2025-2026 Class of Fellows

Susan Balter-Reitz is a Professor of Communication at Montana State University Billings. Balter-Reitz has been studying the limits of the First Amendment for the last three decades, and she has published broadly on issues related to Freedom of Expression. Her work is informed by argumentation theory and conceptions of the public. Balter-Reitz has twice been nominated for the Franklyn Haiman award given by the National Communication Association to honor distinguished scholarship in Freedom of Expression; the work she collaborated on with Michael Bruner won this award in 2015.

Michael Lane Bruner (a.k.a. M. Lane Bruner), formerly at Georgia State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a retired Professor of Communication Studies and Affiliate Professor of Public Policy with a well-established reputation for research in freedom of speech and civic engagement. Bruner’s work, spanning more than three decades, focuses in part on legal rulings and legislation that appear on the surface to protect and expand free speech and citizen engagement that in fact undermine the very public reason upon which sound legal and policy decisions are based. Bruner regularly consults on policy development and communication with policy professionals at the city, county, and state levels.

Over the last decade, Balter-Reitz and Bruner have been concerned with the attacks on public colleges and universities under the guise of protecting free expression. Examples include their 2011-2012 work, on the Westboro Baptist Church’s influence on Supreme Court rulings related to free speech and public spectacle, their 2016-2017 research on the cynical manipulation of university free speech rules by provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulous, and their most recent work on the passage of FORUM Acts in the United States.

D. Chase J. Catalano served as an assistant professor at Western Illinois University in the College Student Personnel Program for four years prior to coming to Virginia Tech. Chase’s previous student affairs work includes positions in fraternity and sorority life, residence life, and admissions. Prior to his faculty position, he served as the director of the LGBT Resources Center at Syracuse University for five years.

Chase identifies as a trans scholar; he identifies as trans masculine and studies trans identities and experiences in higher education. His research and publications address topics of trans(*)ness, social justice, queerness, and masculinities. Chase is an ACPA Emerging Scholar (class of 2018) and is also the program leader for the Ph.D. program in Higher Education.

He is a co-editor for Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, 4th edition (Routledge, 2018) and co-author and co-editor of Gender-Aware Practices: Intersectional Approaches to Applying Masculinities in Student Affairs (New Directions for Student Services). Beyond his various book chapters, he published articles in Equity & Excellence in Education, Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ), International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), and Journal for Diversity in Higher Education.

Anna Chang, MD is a physician in geriatric and palliative medicine and professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She is director of the Clinical Microsystems Clerkship, a course for early medical students on foundational clinical skills and health systems improvement. Dr. Chang directs Tideswell Emerging Leaders in Aging, a leadership development program for those who lead programs to improve the lives of older adults in the U.S.

Calvin Chou, MD, PhD is a practicing general internist and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. As faculty with the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH), he is recognized internationally for leading workshops in relationship-centered communication, feedback, conflict, and remediation in health professions education. He is co-editor of the books Remediation in Medical Education: A Midcourse Correction, and Communication Rx: Transforming Healthcare Through Relationship-Centered Communication.

Margaret (Meg) McNamara, MD is a general pediatrician with over 30 years of experience and professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco. She is recent program director of the UCSF pediatric residency, and past chair of the national Association of Pediatric Program Directors executive committee. She is committed to training the next generation of pediatricians to advance the clinical care of children and scientific research to benefit children’s health.

Antonio Duran (he/him/él) is an associate professor of higher and postsecondary education in The Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation. His research broadly examines how historical and contemporary legacies of oppression influence college student development, experiences, and success at institutions of higher education (especially historically white institutions [HWIs] and Hispanic-serving institutions [HSIs]). Connected to this central thread, he is also interested in how scholar-practitioners use the above knowledge in their practice. He primarily uses critical frameworks (e.g., intersectionality, queer of color critique, quare theory, jotería studies) to complicate the field’s understanding of racism, heterosexism, trans oppression, and other forms of marginalization on college campuses.

Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Duran found a love for higher education during his years as an undergraduate student at New York University. It was at NYU that he first encountered questions of what it meant to be a first-generation queer Latino cisgender man in educational settings and in society broadly. He discovered that educators could create environments for students to explore who they were and to learn how they can contribute to a more socially just world. After his time at NYU, he was lucky to receive his master's degree in student affairs in higher education from Miami University and his doctorate in higher education and student affairs from The Ohio State University.

Bryan Gentry is a communications director at the University of South Carolina with more than 15 years of experience in higher education communications and marketing. He worked at two private colleges in Virginia before joining South Carolina's flagship university. He has worked on award-winning projects including a viewbook that received a national CASE Circle of Excellence Award and a brand video that received three Telly Awards. As chair of the Heterodox Academy Campus Community at the University of South Carolina, he organizes speaker events and other programs to foster a culture of constructive dialogue, free speech and academic freedom. He has presented at the Heterodox Academy national conference and is a contributing writer to the Open Inquiry initiative of Discourse Magazine.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Southern Virginia University and a master's in business administration from the University of Lynchburg. Prior to his work in higher education, he was a reporter for daily newspapers in Virginia and North Carolina.

Catherine Hartman is an Assistant Professor of Community College Leadership and Faculty Scholar at the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research. Catherine’s research focuses on community college student persistence and engagement, community college student transfer to four-year schools, and community college leadership. Prior to joining NC State, Catherine worked at the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. She has also held appointments at the Center for Community College Student Engagement, the Charles A. Dana Center, and William & Mary.

Catherine earned associate degrees in liberal arts and social sciences from Tidewater Community College as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Education in Higher Education Administration from William & Mary. She also received a Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Policy from The University of Texas at Austin.

Afshan Jafar’s research and teaching interests include globalization, transnational women's movements, the Muslim diaspora, gender, media, and the body. Professor Jafar regularly teaches, Introduction to Sociology; Gender, Culture, and the Body; Sex Gender, and Society; Sociology of Globalization.

Professor Jafar was the 2021 recipient of the Helen B. Regan Faculty Leadership Award. The award recognizes “faculty members who exemplify the College's commitment to shared governance, democratic process and campus community development.” She was the 2015 recipient of the Feminist Activism Award presented by Sociologists for Women in Society. She was also the 2014 recipient of the the Helen Mulvey Faculty Award at Connecticut College presented to an assistant professor who “regularly offers classes that challenge students to work harder than they thought they could and to reach unanticipated levels of academic achievement”.

She is the author of “Women’s NGOs in Pakistan” (2011) and the co-editor of (with Erynn Masi de Casanova) of "Global Beauty, Local Bodies" (2013) and "Bodies Without Borders" (2013). Her scholarship has appeared in Teaching Sociology, Gender & Society, Social Problems, Academe, and Gender Issues. Her public scholarship has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Review of Books, Inside Higher Ed, and Ms. Magazine, among others.

Dr. Mohebali is a material scientist, educator, and humanist. His interdisciplinary research broadly focuses on social justice in education and decolonization. Originally from Iran, he studies how systems of oppression operate locally, nationally, and globally through higher education with the goal of disrupting dynamics of power across contexts. Milad draws from a wide range of methodologies, data sources, and theoretical perspectives in his three strands of research:1) He examines how racism and coloniality function in higher education as an institution. He approaches this work by drawing and contributing to the sociology of higher education. 2) He investigates the experiences of material hardship and precarity among college students with the goal of informing policy and practice. 3) He studies difficult dialogues around systems of oppression and how such dialogue can create belonging beyond colonized ways of being.

Elif Yucel, PhD, supports the learning and evaluation efforts that inform the Foundation’s grantmaking and advance our commitment to sharing knowledge internally and with the field. Prior to joining ECMC Foundation, Elif worked in higher education for over a decade, holding roles in college advising, student services and prison education. Elif holds a PhD in Urban Education Policy from the University of Southern California, where her dissertation examined reentry programs and support for formerly incarcerated students on community college campuses and the role these programs play in the reentry and higher education landscapes. Her research has also examined equity issues facing community colleges and higher education policy, with an explicit focus on transfer, developmental education and access and completion for justice-impacted students.

Elif holds an M.Ed. in Education Policy and Planning from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Chinese from Trinity University.