Dr. Dwonna Goldstone is an associate history professor and director of the African American Studies program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Her specialty areas include African American history and culture and Black women in history. She grew up in Moline, Illinois, and received her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. Her book is entitled, Integrating the Forty Acres: A Fifty-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas, which won the Coral H. Tullis Memorial Prize for the best book on Texas history. Her sharing will focus on her experience in helping people with difficult conversations about race.

Dr. Justine Pas is an associate professor of English and associate dean in the School of Humanities at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. Her research interests include American ethnic literature, literature of the Holocaust, and translation studies. She has been published in both domestic and international scholarly journals as well as in scholarly volumes about translation theory and practice. She has also earned awards for teaching, including Lindenwood’s 2014-15 President’s Scholar-Teacher Award. Her most recent publications include, the “Foreword” to a memoir about surviving the Holocaust by Hava Ben-Zvi titled, We Who Lived: Two Teenagers in World War II Poland. She will share personal experiences and discuss the concept of white privilege.

Dr. Steven Abramowitch is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. While his academic focus is on elucidating the processes of injury, disease, and healing of connective tissues through an understanding of tissue mechanics and the complex relationships between composition, structure, and function, his other focus, pertinent to this webinar, is on diversity and action. According to Ande Marini, Region VI Student Representative, “Dr. Abramowitch works a lot with the diversity office, leads the STRIVE program at Pitt (to assist underrepresented minorities in their graduate careers), and has won an award from the biomedical engineering society for his commitment to improving racial and gender diversity in the field.” He will focus on positive actions students can take to address diversity issues. 

Host & Moderator

Lara Noah was selected in 2018 as Alpha Chi’s fourth Executive Director. Two years after being inducted into the Arkansas Eta chapter of Alpha Chi as a college junior, she became professionally affiliated with the Society where her career has now spanned nearly three decades. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Alpha Chi’s national offices are located, and is focusing her efforts on ensuring that Alpha Chi members feel empowered to make scholarship effective for good.