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Faculty selected for presidential leadership program

The program’s goal is to foster talented, emerging leaders with administrative potential.

President Ruth Watkins has selected four faculty members as 2020-21 Presidential Leadership Fellows. The faculty members are:

  • Annie Isabel Fukushima, assistant professor in the Division of Ethnic Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation
  • Jason Burrow-Sánchez, professor of counseling psychology and the chair of the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education
  • Maile Arvin, assistant professor in the Division of Gender Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation and the Department of History in the College of Humanities
  • Kelly S. Bricker, professor and chair in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism in the College of Health

The university launched the Presidential Leadership Fellows Program in 2017, with the first fellow named the following year. The program’s goal is to foster talented, emerging leaders with administrative potential. With the support of The Mellon Foundation, the university was able to expand the program in 2019, with an emphasis on providing training in higher education leadership to rising academic leaders from the fields of arts and humanities.

Fellows engage in the activities and work of the Office of the President and with the President’s Cabinet over the course of one academic year. Each Presidential Leadership Fellow identifies an area of particular interest—fundraising, university budgets, student success, strategic planning, etc.—to concentrate on during the year through study, a project or group work.

The fellows' cohort meets with the president each month and participates in a subset of the President’s Cabinet meetings. Additionally, they meet with and collaborate with cabinet members and other senior university leadership in their area of particular interest.

Past fellows include Joy Pierce, associate dean for academic and faculty affairs in the College of Humanities and an associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies and affiliate professor in Latin American Studies; Harris D. Smith, former professor and chair of the Department of Theatre in the College of Fine Arts who is now dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico; and Erika R. George, director of the Tanner Humanities Center and the Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.

This year, the Mellon Foundation is supporting three faculty members as fellows; a fourth fellow is being sponsored by the university.

2020-21 Presidential Leadership Fellows

Annie Isabel Fukushima

Annie Isabel Fukushima is an assistant professor in the Division of Ethnic Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation. Fukushima also is the project lead on the University of Utah’s Gender-based Violence Consortium. She is the co-lead for the Institute of Impossible Subjects project “Migratory Times” and author of the award-winning book “Migrant Crossings: Witnessing Human Trafficking in the U.S.” (Stanford University Press, 2019). Prior to coming to the University of Utah, Fukushima was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University (2013–15) with the Institute for Research on Women and the Department of Women and Gender Studies. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in ethnic studies with a designated emphasis in women, gender and sexuality studies.

Jason Burrow-Sánchez

Jason Burrow-Sánchez is a professor of counseling psychology and the chair of the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education. He is also the director of the Mountain Plains Region 8 Prevention Technology Transfer Center, funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at the University of Utah. His research interests include the prevention and treatment of substance use for adolescents in school and community settings with a particular interest in Latinx adolescents. His research has been funded at the local, state and national levels and he has published numerous articles, chapters and books. Burrow-Sánchez is a licensed psychologist in the state of Utah. He received his doctorate from the University of Oregon in 2003.

Maile Arvin

Maile Arvin is an assistant professor in the Division of Gender Studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation and the Department of History in the College of Humanities. She is the recipient of an ACLS Incentive Fellowship (2019) and participated in the Foundation Fellows Program (2018). Arvin is the author of “Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania” (Duke University Press, 2019). Arvin was an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside (2015-17) and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2013-15). She earned her doctorate in ethnic studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2013.

Kelly S. Bricker

Kelly S. Bricker is a professor and chair in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism in the College of Health. She has research and teaching interests in nature-based tourism, sense of place, gateway communities, natural resource management, health benefits of nature-based experiences, and the impacts of tourism. Bricker is the co-author or editor of seven books on sustainable tourism, ecotourism and the restorative qualities of nature. She has contributed numerous chapters to books on tourism’s environmental and social impacts and authored more than 60 journal articles. Bricker serves on the boards of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, the Tourism and Protected Area Specialist Group of the IUCN, and the Central Wasatch Stakeholders Council. With her husband, partners in Outdoor Adventure River Specialists, and 12 communities in the rural highlands of Fiji, Bricker established a lease for conservation on the Upper Navua River through an ecotourism project they created called Rivers Fiji. She completed her doctorate at Pennsylvania State University, where she specialized in sustainable tourism and protected area management.