Honors College Staff

spstacey@umbc.edu

jodik@umbc.edu
Dr. Jodi Kelber is the Director of the Honors College, having served previously as its Associate Director and before that, as a faculty member in Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies. She has been at UMBC since 2003. She continues to do research and teach in the areas of critical gender and race studies, LGBTQ studies, visual studies, and gender and science studies. Dr. Kelber is currently the Co-PI of UMBC’s Gender Based Harm Prevention Project, a collaboration with faculty and staff across the university in which they teach courses on gender based harm prevention and engage in research examining the efficacy of those courses on campus climate change with respect to these issues. She co-created The Baltimore Collectives and Communes Project, in which she and her colleagues collected oral histories from 1970s activists in the feminist and black power movements in Baltimore. Dr. Kelber received her Ph.D. in cultural studies from the University of Arizona (where she also earned her M.A. in art history). She currently serves as a Commissioner in the Maryland Commission for Women, and represents the Northern District on the Baltimore Police Department’s Community Training Review Committee (part of the BPD’s consent decree). Originally from Boston, she is happy to make Baltimore City her home, and volunteers regularly with social change nonprofits in the city.

juloakes@umbc.edu
Dr. Julie Oakes has been a member of the UMBC community since 2007, teaching numerous courses for both the History Department and Asian Studies Program. After receiving her M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, she went on to the University of Chicago where she earned a Ph.D. in Japanese history. Her research interests center on Japanese art policy, and she is currently revising her manuscript on the creation of Japan’s National Treasure system. In the 2016-2017 academic year, Dr. Oakes served as Acting Associate Director of the Honors College, following that up with a year as the Interim Director of the Asian Studies Program. In the spring of 2019, Dr. Oakes returned to the Honors College as the Assistant Director of Curriculum and Retention, which entails working with the Honors College Faculty Fellows and the freshmen residents of the Living Learning Community. Outside of her work at UMBC, Dr. Oakes is the Baltimore seminar coordinator for the NCTA (The National Consortium for the Teaching About Asia), whose aim is to help elementary, middle, and high school educators better incorporate East Asian topics into their curricula. She also gives talks on Japanese history and culture to various community groups, ranging from elementary school students to adult learners.

kwalker6@umbc.edu 
Kendyl Walker was born and raised in the Baltimore County, right outside of the Woodlawn area. She received her B.A. in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and an M.Ed. in College Student Personnel at Ohio University in 2019. Before coming to UMBC in 2022, she advised first-year and undecided students at Goucher College for three years. Kendyl’s main passions are to support students’ growth and provide students with resources that will help them succeed during their college careers.