Mayor Rex Richardson
Rex Richardson is a husband, father, and the 29th Mayor of Long Beach. Mayor Richardson’s history in Long Beach is grounded in empowering communities to have a seat at the table.
Mayor Richardson has a distinguished record of public service. Richardson’s electoral history includes serving as a Long Beach City Councilmember from 2014 – 2022, representing the Ninth District. He served two terms as Vice Mayor and is known as both the youngest Councilmember and Vice Mayor in the city’s history. He also broke barriers as the first African American Mayor of Long Beach.
His track record of pursuing positive change for his community has left an indelible mark on the entire city. He has continually worked alongside neighborhood leaders to bring vital public safety, economic, and community investments to Long Beach.
On the national level, Mayor Richardson serves on the Advisory Board of the United States Conference of Mayors. Regionally, Richardson is Vice Chair of the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency and has previously served as past President of the Southern California Association of Governments. He has also held the position of Western District Cities Representative on the South Coast Air Quality Management District Governing Board.
Mayor Rex Richardson is the leader of the 42nd most populous city in America, home to the nation’s second largest port and Space Beach, which is amongst the fastest-growing aerospace clusters in the country.
Since taking office, Mayor Richardson has been at the forefront of addressing the most pressing challenges facing Long Beach through his “Opportunity Beach” Agenda, which focused on key priorities such as homelessness, economic recovery, public safety, youth development, and environmental sustainability.
Mayor Richardson and his wife, Dr. Nina Richardson, are proudly raising their two young daughters, Alina and Mila, in the North Long Beach community. He understands the work and determination it takes for families and communities to climb into the middle class. He believes that everyone, no matter their circumstance, deserves the opportunity to thrive.
Dr. Natalie Graham
Dr. Natalie J. Graham is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Orange County, CA and author of Begin with a Failed Body, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She serves as Interim Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal State University, Fullerton, where she develops faculty-based initiatives that support academic excellence, artistic development, and community-based research in Orange County. She is a widely-published scholar and creative civic leader. When she isn’t writing poems or dreaming up programs, she loves perfecting her chocolate chip cookie baking skills and learning about science with her son, Ronald. Connect with Natalie: @nataliejograham
Dr. Renee Johnson-Thornton
Dr. Renee Johnson-Thornton is a senior program associate and assistant director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program. Prior to Mellon, Renee was dean for the classes of 2018 and 2022 at Wesleyan University where she provided academic advising, monitored student progress toward degree completion, and coordinated student engagement and wellbeing activities. Renee served as dean for equity and inclusion, and managed grant funded initiatives designed to encourage and prepare students to enroll in college and then to pursue doctoral degrees. She credits her experiences in college admission, UTCEI, McNair, and MMUF for introducing her to the use of philanthropy as a lever to advance social justice in higher education.
The first member of her family to earn a college degree, she holds a BA in English and African & African American studies from Binghamton University, an MA in liberal studies from Wesleyan University, and a PhD in Education from the University of Rhode Island.
Demetrius Tien
Demetrius Tien is a first year PhD student in Global and International Studies at UC, Irvine. Their interests are in Asian American Studies, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Cambodian Studies. Demetrius is a recent graduate from California State University, Long Beach, where they received their B.A in History with a minor in Asian American Studies. As an undergrad, Demetrius was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and recipient of the Distinguished Undergraduate in History award.
Dr. Carolyn M. Dunn
Dr. Carolyn M. Dunn, MFA, PhD. is Associate Professor of Theatre & dance at California State University, Los Angeles, and Co-chair of the California Faculty Association’s CSULA Native American and Indigenous Peoples Caucus.is an Indigenous artist of Cherokee, Muskogee Creek, and Seminole Freedman descent on her father’s side, and is French Creole (Acadian, African, Tunica/Choctaw/Biloxi/Ishak) on her mother’s. Her life as a storyteller encompasses both poetry and playwriting with works about family, grief, resilience, and the landscape in all genres and in between. In addition to the award-winning Outfoxing Coyote (That Painted Horse Press, 2002), her books include Through the Eye of the Deer (with Carol Zitzer-Comfort, Aunt Lute Books, 1999), Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk, HN Abrams, 2008) Echolocation: Poems, Stories and Songs from Indian Country: L.A. (Fezziweg Press, 2013), The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck (Mongrel Empire Press, 2017), The Frybread Queen, Soledad, and Three Sisters: Three Plays by Carolyn Dunn (No Passport Press, 2024) and Decentered Playwriting, coedited with Leslie Hunter and Eric Micah Holmes, Routledge, 2023). and more. Her plays The Frybread Queen, Ghost Dance, and Soledad have been developed and staged at Native Voices at the Autry, and her current work in progress is the pow wow comedy entitled Chasing Tailfeathers. Stage acting credits include The Bingo Palace, Citizen, Desert Stories for Lost Girls, Neechie-itas, Sliver of a Full Moon, and the musicals Distant Thunder and Missing Peace. She lives part-time in Los Angeles and part-time in Oklahoma with her family.
Dr. Cindi M. Alvitre
Dr. Cindi M. Alvitre is a Tongva descendant of the Moompetam (Salt Water) Clan, the original people of Los Angeles and the southern Channel Islands. She has been an educator and artist-activist for over three decades. She attended graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of World Arts and Culture, and received her M.A. in Public History Management Program from the University of California, Riverside. She is affiliated and currently teaching in the American Indian Studies Program at California State University, Long Beach. She also serves as the Coordinator for NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 1990) overseeing the preparation of NAGPRA collections for repatriation and re-internment. She is author of a children’s book, Waa’aka’: The Bird Who Fell in Love With The Sun, which brings to life a traditional story with a timely message about community, climate change and the danger of making selfish choices.
Dr. Bonnie Farrier
Dr. Bonnie Farrier is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Writing in the Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics and the Director of the Writing Center at California State University Fullerton. She completed her PhD program in Rhetoric & Writing at Michigan State University. Her areas of concentration include Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy (CSLP), African American Language & Literacy, Black Feminist Theory, African American Rhetoric, Community Literacies, Writing Program Administration, and Qualitative Methods in Educational Research.
As the first African American tenured professor in the English department at Cal State Fullerton, since its founding in 1957, Dr. Farrier has contributed to several efforts to produce equitable and fair representation in English studies in her department, college, and in the profession at large. Dr. Farrier has led her department in a recent overhaul of their curriculum to highlight courses taught by faculty of color and that focus specifically on the cultural diversity of marginalized students. Dr. Farrier is also leading a campaign to promote diversity in CSUF’s writing center, and she has developed a 3-week summer institute for graduate student tutors who seek to become language policy allies for undergraduate students who experience language discrimination in writing studies. At the college level, Dr. Farrier, among 4 other faculty and women of color, started the Collective for Justice, Equity and Transformation at CSUF to support faculty of color and the college of humanities in their commitment to equity and diversity. Dr. Farrier is a member of her field’s national organization’s Language Policy Committee. In this role she recently co-authored a statement and demand for Black Linguistic Justice.
Currently, Dr. Farrier’s research centers on issues in composition studies including: theorizing African American literate and rhetorical traditions; understanding the intersections of gender & language in relationship to black female discursive practices; applying the perspectives from critical race studies and culturally relevant pedagogy to issues of teaching and learning; and highlighting new pedagogical approaches to literacy which underscore the importance of carving out space for the cultivation and support of students’ lived experiences and literacy traditions as essential aspects to empowering writing instruction.
Dr. Renee Moreno
Dr. Renee M. Moreno is Professor in the Chicano/a Studies Department at California State University, Northridge. Dr. Moreno holds a joint Ph.D. in English and Education from the University of Michigan and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Moreno teaches first year writing and directs the Chicano Studies Writing and Tutoring Center, which provides tutoring and writing support for CSUN students. She also supervises faculty teaching composition courses in her position as Writing Coordinator. She co-chairs CSUN’s University Writing Council and is the former director of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Scholars Program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. She has served in various leadership positions for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and was past chair of the Trustees of the Research Foundation, which funds the important program Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color (CNV). Her research interests focus on literature, storytelling and narrative, rhetoric and composition, histories of those from down below, and more.
Dr. Abigail Rosas
Dr. Abigail Rosas is Associate Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Her book, South Central Is Home: Race and the Power of Community Investment in Los Angeles, showcases that African American and Latina/o interactions are charged yet rife with opportunities to craft something anew, as they constantly negotiate their relationships through evolving economic, political, and social policy that perpetually demonize and prosecute poor families color. She served as a special issue editor for Kalfou: Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, writing the introductory article for a collection of essays that discussed the interracial dynamics of caring and laboring in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. She currently serves as the Faculty Coordinator to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship at CSULB. The MMUF program has proved instrumental in her career, as she was awarded a fellowship as an undergraduate while at Stanford University.
Dr. Steven Trzaskoma
Dr. Stephen M. Trzaskoma’s academic career began with a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (1989–1991) at Stanford University. He is now Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Cal State LA, and he previously served as the Director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of New Hampshire, where he was also founding Chair of the Department of Classics, Humanities & Italian Studies, Faculty Director of the Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Project and co-chair of the University Sustainability Task Force. He was the recipient at UNH of both a university Teaching Excellence Award and the Outstanding Associate Professor Award. He is the author, co-author or editor of many scholarly publications focusing on ancient Greek prose fiction and on Greek and Roman mythology and mythography. His professional focus has been on publicly engaged and partnered humanities and arts work, increasing access to the humanities in higher education, and promoting the role of the humanities and arts in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to creating more just, inclusive and sustainable communities, cultures and institutions. His work has been supported by funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation.
Angeles (Rubi) Castorena
UCI Graduate Student in Sociology, MMUF Fellow from University of New Mexico
Rubi Castorena attended the University of New Mexico (UNM), where she double majored in Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. She graduated from UNM in 2021 and that same year and began her graduate career at the University of California, Irvine, where she is a third-year Sociology Ph.D. student. Her research interests broadly focus on Latinx, first-generation students, higher education, capital, and intersectionality. Much of her research interests stem from her background as the daughter of two immigrant parents and a first-generation college student.
Lynette Dixon
UCLA Graduate Student in Gender Studies, MMUF Fellow from Ohio State University
Lynette Dixon is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA. She earned her BA in 2017 from Emory University (Atlanta, Ga). She became a MMUF fellow at Emory in 2015. Lynette earned an MA in African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University before starting her PhD program at UCLA . Currently, her research interests lie at the intersection of black feminisms, hip hop studies, popular culture, and performance studies. Her dissertation mines Black popular culture between 1990-2020 to explore how black women's strategies of embodiment resist anti-Black discourses. Lynette has proudly served as the graduate advisor for MMUF at CSDH for the past two years.
Matthew Hernandez
USC Graduate Student in English, MMUF Fellow from CSU Dominguez Hills
Matthew Hernandez graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills in 2021, where he placed first in both the University's Student Research Competition (SRC) and the CSU statewide SRC for Humanities and Letters. He went on to enroll in the Literature PhD program at the University of Southern California, completing academic work on Graphic Novels, Coming-of-Age narratives, and the impact of Tabletop Roleplaying Games on Mental Health during his tenure there. His current research explores the intersections of Coming-of-Age narratives, Roleplaying Games, and Collaborative Authorship. During his free time, he somehow still enjoys reading.
Moises Ponce-Zepeda
USC Graduate Student in History
Moisés graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2014 and worked with a nonprofit organization housing the formerly homeless. In 2018 he began an M.A. in history at Cal State Los Angeles, where he researched Chicano Tenant Activism in response to the razing of the Temple Beaudry affordable housing community located at the intersection of the 101 and 110 freeways in Downtown Los Angeles. Following the M.A., Moisés began working towards a Ph.D. in history at the University of Southern California under the mentorship of Dr. George Sanchez; his current research continues to investigate the Temple Beaudry community at the turn of the twentieth century following Ed Doheny’s discovery of oil and landowners development of the oil field into an affordable housing community utilizing digital mapping to network census and archival data.