S4 Episode 1

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Askari graduated from Auburn University in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Accountancy. Upon graduating, he taught K-8 Spanish in the DC Public School System for one year. He then attended Middlebury College and received his Master of Arts in Spanish in 2017. Directly following this, he returned to his alma mater and received his Master of Accountancy in 2018. While studying for his MAcc, he realized that he had a passion for academic advising and decided to pursue a Master of Arts in Higher Education at the University of Michigan. He graduated in 2020 and accepted a job with Mississippi State University working in their Athletic Academics department as a Tutor Coordinator. After 6 months, he returned to the University of Michigan where he currently works as an Academic Program Specialist on the Rackham Professional Development DEI Certificate Program.

As Director of the Ginsberg Center, Neeraja Aravamudan contributes to the strategic leadership of Ginsberg and supports the center’s strategic partnerships with academic units across the university. Aravamudan has focused her professional career in higher education on helping students and faculty to make their teaching and learning more student-centered, inclusive, and equitable. Her commitment to social justice education is rooted in her personal experiences as an immigrant from India and her work in anti-bias education. Community-engaged learning brings together her interests in social justice, teaching and learning, and values-centered practices.

Karishma Collette earned her B.Sc. in life sciences at the University of Mumbai (India) in 2001. In 2003, she completed her M.Sc. in industrial biotechnology at Newcastle University (United Kingdom), and a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Michigan in 2011. Collette’s dissertation focused on the characterization of a novel Condensin protein complex (Condensin I) in C.elegans mitosis and meiosis. During her Ph.D., Collette enjoyed teaching introductory biology and genetics, and continued her pedagogical training as a postdoc at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) from August 2012 to April 2014. After her training at CRLT, she advised U-M undergraduate students interested in careers in the health professions at the Newnan LSA Academic Advising Center, and managed the peer tutoring and peer mentorship programs at the Science Learning Center. In her current role at CRLT, Collette consults with and facilitates workshops for faculty, GSIs, and undergraduates in instructional roles, on a variety of topics in teaching and learning. She also directs the winter GSI teaching orientation, and is the CRLT lead for the CRLT-ELI 994 program. Collette is currently an active member of CRLT’s GSI team and DEI team.

Krishna Han’s (he/him/his) professional student affairs journey in the United States took him from Oberlin College to Bowling Green State University (BGSU) prior to joining the University of Michigan. Originally from Cambodia, Han graduated from the Royal University of Phnom Penh with a dual degree in biology and education. After completing a master’s degree in community forestry at Shinshu University in Japan he pursued and earned a Ph.D. in regional environmental resources management at Hokkaido University in Japan. Han studied the impacts of economic development policy introduced by the World Bank to Cambodia in 1993 on the livelihood of Indigenous people in the northeastern part of Cambodia and traditional farming system. He worked with various international organizations such as World Vision International and United Nations Environmental Program before moving to the United States. While in the United States, he pursued and earned another graduate degree in 2003 in college student personnel at BGSU, where he served as assistant director in the Office of Multicultural Affairs from 2012 to 2018. Han is passionate about and an advocate for global and multicultural education, cross-cultural understanding, and social justice.