During 25 years in higher education I have used my teaching, research, and service to engage diverse and intersectional identities toward greater equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging. 

As a teacher, mentor, and advisor, I chaired Ph.D. dissertation committees, Doctor of Ministry projects, and master’s theses for learners from the African, African American, Caribbean American, Cuban American, Indonesian, Korean American, Native American, Pakistani American, and South Korean communities. These learners represent Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, indigenous, and Muslim religious traditions, and LGBTQIIA+ communities. Their research addresses sexual minorities, disabilities studies, immigration, women’s issues, political violence and defection, racial reconciliation, multi- and interfaith families, HIV/AIDS, and more. 

From 2010-2022 I taught at Claremont School of Theology (CST), where a majority of learners come from strategically marginalized communities. As a clinical supervisor with psychotherapy trainees, I worked with learners from African, Cuban American, Korean, Korean American, Indonesian, and South Korean contexts. For a semester I taught two graduate courses in Vietnam for learners from religious minority communities. My academic courses give learners choices about how to document their learning to accommodate different learning styles. I have taught courses on care with LGBTQIIA+ people and religiously multiple people. I also work to decolonize and decolonialize my own attitudes and assumptions toward teaching and learning, as described in my teaching statement. 

My research also addresses EDI. My most recent book discusses racial-ethnic health disparities in the treatment of pediatric end-stage renal disease, and my 2018 monograph addresses the experience of complex religious bonds as a targeted spiritual-religious identity linked to colonialism and post-colonial liberation. In the mid-2000s, I co-directed the research colloquium “Beyond Apologetics: Sexual Identity, Pastoral Theology, and Pastoral Practice” to advance understandings of queer theology and queer experience in religious communities. At the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), I advise student research on disabilities and on belonging in medical education. In 2019, I published a chapter about decolonializing PhD education titled “The University as a Maquila: Whose Voice, Whose Ideas, Whose Knowledge?” co-authored with a colleague from New Zealand and a former PhD advisee who is Cubana American. 

At CST, I co-directed the Center for Sexuality, Gender, and Religion with colleagues who are Asian American and queer; at USU, I served on the faculty senate’s DEI committee, my department’s DEI task force, and initiated and chaired my department’s DEI journal club. I have been a board member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, taught workshops on intersectionality with Mexicana and Puerto Rican colleagues, and served on the board of a professional theater that amplifies work by queer, woman, and BIPOC artists and writers. 

In the future, I want to use my expertise in assessment, curriculum design, and instruction to address epistemicide and colonizing pedagogies at the programmatic and institutional levels.