“Professor Zangerl said we wouldn’t have to study the things we already know, like communication strategy, which is what we do every day,” Aimi says. “So you can get right to stuff that’s of interest to you.”

For Aimi, some of those topics literally hadn’t been invented when he graduated with a degree in advertising from Argentina’s Universidad del Salvador in 1994.

“My final project as an undergraduate was on advertising in online systems,” Aimi says. “I wrote 60 pages. And I had one page in total on the internet. One page. Think about it. The internet existed, but no one used it. Everyone was using forums and things like that—and I didn’t think of Google myself, I’m sorry to say!”

Having already achieved success in online spaces, and with a business of his own to run, Aimi saw the online master’s in corporate communications as a perfect fit.

“For our profession,” Aimi says, “the change to digital can be a real boon. In corporate communications we’re in a great position to exploit digital, and to develop a digital practice, to a much larger extent than we are doing now. But we need to make the transition. And that takes a lot of courage.”

Zoe Cohen (CPS ’06), the founder of digital communications firm Everbrightly and a CPS lecturer in corporate communications who taught Aimi, agrees.

“Going back to school in the middle of your career is just different” she says.

Cohen sees Aimi as a good example of the kind of student who can benefit from the CPS program. “With years—maybe decades—under their belts, my mid-career students have a rock-solid foundation in communications,” she says. “But many are looking to update their skills. To learn new strategies, platforms and technologies—selectively. Not as a firehose, which it can feel like in digital communications, but in a thoughtful, relevant, career-focused manner.”

Not only did CPS count Victor’s professional experience as credit toward his degree, it also allowed him to study remotely, meaning he could keep building his company as he continued his education. In a parallel to the international collaborations he fosters in his business, Aimi worked for a semester from his office in Fort Lauderdale with two other CPS students, one in upstate New York and one in Nigeria, to analyze the social media presence of a New York artisanal ice cream chain.

“We were able to do the project entirely online,” Aimi says. “With one person in Lagos, one person in upstate New York, and one person in Florida. And we got a good grade!”

He also notes that the program at CPS has had immediate real-world benefits.

“That’s something else I like about Northeastern,” he says. “I thought it was going to be less focused on the practical side, more theoretical. But no, it has been extremely useful.”           

While Aimi is among those for whom earning a master’s through CPS has supplemented a thriving career, Cohen points out that CPS can also be a key for less-experienced professionals to unlock success.

“Many mid-career students are looking for a master’s degree credential from a highly ranked school,” she notes. “According to the census, 13.1 percent of U.S. adults have an advanced degree, up from 8.6 percent in 2000. For mid-career professionals looking to advance in their field or jump into a new job, a master’s degree can be the difference.”

Meanwhile, Aimi continues to discover overlaps between his academic work and his professional life.

“One of the assignments in Professor Cohen’s class,” he says, “was to write blog posts. I had never written a blog post following guidelines on how to write a good blog post. And it was great! I realized that the end result was a much better post than I had ever written before. I’m presenting a project this year for the PRSA, and I’m using a lot of the material that I created in class with Professor Cohen. Those blog posts—I think the association is going to post them. I have to remember to send Professor Cohen the link when they go live.”

Meet Our New and Promoted Faculty

This year, the College of Professional Studies welcomed 15 new faculty colleagues and celebrated 11 faculty colleagues who earned a promotion, whose accomplishments are listed below.

The faculty of the College of Professional Studies create exceptional learning experiences that are essential to our students’ success. Along with that demonstrated excellence, the faculty also share a commitment to exploring new ways of responding to the changing needs of our students. Our faculty members’ ingenuity, expertise, and creativity in program and curriculum development prove that education can persist and even flourish during difficult times.

New Faculty:

Heidi Liu Banerjee

EdD (Applied Linguistics), Teachers College, Columbia University

Heidi Liu Banerjee is an assistant teaching professor in the NU Immerse and Global Pathway programs. Dr. Banerjee’s research and teaching interests include developing game- and scenario-based assessment and implementing learning-oriented assessment in language classrooms. Her dissertation, which investigates the construct of topical knowledge in a scenario-based language assessment, received a TIRF (The International Research Foundation for English Language Education) Doctoral Dissertation Grant and as well as ETS TOEFL (Educational Testing Service Test of English as a Foreign Language) Small Grants for Doctoral Research in Second or Foreign Language Assessment, and it was selected as the finalist for the Jacqueline Ross TOEFL Dissertation Award. Previously, Dr. Banerjee was a lecturer in the NU Immerse and Global Pathway programs where she taught English for academic purposes to international students. She also taught second language assessment to students enrolled in the TESOL Certificate program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Banerjee lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Alex Fronduto

DHS (Health Sciences), Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Alex Fronduto is an assistant teaching professor in the Graduate School of Education, where he teaches on topics that include strategic leadership in enrollment management, assessment and accreditation and the foundations of higher education. Dr. Fronduto’s research has ranged from the lab-based study of “Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpes Virus and Yeast-Two Hybrid System” to an investigation of team-based learning in health professions education and its impact on student achievement. He has also served as a Teaching Fellow in biochemistry at Boston University and as a Teaching Assistant in biochemistry at Simmons College. Dr. Fronduto previously worked for a decade in admissions at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, where he became Associate Director of Admissions in 2017. His responsibilities included recruitment of students, supervision of staff and student workers, operations and data management, educating students on affordability and financial aid and managing events and marketing. He lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Susan Gracia

PhD (Educational Measurement, Research and Evaluation), Boston College

Susan Gracia is an assistant teaching professor in the Analytics program. She is also a former faculty member in the college’s Graduate School of Education, where she taught courses in learning analytics, data mining, data visualization, text mining and classroom assessment. For the past 20 years, Dr. Gracia has directed her own consultancy in educational research and evaluation. She previously served as a tenured associate professor at the Feinstein School of Education and Human Development at Rhode Island College, designing and teaching a variety of research and evaluation courses. She also served as the Director of Assessment at Rhode Island College and at Simmons College, where she assessed student learning outcomes and teaching effectiveness and evaluated programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has been a visiting professor of evaluation and learning analytics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú since 2013. Dr. Gracia lives in Providence, RI, and teaches in Boston and online.

Fareed Hawwa

PhD (Mathematics), Louisiana State University

Fareed Hawwa is an assistant teaching professor in the Foundation Year program. Before joining Northeastern, Dr. Hawwa worked in the financial industry, first as an equities and exchange traded funds trader in New York City, then as an analyst, partner and head of trading at a financial firm in Chicago. In these roles he provided technical analysis and risk management using logic, quantitative analysis, and expertise in the mechanics of capital markets, leading trading and strategy for funds valued at $250 million in assets under management. In the course of his graduate studies at Louisiana State University (LSU), Dr. Hawwa was a three-time recipient of the LSU Mathematics Department Teaching Excellence Award for his work with LSU students. He was also named one of eight National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellows. He managed workshops for high school students on the LSU campus and at nearby high schools and implemented technology such as video conference teaching and online learning. Dr. Hawwa lives in Rhode Island and teaches in Boston and online.

Sarmann I. Kennedyd

PhD (Strategy, Program and Project Management), SKEMA Business School of Lille, France

Sarmann I. Kennedyd is an assistant teaching professor in the Project Management program. With more than 20 years of experience in business process reengineering, information technology systems development, managing complex projects and data analysis, Dr. Kennedyd has served as a strategic financial and business analyst, consultant, and project manager with companies that include AOL, Fannie Mae, Charles E. Smith, Verizon, and USAC (Universal Service Administrative Company). He has provided corporate training sessions in project, program, and agile management to professionals from all backgrounds in many countries. Previously, Dr. Kennedyd served as an Assistant Professor of Management at Kean University – Wenzhou China and at Northern New Mexico College, where his responsibilities included teaching, research, and developing undergraduate curricula for courses in operations management and project management. His research is focused on agile project management, electronic commerce, virtual communication in projects and topics related to the connected workplace. Dr. Kennedyd lives in the greater Seattle area and teaches at Northeastern’s Seattle campus and online.

Varsha S. Kulkarni

PhD (Information Sciences), Indiana University Bloomington

Varsha S. Kulkarni is an assistant teaching professor in the Analytics program. Dr. Kulkarni has worked at the Harvard Business School as a researcher specializing as a statistician and in applied math areas, as a research affiliate at the Harvard Institute of Quantitative Social Science. Her research encompasses quantitative data analysis, mathematical modeling and socioeconomics, and she has lectured on data analytics in business, socioeconomics and applied mathematical sciences. Her research on topics of the evolution of social innovation, inflation and volatility and rising food prices is published in academic journals including the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems. She has received numerous awards and fellowships. An affiliate of Harvard University, Dr. Kulkarni conducts research in various fields. Her interests are in dynamic models in social networks, social innovation modeling, health, development, macroeconomic modeling, market volatility, financial markets, and analysis of socioeconomic systems.

Todd Loeb

MBA, Boston University

Todd Loeb is an assistant academic specialist in the Project Management program. Professor Loeb is a consultant, speaker, author and blogger in the areas of project management tactics and strategy, communications and soft skills, and staff recruiting and development. In more than 30 years in the financial services industry, his professional roles have encompassed project management, leadership and technology. He has worked with organizations including State Street Corporation, Bank of New York Mellon, Thomson Financial, Barclay’s, and Liberty Mutual Insurance, where he managed the design, development, and implementation of several multi-million dollar technology platforms and helped clients improve project management practices. Currently a vice president and program manager at a large Boston investment management firm, Professor Loeb has been a certified Project Management Professional since 2003. In 2013, he published No Project Management by Powerpoint, a book on project management in the financial services industry. Professor Loeb lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Tim Mills

MBA (Global Management), Golden State University

Tim Mills is an assistant academic specialist in the Leadership and Project Management programs. He joined Northeastern as an associate professor in 2015. An executive management consultant, Professor Mills has led global projects with KPMG Consulting and IBM Global Services, focusing on information technology strategy and design, project management and e-commerce projects. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force, where he managed acquisition and implementation of fighter aircraft, integrated telecommunications and ballistic missile programs. He also earned a Master of Science in Logistics Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Professor Mills has taught on topics including global project management, agile methods, and project portfolio management at Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education, California State College Sacramento and as a guest lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School. He is a member of the Project Management Institute, a certified Project Management Professional, and an Agile Alliance-certified Scrum Master. Professor Mills lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Mikhail Oet

PhD (Designing Sustainable Systems), Case Western Reserve University

Mikhail Oet is an associate teaching professor and the faculty lead in the Commerce and Economic Development graduate program. Currently the Director of Analytics at Financial Network Analytics, a deep technology analytics innovator, Dr. Oet began his career with the Federal Reserve System, working to strengthen the resilience of risky and complex financial service organizations. He later led research, development and the extension of supervisory technologies and financial stability analytics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. In 2016, he started the Economic Forecasting Group at the Bank of New York Mellon, the world’s largest asset servicing company. Dr. Oet has held teaching positions in economics, finance, and supervisory analytics at the Federal Reserve System, Cleveland State University, and Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of numerous articles in refereed journals including the Review of Finance and the European Journal of Finance. He lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Lindsay Portnoy

PhD (Educational Psychology), Fordham University

Lindsay Portnoy is a cognitive scientist and associate teaching professor in the Curriculum, Teaching, Learning, and Leadership concentration in the Doctor of Education program. Dr. Portnoy’s research focuses on the use of immersive technologies and systems thinking to enhance cognition and create a more equitable and authentic system of education. She is a former public school teacher and a co-founder of the National Science Foundation and Institute of Education Sciences funded learning-games company Killer Snails. Dr. Portnoy has been published in academic journals and popular media outlets including The Washington Post, World Economic Forum, and EdSurge. She is the author of Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom and the forthcoming Game On? Brain On! The Surprising Relationship Between Play and Gray (Matter). A member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, a former Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader, and an Assessment Fellow at Hunter College, City University of New York, Dr. Portnoy lives in New York City and teaches online.

John Terpinas

JD, California Western School of Law

John Terpinas is a professor of the practice and faculty lead in the Homeland Security, Strategic Intelligence & Analysis and Criminal Justice programs. Professor Terpinas’ experience encompasses leadership, law enforcement, intelligence, and international diplomacy. His 21-year career as a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI included serving as Director of the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary, and as the FBI Chair and Assistant Professor of National Security Studies at the Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Professor Terpinas held numerous managerial positions within the FBI’s National Security Division and Counterterrorism programs including serving as Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations in the White House. Previously, he was a counterterrorism specialist in the FBI Chicago Division. Before joining the FBI, he was an Assistant State’s Attorney in the Criminal Division of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in Chicago. Professor Terpinas lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Youngbok Ryu

PhD (Policy Analysis), Pardee RAND Graduate School

Youngbok Ryu is an assistant teaching professor in the Commerce and Economic Development graduate program and the undergraduate Management program. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Dr. Ryu has conducted research with the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT), the RAND Corporation, The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, South Korea’s Incheon Development Institute and other institutions. This work has included analyses of science, technology and environmental policy issues as well as the study of global special economic zones. Previously, Dr. Ryu was an instructor at NMT, where he taught courses including Business Policy and Corporate Strategy, Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship and Engineering Economics and served on thesis committees and as an advisor to independent studies and student clubs. At NMT, he founded the Tech Policy Group, the first science policy group in New Mexico affiliated with the National Science Policy Network. Dr. Ryu lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Adel A. Zadeh

PhD (Civil & Environmental Engineering), University of Cambridge

Adel A. Zadeh is an associate teaching professor in the Project Management program. A civil engineering and project management educator and consultant with more than 10 years of experience, Dr. Zadeh has managed complex public/private construction projects including planning, estimating, engineering, procurement and construction. He is a certified Project Management Professional, and accredited LEED BD+C (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Building Design and Construction). Dr. Zadeh’s research and teaching focus on organizational transformation, construction management, sustainability initiatives in green building construction, and how sustainability trends impact the building and construction industry. He previously served as program director and lecturer at a number of colleges in Ontario, teaching and supervising students in advanced project management and strategic leadership, construction management and engineering, and applied research. He is the director of the Toronto chapter of the Project Management Institute. Dr. Zadeh lives in the greater Toronto area and teaches in Toronto and online.

Lin Zhou

PhD (Second Language Studies), University of Hawai’i

Lin Zhou is an assistant teaching professor in the NU Global program.

An expert in pedagogical game design and innovative course design, Dr. Zhou promotes and practices teaching that revolves around experiential learning, project-based instruction and game-supported pedagogies using new online technologies. A frequent speaker at international conferences, she has presented papers on topics including Learning Chinese in Chinatown with an Augmented Reality Mobile Game, Translanguaging in Pedagogical Drama Gaming, and An Ecological Approach to an Online Second Language Writing Course.

Dr. Zhou has taught in the Department of Second Language Studies and the English Language Institute at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her research focuses on game and course design to empower educators and foster differentiated instruction. For her PhD dissertation, she created a game-supported critical writing course for second-language learners in which students could work with peers and game characters to explore socio-political issues.

Dr. Zhou lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Promoted Faculty:

Congratulations to 11 faculty members of the College of Professional Studies who have been promoted, effective May 1, 2020. The following faculty members have been recognized for their excellence in teaching and curriculum development. Promotion also recognizes their contributions to the college and university through their leadership, service, educational innovation, discovery and professional engagement in their fields.

Dr. Jacques Alexis

Jacques Alexis, PhD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

Dr. Alexis joined Northeastern in 2012. He teaches in the Master of Science in Project Management program and has served as Principal Instructor for the “Foundations of Project Management” and the “Project Quality Management” courses. He developed a guide for innovation in teaching the latter, has revised existing courses and developed a new course in project finance. Dr. Alexis participates in recruiting, outreach, and orientation events, and is a founding advisor to a student network for the Project Management program. He has served on the Faculty Academic Council, on the Professional Standards committee of the Council and on a task force examining college practices in faculty merit review. Dr. Alexis previously worked in the manufacturing and power-generation industries. An active member of several management-oriented professional organizations, he earned his Doctor of Management degree from the University of Maryland in 2018. He lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Dr. Earlene Avalon

Earlene Avalon, PhD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

Dr. Avalon designed and piloted both the Health Management Capstone and Public Health courses and has co-authored numerous conference presentations and articles, including one in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. Other collaborations with colleagues include a grant to map the opioid epidemic in Boston using geospatial technology. An advocate for first-generation student success and a co-founder and steering committee member of the First Generation, Undocumented, Low Income (FUNL) Network at Northeastern, Dr. Avalon also serves on faculty governance committees and has been an organizer and presenter at Northeastern’s Women of Color in the Academy Conference since 2018. Dr. Avalon’s career has included roles as a financial analyst for Partners Healthcare, as Director of Nursing Diversity Initiatives at Boston Children’s Hospital and in various leadership roles in higher education. She earned her PhD in Health Professions Education from Simmons University in 2009 and joined Northeastern as a lecturer in 2010. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Cynthia Baron

Cynthia Baron has been promoted to Full Academic Specialist in the Professional Programs.

Professor Baron has contributed uniquely to the development of the Digital Media program at Northeastern, recruiting faculty, serving as the program’s Academic Director and adapting it for changing student populations. She designed and implemented a bridge program, Connect, that prepares students without undergraduate backgrounds in digital media for success in the master’s program. Professor Baron has also served as Chair of the Academic Programs Committee of the Faculty Academic Council and is the former Chair of the Council’s Agenda Committee. The co-founder and former Executive Vice President of Serif & Sans, Inc., a Boston graphic design company, Professor Baron was a partner in LeWinterBaron Graphics Multitasking, Inc., and a principal in her own firm, Phoenix Design & Communications, and she has edited, authored, or co-authored more than a dozen books. She joined Northeastern in 1988 and earned her MBA in Marketing at the university in 1993. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Dr. Darin Detwiler

Darin Detwiler, LPD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

Dr. Detwiler helped relaunch the college’s Regulatory Affairs of Food and Food Industries program and serves as its lead faculty member. The Assistant Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs, he oversees Academic Quality Assurance across the professional programs. The 2016 recipient of the college’s Excellence in Teaching Award, Dr. Detwiler has advised the Department of Agriculture and is the author of two books on food safety. He consults internationally on food safety and regulation, serves on advisory and editorial boards, and received the 2018 Distinguished Service Award from the International Association for Food Protection. Dr. Detwiler earned the Doctor of Law and Policy degree from Northeastern in 2016 and joined the university the same year. Prior to completing his doctorate, he served in the US Navy’s Nuclear Submarine Force and was an award-winning teacher in Redmond, WA. He lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Constance Emerson

Constance Emerson, EdD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

Dr. Emerson has served as Academic Quality Assurance lead for the Project Management program and as a Master Teacher, ensuring the risk management and capstone courses teach relevant curricula in innovative ways. She teaches a number of courses in the program. She contributed to the Project Management program’s reaccreditation in 2017, took a leading role connecting the Project Management program with the needs of regional businesses, and is working to build and implement the bachelor of science program in Project Management. She also served on a task force that evaluated instructor feedback and presence and the use of best practices in online and hybrid learning across courses in the college. The principal of her own project-management consultancy, Dr. Emerson joined the university in 2015. She earned her EdD from Northeastern in 2018 and previously worked with firms that included Inland Steel Company and Mitchell Management Systems. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and teaches online.

Patricia Goodman

Patricia Goodman, EdD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Communications, Media and Human Resources Programs.

A faculty member since 2015, Dr. Goodman led the development and implementation of the concentration in Cross-cultural Communication for the Master’s in Corporate and Organizational Communication and has served as chair of the college’s faculty development conference and on its Task Force for Diversity and Inclusion. She worked with students and faculty across the university to generate definitions and expressions of global citizenship and organized the university-wide “Visions of Peace” event with Northeastern’s Center for Intercultural Engagement. She serves on the Faculty Academic Council and chairs the Faculty Development Support Committee. A frequent presenter at international conferences, Dr. Goodman earned her EdD from The George Washington University in 2004. She previously served as Human Resource Director at Florida mental health provider The Centers and in finance and program delivery at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Dr. Goodman lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

David Hagen

David Hagen, JD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Security Programs.

Professor Hagen serves as Special Assistant to the Dean for Veteran and Military Affairs, acting as a liaison to Northeastern’s Dolce Center for the Advancement of Veterans and Service Members, to external agencies, and to faculty and student veterans and members of service families. He has served on committees including the Professional Standards Committee, which he currently chairs; the Academic Policy Committee; the Ad hoc Grievance Committee; and the Academic Policy Committee of the Faculty Senate. In 2019, he received the college’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor Hagen earned his JD from the New England School of Law in 1984. His teaching appointment at Northeastern in 2016 followed a distinguished career in military service, and he volunteers in the military and veteran community. In 2016, he was Military Volunteer of the Year at Veteran’s Inc., a shelter in Worcester, MA. He lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Cristine McMartin-Miller

Cristine McMartin-Miller, PhD, has been promoted to full Teaching Professor in NU Global.

The program coordinator of the International Tutoring Center (ITC), Dr. McMartin-Miller recruits, trains and supervises tutors who collectively deliver more than 2,000 appointments per term. She is course coordinator of the courses “Writing for Graduate School,” “Advanced Listening and Speaking for Graduate School,” and “Foundations of Professional Communication,” and she has served on curriculum committees and university-level search committees. The Vice Chair of the Faculty Review and Promotion Committee of the Faculty Academic Council, Dr. McMartin-Miller is also a member of the university-wide International Student Academic Success Team. She regularly presents at conferences, and her team’s findings on student engagement with the ITC were presented at NAFSA: Association of International Educators meetings. She also serves as a manuscript reviewer for two journals in language learning.Dr. McMartin-Miller earned her PhD in English, with a specialization in Second Language Studies, from Purdue University in 2012, joining Northeastern the same year. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Dr. Pamela Wojnar

Pamela Wojnar, EdD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

Dr. Wojnar’s contributions to the Master of Sports Leadership Program since 2016 have included curriculum development; supporting the Academic Quality Assurance assessment process; representing the program at the university’s Charlotte campus; helping maintain accreditation with the Commission on Sports Management Accreditation (COSMA); and engaging students in volunteering. She served on the planning committee for the college’s 2017 Faculty Development Conference, as Chair of an ad hoc Bylaws Review Committee for the Faculty Academic Council, and as co-chair of the Faculty Senate Full-Time Nontenure-Track Faculty Committee. She has also served on COSMA’s Nominating Committee and as Chair of the Program and Abstract Review Committee for COSMA’s annual conference. Dr. Wojnar earned her Doctor of Education from the United States Sports Academy in 2008. Previous professional roles included serving as Director of the Athletics at both Notre Dame of Maryland University and Rosemont College. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Dr. Xiamou Zhou

Xiaomu Zhou, PhD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

As lead faculty member for the Informatics program, Dr. Zhou has expanded and restructured the curriculum in collaboration with colleagues to address cutting-edge technology needs, emphasizing academic honesty and incorporating real-world projects. Enrollment has risen under Dr. Zhou’s leadership, and she continues to guide the college’s work towards a cross-program integrated computing environment. Dr. Zhou served on the Professional Standards Committee of the Faculty Academic Council and currently serves on the Academic Program Committee and Faculty Development and Support Committee. She is a frequent journal referee, and her participation in Boston-area professional meetings on platform strategy and open data science support her leadership in the digital transformation of teaching and learning. Dr. Zhou earned her PhD in Information Science from the University of Michigan in 2010. Before joining Northeastern in 2016, she taught in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Dr. Elizabeth Zulick

Elizabeth Zulick, PhD, has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor in the Professional Programs.

A faculty member since 2016, Dr. Zulick is Faculty Director for Health Care and Biotechnology programs, Director of the Lowell Institute School, and Special Assistant to the Dean for Research, Innovation, Discovery and Entrepreneurship. In collaboration with faculty in the College of Science (COS), she designed the first “Plus One” pathway from the College of Professional Studies (CPS) into a degree in another college of Northeastern. She secured a $4.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to support students moving from a partner community college into CPS and COS earning both an undergraduate and graduate degree. She has collaborated with colleagues on another NSF grant assessing the efficacy of experiential learning in increasing the persistence of young women and underrepresented minorities in STEM careers. Dr. Zulick earned her PhD in Molecular Medicine from Boston University’s School of Medicine in 2015. She lives in the greater Boston area and teaches in Boston and online.

Celebrating our Newest Graduates– Virtually

The college celebrated the achievements of undergraduate and master’s graduates in a virtual recognition ceremony on May 15.  Watch highlights from the ceremony below, and click here to watch the full ceremony, which includes candidates’ personalized messages and photos as well as messages from faculty members. Congratulations to our newest graduates! 

Mary Loeffelholz, Dean of the College of Professional Studies, welcomes students, families and friends to the virtual recognition ceremony. 

David Fields, Senior Associate Dean, Academic and Faculty Affairs and Professional Programs, introduces this year’s student speakers. 

Anh (Ann) Doan and Tien (Tiffany) Nguyen, this year’s student speakers, discuss their career goals and how the college has helped them on their journey to create a start-up that supports women’s development.  

Dave Hagen, Associate Teaching Professor, announces this year’s Excellence in Teaching award winners:  Dr. Margaret Gorman and Dr. Wendy Crocker. 

Dean Loeffelholz introduces the recognition ceremony speaker. Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Robert DeLeo, AS’72, gives his address to graduates.  

Dean Loeffelholz introduces the ceremony’s alumni speaker. Clifford Harrison, CPS’15, addresses graduates as this year’s alumni speaker. 

Congratulations to all of our newest graduates! Click here to watch the full ceremony, which includes graduates’ personalized messages and photos as well as individual messages from faculty members.