On the front cover, from top to bottom:
Top: From left to right—Joby Taylor, Ph.D. ’05, LLC; David Truscello, Ph.D. ’04, LLC; Adriana Medina López Portillo, Ph.D. ’04; Bev Bickel, Ph.D. ’05, LLC; Delana Gregg, Ph.D. ’19, LLC, taking the photo.
Middle: From left to right— Codou Diaw, Ph.D. ’03, LLC, with Professors Omar Ka and Jodi Crandall.
Bottom: Establishing the LLC Papers and Collection at AOK Library’s Special Collections. From left: Founding Emerita Director and Professor, Jodi Crandall; Head of Special Collections and Gallery, Beth Saunders; Professor Omar Ka, a founding LLC faculty member; Processing Archivist, Laurainne Ojo-Ohikuare.
Ifyou picked up this booklet, then you must be wondering about the Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) doctoral program at UMBC. Maybe you are interested in applying and want more background information. Maybe you are among our current students, alumni, or faculty and wonder who built it, and how, where, and why LLC began and evolved into the program that exists today. We intend this booklet to serve as more than a survey of LLC’s history. Instead, it is a celebration of the program’s first 25 years as a unique, innovative, and thriving doctoral program, and one that you will want to join or stay engaged with over the next 25 years!
Emerald Christopher-Byrd, Ph.D. ’15, LLC, later a professor at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation director was Professor Michelle Scott, from the Department of History.
Kaye Whitehead, Ph.D. ’09, LLC, The Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice and Professor at Loyola University Maryland from cohort 9, who was also later President of the National Women’s Studies Association.
The Vision
Thevision for the program was to provide an interdisciplinary perspective, combining faculty from diverse disciplines and allowing for a variety of contexts in which students could apply their learning. The program founders intended to appeal to already accomplished working professionals and researchers. Even today, in 2024, the program offers courses in the late afternoons and evenings precisely to appeal to working people. LLC students brought a wealth of experience that was integral to the program’s success. The founding faculty intentionally designed the program to honor and build on the students’ diverse backgrounds and knowledge.
First, the curriculum of the LLC program has stressed interdisciplinarity, internationalization, and social justice around language learning and literacy studies since its inception. From the beginning, the program emphasized student-centered choices and flexibility. Our
curriculum allows students to select from a wide range of courses, tailoring their education to their unique interests and needs. This flexible structure promotes a self-directed learning environment as students can customize their education. The doctoral program’s seminarstyle courses emphasize active participation and respect for students’ expertise, fostering an environment where students become full participants in the academic conversation.
Second, the program’s design was influenced by doctoral tutorial models with a lot of individualized attention, and blending structured coursework with the flexibility for practical application. While the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) required certain courses, the LLC program ensured these included practical and applied elements. The comprehensive exams, like many of the innovations, reflected a shift towards studentcentered, forward-looking, and individualized
building blocks toward a successful dissertation rather than traditional comprehensive exams covering entire disciplines and subject areas.
Third, we have admitted students with graduate degrees in diverse fields. We have had students enter with M.A., M.F.A., M.S., M.Ed., and even J.D. degrees as well as a few who transfer from other Ph.D. degree programs. Reinforcing a
balance between research and practice, the first decade or more of the program continues to include both working professionals and graduate teaching and research assistants in our partnering departments. Our alumni have gone on to become university presidents, state representatives, and hold prestigious academic appointments.
The History
Around 1994, the idea of establishing a new Ph.D. program at UMBC began to circulate, responding to the demand from graduate students in other programs. Students quickly recognized the importance of interdisciplinary doctoral study in language learning and applied linguistics, and the pioneering LLC doctoral program filled an unusual niche. Based just outside downtown Baltimore, Maryland, the program sought to serve both local and international students.
In the late 1990s, a small group of faculty members became instrumental in shaping the program and volunteered their time and effort to write a proposal for a unique and compelling new doctoral program. Many people soon signed on to help build the program.
Jodi Crandall, LLC’s founding director until fall 2011, had a forward-thinking approach and dedication to interdisciplinary education
which laid the foundation for LLC’s vision. She stepped down as director when she became an emerita professor, and later established a Jodi Crandall Dissertation Completion Grant, meant to financially support students’ efforts to complete dissertations. LLC now has two permanent grants or fellowships in addition to a number of graduate research assistantships. We also established travel and research grants to supplement funding for students presenting papers at conferences. Key faculty members in those early years included Omar Ka, Kevin Eckert, Carole McCann, and Fred Pincus. Professor Ka directed one of the first dissertation committees for Codou Diaw, Ph.D. ’03 who wrote on “Gender and Educational Policies in Senegal.” Diaw became a gender and literacy specialist in Senegal. By 1996, the discussion had gained momentum. As word spread about the potential Ph.D. granting program, interest
from other departments grew. The core group created a larger coordinating committee. The collaborative effort culminated in the launch of the Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program in the fall 1998. LLC was initially housed on the fourth floor of Sherman Hall, remaining there until 2023 when it relocated to a dedicated suite of offices, graduate student study room, and a seminar room on the second floor of a completely renovated Sherman Hall.
Among the many students whose dissertation committees Crandall directed, the first two to graduate were Kevin Maxwell, Ph.D. ’02, LLC, who became the school superintendent in two Maryland counties, and Karen Carpenter, Ph.D. ’02, LLC, who was on the faculty at UMBC for over 20 years. Later, Crandall’s students included Polina Vinogradova, Ph.D. ’21, LLC, who is on the faculty at American University where she directs the TESOL program. Professor Vinogradova published Digital Storytelling as Translanguaging: A Practical Guide for Language Educators (2024) with Professor Heather Linville, Ph.D. ’14. A few others are mentioned later in this booklet, and all can be found in our list of dissertations: llc.umbc.edu/alumni.
As the doctoral program continued to promote engaged academic work and a communitycentered approach that could inform social and educational policy and practice, they hired the first full-time faculty member in the academic program, Christine Mallinson. Mallinson co-directed her first dissertation committee with Kriste Lindenmeyer in the Department of History for Kaye Whitehead, who graduated in 2009 and later went on to become the founding director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice and a professor at Loyola University Maryland,
and also the president of the National Women’s Studies Association. UMBC awarded “Dr. Kaye,” as she is known in her media programs, the 2022 Outstanding Alumna of the Year in the Humanities. Although Mallinson has multiple administrative appointments outside of LLC, she continues to mentor LLC students and co-direct dissertations.
In 2009, Beverly “Bev” Bickel, Ph.D. ’05, LLC, joined the program’s faculty full-time and became a cornerstone in the program. Over the years, Bickel mentored and co-directed over 20 doctoral dissertation committees, and continued even after becoming an emerita professor. Her impact on the program and her collaborative pedagogy inspired students. As an LLC student, alumna, faculty member, and intermittent administrator of the program, Bickel cultivated a collaborative and radically inclusive ethos in the program. The last dissertation committee she co-directed
with Associate Dean Joan Kang Shin from George Mason University, Ph.D. ’08, LLC, was for Heidi Faust, Ph.D. ’23, LLC, whose dissertation title “Extending Professional Development through Community,” suggests the special qualities of our program.
In 2010, when Crandall announced her retirement, UMBC hired Craig Saper. In Saper’s nine years administering the program (eight as director), the university increased LLC’s graduate student assistantship lines from very few to many and increased the number of affiliate faculty members from a handful initially to over 60 now. Although too many to mention here, we have an ongoing list available at our website, llc.umbc.edu/people/llc-affiliatefaculty. He also made space for a graduate student library and study from existing offices that will continue in our new LLC suite. Saper added strengths in the interdisciplinary arts and humanities with a focus on social technologies of reading, literacy, and writing. This included a dynamic range of modes of communication, from print-based to film to electronic, and other systems and formats.
Students worked on electronic and other publishing projects with Saper, including Kevin Wisniewski, Ph.D. ’18, LLC, who later became the director of book history and digital initiatives at the American Antiquarian Society and then taught at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Felix Burgos, Ph.D. ’18, LLC, who became a professor at Indiana University–East. Together Burgos and Wisniewski founded the journal Textshop Experiments and Textshop Editions, and Wisniewski separately worked on helping Saper founded Roving Eye Press, built with support from Saper’s three-year Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship funding. As part of LLC’s
commitment to inclusivity, including older and already accomplished professionals, Saper co-founded UMBC’s Wisdom Institute. The institute was established with a startup grant from a Hrabowski Innovation award as our doctoral program encourages students of all ages and backgrounds.
When Saper became the program’s director in 2012, LLC hired its first full-time staff member, Liz Steenrod, who later became our program manager. As with many small academic programs, our staff coordinates the workings of the program, and in LLC also plays an outsized role in managing and meeting the needs of students, graduate assistants, applicants, and faculty beyond the regular workings and systems of any academic program. Steenrod also contributed to designing a student handbook, producing a regular newsletter, and coordinating numerous events. Additionally,
she streamlined the various systems and forms that students must navigate. Our academic program seeks that community feeling in ways that go beyond classes, research, and work.
All of these elements establish and reinforce the unique identity of our program as it evolved into a cohesive, academically rigorous program capable of supporting a diverse cohort of doctoral candidates and contributing meaningfully to the academic landscape at UMBC. The LLC program’s commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship, innovative pedagogy, and community engagement began to shape the future direction of LLC as a leader in graduate education in the humanities and social sciences.
In 2012, with LLC under the direction of Craig Saper, the MHEC agreed to award M.A. degrees to students who completed
coursework in LLC but not the dissertation. This significant change reinforced the program’s student-centered approach and created good-will among all alumni of the program who otherwise would have little to show for their efforts if they decided not to pursue completing a dissertation. Nine alumni have chosen this path as of 2024.
In 2014, LLC students organized a decidedly successful international graduate student conference on “Rethinking Intellectual Activism” and the thematic focus and title of that conference could serve as a coda for our doctoral program’s vision and goals. The conference organizers were led by Felix Burgos and Emek Ergun, who earned the Ph.D. in 2015 with Carole McCann directing her dissertation committee. Ergun went on to become a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Women’s and Gender Studies and Global Studies, and was the prestigious 2024 Joan S. Korenman Lecturer at UMBC.
LLC hired Cedric Herring in 2014, who was already an established leader in Black sociology. His scholarship became the core of UMBC’s STRIDE program (Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence). Like others associated with our doctoral program, he sought to remove the racial and cultural blinders that undermine human rights and organizational progress. With his passing in April 2018, the program established The Cedric Herring Fellowship for Research in Language, Literacy, and Culture, which aims to further the legacy of Herring’s research by funding student projects. Harry Bhandari, Ph.D. ’21, LLC, worked with Cedric and with Loren Henderson, a professor in public policy. Bhandari went on to become a Maryland State Representative.
In 2015, LLC invited now Dean Kimberly R. Moffitt, of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), to join the program. She directed the program from 2019 to 2020, when she was appointed as the interim dean in August of 2020 and then in 2022 as the CAHSS dean. Her interests and research in culture, media studies/criticism, Black hair and body politics, sports and media, and popular culture reinforced the program’s focus on cultural literacy. Even in that one year as director, Moffitt had an enormous impact on the program. LLC was instrumental in having UMBC earn a prestigious “Very High Research Activity” or R1 classification because LLC produced many humanities and humanistic social science Ph.D.s. Moffit also introduced crucially important SWAGs (Student Writing Accountability Groups) as a component of
LLC’s extra-curricular activities and those continue as an important part of our program.
Ramon Goings became a part of the LLC doctoral program faculty in 2020, but his journey at UMBC started three years earlier as a program coordinator and research associate at the Sherman Teacher Scholars Program. His research interest is centered on the academic and social experiences of gifted/high-achieving Black males Pre-KPh.D., diversifying the teacher and school leader workforce, and investigating the contributions of historically Black colleges and universities. Goings quickly started directing dissertations in those areas, and one of his students, Jackie Peng, Ph.D. ’24, LLC, was awarded the prestigious national AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research.
Fitting into the LLC ethos of collaborating with doctoral students as our peers, Goings also published a monograph with three LLC graduates, Sherella Cupid, Ph.D. ’20, LLC; Montia Gardne, Ph.D. ’21, LLC; and Antoine Tomlin, Ph.D. ’21, LLC. Goings also has recently collaborated with an ABD student as of the fall of 2024, Michael Hunt, who is the director of the McNair Scholars Program at UMBC.
In March 2021, the symposium “Critical Conversations: An Intersectional Perspective to Ignite Social Change” featured Patricia Hill Collins, Distinguished University Professor emerita of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, as the guest in conversation with a group of our doctoral students and alumni. The four alumni, all now
faculty members at various universities, are: Emerald Christopher-Byrd, Ph.D. ’15, LLC; Emek Ergun, Ph.D ’15, LLC; Katie Morris, Ph.D. ’21, LLC; and Alyse Minter, Ph.D. ’23, LLC. The panel also included two students, Elaine MacDougall, LLC Cohort 22, the director of UMBC’s Writing Center, and Chelsea Mays-Williams, LLC Cohort 23.
In 2022, LLC hired Tanya L. Saunders whose research in the ways in which the African Diaspora throughout the Americas uses the arts as a tool for social change, specifically through decolonizing systems of thinking and knowing, adding an important aspect to our program’s strengths in international and intersectional approaches. Saunders began directing the UMBC-side of a Brazilian Abdias
do Nascimento Fellowship Program in 2024 that will begin by bringing a group of graduate students here, reinforcing the LLC program’s internationalization, increasing our reputation, recruiting in the global south and especially in Latin America, and lead to more multilingual opportunities for students and in dissertations.
Just as we sent this booklet to press, we hired Nicole Morse, who will start in the fall of 2024. Their specialty in LGBTQ cultural production, including cinema, television, new media, and popular culture will strengthen LLC’s media and multimodal aspects while reinforcing our community engagement and intersectional issues. Their work on how trans and LGBTQ people craft media representations in selfies, use media politically, and interpret media as spectators, will, with Saunders’ work, continue to put our doctoral program on a map for top-notch doctoral students working on similar issues of representation.
In 2023, the 25th anniversary celebration of the Language, Literacy, and Culture program commenced with a vibrant multilingual welcome from five students, each greeting the audience in their native languages to the delight and cheers of the audience of alumni, affiliated faculty, and current doctoral students.
Carole Njoroge from cohort 26 kicked off the event in Swahili, warmly saying, “Karibu na Tuna furaha sana kwako kujiunga nasi katika maadhimisho ya miaka 25 ya Lugha, Kusoma na Kuandika na Utamaduni.” Maria Razcon, also from cohort 26, greeted everyone in Spanish: “Bienvenidos y estamos felices de que nos acompañen al vigésimo quinto aniversario de Lengua, Literatura y Cultura. Soy Iran Maria Razcon, del grupo 26.” Zareen Taj from cohort 22 continued in Farsi:
Language, Literacy, and Culture
.» The greetings concluded with Xixellonje Nebihu from Kosovo, cohort 26, who spoke in Albanian: “Mirë se vini dhe jemi shumë të lumtur që na jeni bashkuar në 25 vjetorin e Departamentit të Gjuhës dhe Kulturës.” This multilingual greeting highlighted the international breadth and multinational depth of the program, which boasts students and alumni from 28 countries across six continents and continues to focus on language and literacy.
The president of Ithaca College, La Jerne Cornish, Ph.D. ’05, LLC, and recipient of the UMBC 2019 Outstanding Alumna of the Year in the Humanities, remembers starting the LLC program in 1998 and how it offered “a program flexible enough for its students to balance their personal, professional, and intellectual lives and
rigorous enough for its graduates to become impactful change agents in their chosen fields locally, nationally, and internationally.”
Overall, the LLC program has thrived on its flexibility, interdisciplinary approach, and commitment to practical applications, making it a unique and successful doctoral program. UMBC’s dedication to interdisciplinarity and progressive values has been a cornerstone of the LLC program, setting it apart from traditional Ph.D. programs and contributing to its unique success.
The program thrived in its first 25 years with the support of then-UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, and the program celebrated its 25th anniversary soon after the induction of UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby in 2022. The new provost and senior vice president, Manfred H. M. van Dulmen, was appointed just as this booklet went to press. After 15 years as
Graduate School dean and vice provost, Janet Rutledge retired in the summer of 2024. As we introduced Rutledge at our 25th anniversary celebration. Rutledge’s work helped build LLC, and was instrumental in getting UMBC its Carnegie Research 1 (R1) designation.
The next chapter of our doctoral program will build on the innovative success of the first 25 years of the program with the support of our new president, provost, and graduate dean, as well as the support of Dean Moffitt of CAHSS. Applicants, students, faculty, and future staff and administrators of LLC can use this booklet as a blueprint of the elements that made and built our thriving doctoral program. We owe the existence and success of LLC to the leadership of JoAnn “Jodi” Crandall and to the founding members. New and future faculty members will build on that initial vision of an interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and language and literacy-focused doctoral program.
This booklet is more than a survey, as it serves as a call to action to continue to emphasize the collaborative spirit and inclusive excellence that defines the LLC community. Please consider joining us as applicants, students, alumni, or affiliated faculty if you are looking for a program that stresses inclusive excellence, community building, and interdisciplinarity at a doctoral research-intensive university.
Looking ahead, we envision a future where LLC continues to play a pivotal role in UMBC’s mission as a leader in doctoral research and aligns closely with our university’s strategic plan, emphasizing the importance of networking, collaboration, and sustained support to uphold the program’s legacy of academic distinction and community impact.
We look forward to your interest in our doctoral program as a model for inclusive excellence. Join us as we celebrate 25 years of groundbreaking achievements and look forward to the next exciting chapter in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral Program at UMBC.
