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Topic: Education

Laura Niesen de Abruña

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Laura Niesen de Abruña, Ph.D., serves as the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise encompass diversity, equity and inclusion, HSI/Minority Serving Institutions, Title V and Title III grants, digital pedagogy, and literature of postcolonial women writers. Her career focus is on culturally responsive pedagogy, enrollment and retention management.

In addition to teaching, she is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies and the American Conference of Academic Deans. She has co-authored “Becoming a Provost.” featured in the Provost’s Handbook as well as “The Role of the Dean in Decision Making at the University Level in the American Council of Academic Deans’ Handbook.

Before joining MSU Denver, Niesen de Abruña was the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Dominican University of Chicago. She was the principal investigator on a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation digital fellows project that supported more than 30 provosts at institutions around the country by implementing resources to improve undergraduate teaching and learning.

Niesen de Abruña earned her Master of Science in Education in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned both her Ph.D. and Master of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Manuel Del Real

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Manuel Del Real, Ph.D., serves as the Executive Director of Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives and Inclusion at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include HSI/Minority Serving Institutions, diversity, equity & inclusion, Greek-letter organizations, civic engagement, Title V grants, and National Science Foundation grants. His professional focus is centered around culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum.

Del Real is the assistant vice president of membership for The Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators. He is also the co-founder of the Colorado HSI Consortium and is the current president of the Colorado Coalition for the Educational Advancement of Latinxs. He has presented at a panel at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference and facilitated the 2021 Sigma Lambda Betas International Fraternity Inc.’s Virtual Leadership Institute.

Before joining MSU Denver, Del Real was an adjunct faculty member in Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University.

Del Real earned his Doctorate in Education with a focus on higher education and social justice from Iowa State University, Master of Arts in higher education with a focus on diversity in organizations and Bachelor of Arts in French, Psychology, and Spanish from the University of Denver.

Rashad Anderson

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Rashad Anderson, Ph.D., serves as an associate professor in the School of Education, and Director of the Call Me MiSTER Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include mentoring, school discipline, education equity, race in the U.S., teacher education, and life coaching. His focus is centered around culturally responsive teaching and social justice issues in education, including racial, gender, and class oppression.

Anderson is the author of, “Wassup with all the Black Boys Sitting in the Principal’s Office,” which examines the teacher interactions and school practices that influence pre-adolescent Black males to devalue and/or disengage from school. He is also the author of “Doing Something About It! A Guide to Building a School-Based Mentoring Program.” He has presented at over 100 national and international education conferences and was the keynote speaker at the 2019 Effective Educators Summit for the U.S. Department of Education.

Anderson earned his doctorate’s in Educational Foundations and Inquiry and his master’s in Music Education from the University of South Carolina and his bachelor’s degree in Music Education from South Carolina State University.

Charlie Buckley

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Charlie Buckley, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver.  Her areas of expertise include inclusive education, supporting students with disabilities including those with significant support needs and autism, and those using alternative and augmentative communication. Buckley focuses on advancing inclusive education practices in public schools and higher education.   
 
Beyond teaching, Buckley co-created the Social Communication and Engagement Triad for the Colorado Department of Education.   Additionally, she co-authored and submitted an article titled, “Using a Social Model to Guide Individualized Education Program Development and Change Educational Paradigms to Be Critically Inclusive,” published in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Journal and is available in the National Library of Medicine online database. 

While at MSU Denver, Buckley led the establishment of the Autism Significant Support Needs Certificate Program at the School of Education. She played a significant role in creating the inclusion strand within the Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction program. She holds a certificate of clinical competence in Speech-Language Pathology from Colorado State University. 

Buckley earned her Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of Northern Colorado and her Master’s of Science in Communication Disorders from Colorado State University.  

Arturo Jimenez

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James Mejia

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Shaun T. Schafer

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Shaun T. Schafer is the associate vice president of curriculum, academic effectiveness and policy development in the Department of Academic Affairs at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. Schafer is also professor in the Journalism and Media Production Department. His areas of expertise include media law, media ethics, free press, curriculum policies and artificial intelligence in academic settings.

Dawn Matera Bassett

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Kathryn Young

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Kathryn Young, Ph.D., is a professor in Secondary Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver and served as a faculty fellow with the Office of Institutional Diversity at the University for a number of years. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in French Education from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a Masters of Arts in Teaching in Special Education with a concentration in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders from North Carolina Central University and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy from University of California, Berkeley.

Young has worked as an educator for 25 years and in higher education for the past 14 years. Before becoming a professor she taught French for a year, then English, Math and Science in the Peace Corps, then went on to be a special educator specializing in working with students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities. Her research interests include disability studies in education, inclusive education, cultural competence, diversity in higher education, and (Hierarchical) microaggressions in Education and in the workplace. She is an Intercultural Developmental Inventory (IDI) qualified administrator. Young has more than 20 published papers, numerous presentations across her research interests, and a new co-authored book titled Fix Your Climate: A Practical Guide to Reducing Microaggressions, Microbullying, and Bullying in the Academic Workplace.

Adriann Wycoff

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Adriann Wycoff, Ph.D., is a professor of Chicana/o Studies and holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor of Women’s Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

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