Community Leadership Faculty Advisory Committee

The role of the Community Leadership Faculty Advisory Committee is to advise and support the CLDR Master’s and Certificate programs. The Faculty Advisory Committee will:

Promote the CLDR programs on and off campus.
Participate in student recruitment for the CLDR program.
Advise the Graduate Program Director on CLDR programmatic and university-wide issues and policies.
Provide support and service to the program by developing, revising, and promoting CLDR courses and programming, including regularly reviewing and approving electives.
Serve as liaisons with home departments/programs, and communicate with the department chairs and faculty about the CLDR program.

Charlotte Keniston

Charlotte came to Baltimore in 2011 to participate in Peaceworker and pursue an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Arts at UMBC where she completed a thesis on the intersection of art, food systems, and social justice. She remained in Baltimore as an Open Society Institute Fellow and later ran community food programs at Paul’s Place, a non-profit in Southwest Baltimore. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, Charlotte served in San Sebastián Huehuetenango, Guatemala from 2008-2010, helping to form women’s groups organized around gender equity and rural community development. Charlotte has taught classes at UMBC in Food Systems, Photography, and Public Art in the Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies programs. She lives in central Baltimore with her partner Arnold and their son Cole.

Lauren Hamilton Edwards, Ph.D.

Dr. Edwards is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, County. She researches the management of public sector organizations, particularly how these organizations strategize for the future, how they include the public, and workforce inclusion. She is the advisor for graduate students that focus on public management.

Dr. Edwards received her Master of Public Administration from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and her Ph.D. in Public Policy from a joint program at Georgia State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. She currently lives in Catonsville, Maryland with her husband and awesome dogs, Jasper and Scout.

Sarah Fouts, Ph.D.

Sarah Fouts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies, an affiliate professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program, an affiliate professor in the Latin American Studies minor, and program director of the Public Humanities Minor. Fouts’ research interests include transnationalism, Honduras, New Orleans, ethnography, labor, accompaniment methodology, and food studies.

Currently, Fouts is working on a book manuscript which uses ethnographic and archival research to analyze the transnational stories of Central American and Mexican food industry workers and day laborers in post-Katrina New Orleans. Fouts shows how despite being criminalized and pitted against other low wage workers, immigrants use strategies of self-reliance and multiracial solidarities to fight against extractive models of development in New Orleans and Honduras.

Fouts’ research includes public humanities projects with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the Southern Foodways Alliance, and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) New Orleans Black Workers Organize labor history timeline. From 2017-2019, Fouts produced and edited the series “Latinx Foodways in North America” for the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. Fouts is also an op-ed contributor for the New York Times and contributes articles to NACLA and Gravy magazine.

Margaret Buck Holland, Ph.D.

Dr. Holland is an associate professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is an applied human-environment geographer and is driven by research questions that actively address environmental conservation and human well-being challenges in the local contexts, but also builds broader lessons for informing changes to environmental policy and management.

Dr. Holland’s scholarly interests rest at the intersections between rural livelihoods, land use dynamics, governance, and conservation strategies.

Michael Hunt, M.Div.

Rev. Michael A. Hunt is a native of Baltimore, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and his Master of Divinity from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Michael has served as a university/college administrator, middle & high school math instructor, musical vocalist, and social justice educator, shaping the lives of today’s leaders. His life’s work focuses on radical inclusion through social justice engagement & interfaith partnerships. Also, Michael has returned to his alma mater as the Director of the UMBC McNair Scholars Program, working to increase underrepresented and underserved, first-generation, and low-income students’ attainment of research-based doctoral degrees. His personal research interest seeks to bridge spirituality and STEM education by providing culturally nuanced resources for increasing self-esteem and promoting holistic critical mentoring. Michael focuses on dismantling hierarchical structures that impede the success of underserved populations by examining holistic critical mentoring, a network of power-dynamic-flipped, student-centered, reciprocal relationships. Michael is completing his Ph.D. at UMBC in the Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) Program. He embraces daily the belief that “If I can help somebody as I pass along, then my living shall not be in vain.”

Joby Taylor, Ph.D.

Joby Taylor came to Baltimore as a Peaceworker Fellow in 1999 and liked the program and the city so much that he has proudly stayed on, becoming program director in 2003. Joby was born and raised in Miami, Oklahoma, a small town that is also home to eight Native American nations. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon, Africa (91-93) helping build an elementary school in the village of Seka Seka, and, as all RPCVs soon find, he learned much more than he gave along the way. Joby’s involvement in service and service-learning has included other construction projects in the U.S. and the Caribbean, but also much work with youth, particularly at-risk and special needs youth. Academically Joby received his B.A. in Philosophy, an M.A. in Religious Studies, and completed his Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Language Literacy and Culture program. His dissertation is titled: Metaphors We Serve By: Critical and Constructive Play with the Discourses on Service. Joby lives in Baltimore City with his wife Beth and their two girls, Isabel and Katherine.

Dr. Nicole Morse

Nicole Erin Morse is a scholar and activist whose work focuses on the intersection of LGBTQ+ identities, media culture, and community liberation. Nicole’s research examines how LGBTQ+ individuals produce, consume, and politically engage with cinema, television, and digital media to shape representations and drive advocacy. They are the author of Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art (Duke University Press 2022), and their forthcoming book, Bending the Bars: Queer Conspirators Against Carcerality, explores how queer art collectives leverage media to challenge carceral systems. Beyond academia, Nicole is deeply committed to public engagement and regularly shares their research with local community organizations. As an activist, they work closely with groups dedicated to justice and liberation, and as a mentor, they are passionate about teaching academic and professional writing to empower students to share their work with broader publics.

David Hoffman

David Hoffman is the director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life. He develops and teaches courses about civic communication and culture as a faculty fellow in UMBC’s Honors College, creating dozens of programs that help students build the skills and relationships needed to help their communities thrive. David serves on the Steering Committee for AASCU’s American Democracy Project and led the development of the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Theory of Change. His research and publications explore civic agency, democratic communication styles, and institutional culture change. David is an alumnus of UCLA, where he served as student body president and University of California student regent. He went on to earn J.D. and M.P.P. degrees from Harvard University before completing his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture at UMBC. When he’s not working, David can often be found managing his fantasy baseball lineups or taking photos on campus, which once earned him the nickname “the #UMBCsky guy.”

Yolanda González Mendoza

Yolanda Valencia, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems. Her research focuses on the intersection of Latinx migration, critical geographies of race, and feminist methods. Specifically, Yolanda investigates how undocumented Mexican immigrants navigate displacement and systemic risk while building spaces of survival and community thriving within the United States. Drawing from migration studies, feminist political economy, and Indigenous theory, her recent work highlights transnational community networks, including the socio-economic impacts of migration on the elders left behind in rural Mexico. She is the recipient of a prestigious Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and a Right to the Discipline grant from the Antipode Foundation. At UMBC, Yolanda teaches specialized courses in qualitative methods, global inequalities, and geographies of migration. When she is not conducting research, she enjoys coordinating study abroad programs centered on food sovereignty and community development across borders.

Dr. Thania Muñoz D.

Dr. Thania Muñoz is an associate professor of Spanish, Latin American, and Latinx literature and culture in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication. She also advises the Latin American Studies Minor and serves as the founder and Managing Editor-in-Chief of Latino Literatures. Her research centers on Latin American and Latinx immigrant literature, translation, and the vibrant role of Spanish and Spanglish within U.S. literary landscapes. She is the author of Across Canons: Language, Latin American Immigrant Literature, and the Making of Latinx Narratives (University of Arizona Press 2026). Deeply dedicated to community-engaged scholarship, Dr. Muñoz co-leads “Intercultural Tales: Learning With Baltimore’s Immigrant Communities,” a digital storytelling and service-learning project that empowers students to uplift and connect with their local communities. Originally from Mexico, she moved to Los Angeles at age 14 and brings her rich transnational experiences directly into her teaching and research.

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