Rachida Parks, Associate Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems in Quinnipiac University’s School of Business and Associate Professor of Medical Sciences at the Medical School, strives to investigate and understand the best uses of artificial intelligence and data analytics in healthcare to promote better outcomes for organizations, practitioners, patients, and her students. Parks has published articles in many leading scientific journals addressing key aspects of AI and analytics. In her Fulbright research, she has focused on these issues in developing countries, and her experiences over the past year have deepened her commitment to supporting emerging scholars, particularly those from groups that are currently underrepresented in higher education.

Jacqueline B. Helfgott, PhD—Professor of Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Forensics, as well as Director of the Crime and Justice Research Center at Seattle University—is an indefatigable researcher, professor, and community partner. She excels in every arena, with a remarkable publishing record and admirable student mentorship agenda, and her multiple initiatives collaborating with the Seattle Police Department are setting nationwide standards for the field of criminal justice

Lisa Engel, Associate Professor of Nursing and Director of Simulation at Harding University, skillfully fulfills a great many responsibilities in her various roles: she teaches demanding nursing courses in several degree programs and has been instrumental in establishing and continuing to develop the school’s simulation program. Her zeal for high fidelity nursing simulators impels her to continue finding and exploring the most current innovations available, and she is always delighted to see the students hone their clinical expertise and judgment as they interact with the simulations in the program she oversees.

Mark Rosenbaum, Dean of the College of Business and Professor of Marketing at Hawai’i Pacific University, has drawn on his deep understanding of HPU’s place and stakeholders to develop an exciting, groundbreaking initiative. After assessing the history, strengths, and needs of HPU’s College of Business, Rosenbaum spearheaded the formation of a partnership between Hawai’i Pacific University and Coursera’s Career Academy—the first partnership of this kind in the world.

Kelly McFall, Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University, seeks out and employs multiple ways to connect his students and the public to the concerns of history. He originated a podcast channel to publicize new books in Genocide Studies; he has a long history of taking students on educational trips abroad; and he directs Newman’s Honors program. A great deal of his teaching focus, however, lies in playing games with his students—games in which his students are immersed in the history they study.

Albert Douglas, Jr., Assistant Professor in the Department of Aviation and Safety at Florida Memorial University, brings a wealth of experience and a lifetime of knowledge to his campus work. Having become an air traffic controller in the United States Air Force, he rose to the highest levels at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by the time he retired; he continues his energetic engagement with the field as a subject matter expert to the FAA as well as teaching all air traffic control courses at FMU.

Barb Daubenspeck, Program Director and Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Bellevue University—as well as a licensed mental health professional working part-time in the community—pinpoints the word “transformation” to define the many paths her life has taken. As she has moved through personal heartaches and professional challenges, she has consciously focused on allowing herself to transform, and she brings this mindset to her work as a program director, professor, and counselor.

Dr. Carla Jackson Bell, Dean of the Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science (TSACS) and Professor of Architecture at Tuskegee University, is a trailblazer. She is the first African American woman Dean of an Architecture and Construction Management school in the United States. Additionally—of only twenty African American women who are tenured architecture faculty in the nation—she is the first woman to become tenured in Tuskegee’s Department of Architecture. Under Bell’s leadership, Tuskegee’s architecture program earned the maximum eight-year term of re-accreditation from the National Architectural Accrediting Board for the first time in the school’s history, and the Construction Science and Management program became accredited for the first time.