submitted by haalandr@augsburg.edu
It is with great excitement that we announce the first two faculty hired in the department of Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Monica Lugo-Velez and Dr. Ly Nguyen as founding faculty of CRES and new members of the Augsburg community. Each is committed to our mission and ready for the challenge of building our Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies department. Each looks forward to working with faculty, departments and students across campus to construct a program that reflects Augsburg’s vision for CRES. Dr. Lugo-Velez holds the Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and comes to us from Eastern Illinois University. Dr. Nguyen completed her Ph.D. this past spring and comes to us from the Ethnic Studies department at the University of California, San Diego. Together, they bring a well-rounded set of experiences and passion for the promise of Augsburg’s new program.
I would like to thank the CRES search team for their extraordinary hard work that brought us to this point. The team was unique in many ways, not the least of which was the number of students engaged in every step of the process. Additionally, we would like to thank all the students, staff, and faculty that attended virtual campus interview events and provided feedback. Your input in the process was invaluable. As we move forward with next steps, we will communicate our progress to a broader audience. At the beginning of the new academic year, we will relaunch the Black/Africana studies search and plan to engage our new CRES faculty, as well as the rest of our campus, in that process.