Directors
David Olan, Principal Investigator
David Olan is a Professor of Music and former Associate Provost and Dean for Academic Affairs at the CUNY Graduate Center from 2013 to 2022. He was Executive Officer of the Ph.D./DMA Programs in Music from 2001-2013 and has served as a co-director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance since its inception in 2016. Among his awards are Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, CAPS, and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships and a commission from the Serge Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress.
Luke Waltzer, Program Co-Director
Luke Waltzer is the Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he supports GC students in their teaching across the CUNY system and beyond, and works on a variety of pedagogy and digital projects. He previously was the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Baruch College. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the CUNY Graduate Center, serves as Director of Community Projects on the CUNY Academic Commons, and is on the faculty of the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program and MA Program in Digital Humanities. He is on the editorial collective of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and has contributed essays to Matthew K. Gold’s Debates in the Digital Humanities and, with Thomas Harbison, to Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki’s Writing History in the Digital Age.
Adashima Oyo, Program Co-Director
Adashima Oyo is the Co-Director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance, Executive Director of the Futures Initiative, and Director of Programs and Administration at HASTAC. She is a native New Yorker and a three-time CUNY alumna. She holds a PhD, MPH, and BA from CUNY schools. Adashima brings a wealth of experience and knowledge about CUNY. She has worked with students and administrators in various capacities across seven different CUNY schools. Her research explores application, enrollment and graduation trends for Black and Latinx students at schools of public health in the United States. #BlackScholarsMatter
Luis J. Henao Uribe, Humanities Director
Luis J. Henao Uribe is the Humanities Scholar for the CUNY Humanities Alliance and the Teaching and Learning Center at the Graduate Center. In this role, he provides support for the teaching fellows, and helps pivot the lessons of the Humanities Alliance to broader audiences through a variety of programs and projects at the TLC. Henao Uribe is a graduate of the Ph.D. program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at The Graduate Center, CUNY. His recent research explores the role of novels in the establishment of national imaginaries and the legitimization of the state in Mexico and Colombia. He also writes about how Latin American cultural objects circulate in the United States. He is a Colombian writer based in New York since 2005 and has published the short-stories collection Diarios del limbo in 2006 and he collaborates with literary magazines such as Los bárbaros and Vecindad.
CUNY Humanities Alliance Staff
Sujung Kim, Senior Research Associate
Dr. Sujung Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research addresses the critical pedagogy of higher education and community colleges for the public good and educating students as critical public intellectuals. Her research and teaching interests are located at the intersection of class, race, citizenship, power, and subjectivity, and how these intersecting conditions affect vulnerable college students’ sense of institutional and social belonging. She also focuses on access to postsecondary education, retention, and outcomes and how these factors impact students’ further educational, career, and life trajectories. Her current book project examines the interrelations among neoliberal community college policies and politics, the globalization of community colleges, and the restructuring of racial and class relationships among diverse student populations. In addition, her work considers the complex mechanisms through which lower middle- and working-class Korean international students are created as (potential) transnational, adrift, cheap laborers. Dr. Kim earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Miranda Fedock, Program Coordinator
Miranda Fedock (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center. Her dissertation research explores the NYC immigrant arts non-profit organization Center for Traditional Music and Dance as applied ethnomusicological project, focusing on questions of ethics, social justice, bureaucracy, and the purpose of ethnomusicology in today’s world. As a passionate educator with over a decade of experience in music education, Miranda advocates for the value of joy, play, compassion, and care in the classroom. She has taught ethnomusicology at CCNY & BMCC, and served as a 2020-2021 fellow at the GC’s Teaching and Learning Center. She is co-developer of the GC Music Teaching Hub, an open-access pedagogy resource intended to support GC graduate music student instructors in their pedagogical development.
CUNY Peer Leaders Staff
Lauren Melendez, CUNY Peer Leaders Director
As Director of the Undergraduate Leadership Program, Melendez directs and oversees a program that brings together 30 undergraduate students from across 12 CUNY campuses as Leadership Fellows. Melendez consults with fellows on how to develop their mentoring and leadership skills in addition to helping them learn how to navigate spaces inside and outside their college campuses. The fellows in turn learn about opportunities within and outside their campuses that will help shape, strengthen and prepare them for not only their academic paths but more importantly their life paths.
In her role as administrative specialist, Melendez provides academic and administrative support to the Futures Initiative. She oversees department operations, manages workshop planning and scheduling, conducts research, and organizes and processes materials for all administrative documentation. Melendez manages the program’s budget and coordinates purchasing, accounting, and payroll for the department.
Kelsey Milian, CUNY Peer Leaders Facilitator
Kelsey Milian was raised in Miami, Florida. With a strong sense of cultural identity she has been able to connect and trace her heritage with her Mexican, Guatemalan, Aztec, Zapotec, K’iche Maya, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese roots. In 2020, she graduated with a degree in Sociology and Educational Studies at the Liberal Arts Institution Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She now resides in New York City as she pursues a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at CUNY Graduate Center. She recently published her first poetry book called The Sociology of a Miami Girl which explores generational lessons as a daughter of immigrants from Latin America.
Jackie Cahill, CUNY Peer Leaders Program Coordinator
Jackie Cahill is the CUNY Peer Leaders Program Coordinator at the Humanities Alliance. She graduated from Hunter College in 2020 with bachelor’s degrees in English, Classical Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies. She also completed minors in Latin and Art History. She has also been accepted into the Digital Humanities program at the Graduate Center.
As a CUNY graduate who comes from a family of other CUNY graduates, Jackie seeks to contribute to programs that are actively making the university a better and more equitable place for students. As a CPL staff member, she contributes to the creation of support systems and leadership training for undergraduate students. She also provides proofreading and editing support for the research output of the Humanities Alliance Senior Research Associate, which seeks to identify paths for the improvement of CUNY’s community colleges.
Former Staff
Elizabeth Alsop, Humanities Scholar 2016-2018
Kitana Ananda, Phase 1 Post-Doctoral Researcher
Cathy N. Davidson, Phase 1 Director
Kaysi Holman, Director of Programs and Administration 2016-2021
Jesse Rice-Evans, Phase 1 Web Development and Documentation Fellow
Katina Rogers, Phase 1 Advisor, Co-Director 2019-2021
Stefanie Sertich, Phase 1 Laguardia Mellon Humanities Scholars Coordinator
Kashema Hutchinson, CUNY Peer Leadership Fellows Program Co-Director
