GREATS Welcome Dinner and Conversation with Dr. James Holly Jr.

Our guest speaker will be Dr. James Holly Jr.. He is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and core faculty member within the Engineering Education Research program at the University of Michigan. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University and a master’s degree from Michigan State University, both in Mechanical Engineering. He earned his doctorate in Engineering Education from Purdue University. His research paradigm is shaped by his experiences growing up in a Black church within a Black city and later studying engineering at Tuskegee University, a Black institution, three spaces where Blackness is both normal and esteemed. As such, he sees his teaching, research, and service as promoting pro-Blackness—affirming the humanity and epistemic authority of Black people—in engineering education. His scholarship focuses on the ways disciplinary knowledge (i.e., mechanical engineering) reinforces racialized power, the role of culture and cognition in teaching and learning, and preparing pre-college engineering educators to identify and counteract racial inequity. He helped create the Equity, Culture, and Social Justice in Education Division within the American Society of Engineering Education, and serves on the Editorial Board for both the Journal of Engineering Education and the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research.