2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

1. Dr. Sundiata Jangha http://orcid.org/0009-0001-6438-6470 University of Maryland, Baltimore County [biography]

   Dr. Sundiata Jangha (he/him/his) serves as the Senior Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and Special Projects in the Graduate School at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Dr. Jangha works to bridge the critical gap between graduate student admission and degree completion by establishing and supporting initiatives that promote academic excellence, broaden participation, and accelerate progress through key milestones.

2. Dr. Robin Herlands Cresiski University of Maryland Baltimore County [biography]

   Dr. Robin Cresiski serves as the Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Student Development and Postdoctoral Affairs, as well as Affiliate Professor in Biology, at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She has directed and co-led numerous grant-funded programs to help broaden participation in graduate education and the professoriate. Prior to her current role at UMBC she has been a tenured faculty member, a faculty senate chair, department chair, interim provost and run a faculty development center.

3. Jee Young Bhan http://orcid.org/0009-0007-1368-8747 University of California, Davis [biography]

   Jee Young Bhan (she/they) is a PhD student in Sociology and a Graduate Student Researcher for Inclusive Excellence at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Jee Young brings sociological perspectives to examine education inequality at a structural level, with a focus on policies, institutions, and meso-level actors that shapes student outcomes.

4. Ebony E Lewis http://orcid.org/0009-0005-3610-1481 University of California, Davis [biography]

   Dr. Lewis (she/her/hers) serves as Chief Strategy Officer in Inclusive Excellence at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), leading initiatives and projects that advance the campus Inclusive Excellence strategic goals. In this role, Dr. Lewis focuses on developing and implementing approaches that centralize and align institutional initiatives and partnerships related to recruitment, retention, and advancement programs and interventions that connect to issues of inclusive excellence. Within Inclusive Excellence, Dr. Lewis also oversees the Institute for Dissemination, Engagement, and Access (IDEA) which focuses on amplifying higher education research by ensuring that evidence-based insights reach the audiences who can put them into practice. The IDEA also showcases promising practices that can be replicated and scaled to advance learning and achievement for scholars at all levels.

5. Elaina Marie Lopez University of California, Davis [biography]

   Elaina Lopez is a Program Analyst at Inclusive Excellence at the University of California, Davis. She supports grant-funded programs that advance student access, success in higher education, and the education-to-workforce pipeline.

6. Dr. Renetta Garrison Tull http://orcid.org/https://0009-0009-7197-5212 University of California, Davis [biography]

   Renetta Garrison Tull, Ph.D., is the Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Excellence at the University of California Davis, and she is a past convenor for the University of California’s system-wide (10 campus) Council of Vice Chancellors for Equity and Inclusion. Tull’s undergraduate and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and speech science are from Howard University and Northwestern University, respectively. She has had past faculty roles at UW-Madison, the University of Maryland College Park, and UMBC. At UC Davis, she is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, and a faculty affiliate in the Interdepartmental Program on Human Rights Studies. As Vice Chancellor, her divisional portfolio includes the Davis-based Office of Campus Community Relations, and the Office for Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate. The Sacramento headquarters houses the Office for Health Equity by Design for Inclusive Excellence, serving the medical school, nursing school, and medical center. Inclusive Excellence also covers medical clinics around California, and UC Davis’ locations in the Bay Area and other parts of the state. Her portfolio also includes the Avanza initiative; the Police Accountability Board; the Center for Reducing Health Disparities; the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science; the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Social Sciences, Arts, and the Humanities; and the Truth, Community Healing, and Transformation Center. She credits the success of Inclusive Excellence to talented teams and a supportive university environment. She is proud to be the Executive Sponsor for the UC Davis Principles of Community university-wide campus climate campaign, which highlights the key phrase, "We affirm the dignity inherent in all of us."

   Before joining UC Davis in California, Tull was in Maryland at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and served as Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Development (GSD), Associate Vice Provost for GSD and Postdoctoral Affairs, and Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives. She later had a detail with the University System of Maryland (USM, 12 institutions), serving as the Director for USM Pipeline Professional Development Programs, and she had Co-PI and PI roles on National Science Foundation (NSF) grants within the LSAMP, Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, and ADVANCE programs. At Davis, she is PI for the NSF-funded PROMISE Engineering Institute (PEI - UC Davis and UMBC). PEI has developed an intergenerational mentoring engineering leadership network which has engaged engineering graduate students and senior leaders from UC Davis, UMBC, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, University of Maryland College Park, Virginia State University, Rice University, George Mason University, and North Carolina A&T.

   An international speaker on global inclusion in STEM, Dr. Tull, a member of Tau Beta Pi, has shared Humanitarian Engineering principles and work connected to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations Headquarters, and on every continent (except Antarctica). Through the Latin and Caribbean Consortium for Engineering Institutions (LACCEI), she has given bilingual talks across Latin America on topics related to engineering for all.

   Tull was a finalist for the Global Engineering Deans Council/Airbus Diversity Award (announced in Italy and acknowledged in Dubai). In addition, she has received the ABET Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity, the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development Global Mentoring Award, and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head Association’s (ECEDHA) Diversity Award. She was a PI for Puerto Rico’s ADVANCE Hispanic Women in STEM, she is the past President for LACCEI, and the current Vice President of Transformative Initiatives for the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES). Tull is currently leading the “Alianza” project for LACCEI in partnership with the Organization of American States; she sits on the Board of Directors of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), one of the world's largest Earth and space science organizations; and recently, she has been invited to serve on engineering expert teams in Chile and China.
   Tull was a co-author for UNESCO Engineering Report II, and she participated in the UN Women CSW66 side event on “Role of Women in STEM in Addressing Climate Change” where she joined global leaders on the importance of women in engineering for climate action, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development. She is an author of a chapter of "Rising to the Top," an IFEES book on global women in engineering, and was a co-author for the National Academies’ “Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic STEMM,” and “The Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM. She is also co-author for the "Matilda y las Mujeres en Ingeniería" series, and her book chapter with a collaborative team of authors from several continents, "Models for International Collaborations to Nurture Students into Global Engineers," in the Springer book, “Academic Leadership in Engineering Education: Learnings and Case Studies from Educational Leaders Around the Globe,” was launched in Australia. Tull enjoys her work as a global education policy strategist and champion for equity. She often travels with her husband of more than 30 years, Dr. Damon Tull, with whom she collaborates on work such as “The Success Equation,” and “Dark Matters: Metaphorical Black Holes…”, which creatively couples math, physics, and social science.

7. Dr. Janet C. Rutledge University of Maryland Baltimore County [biography]

   Dr. Janet C. Rutledge is Dean Emerita of the Graduate School at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where she was also a faculty member in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department. She is currently serving as Dean-in-Residence at the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS). She has been a PI or co-PI on over $25 million dollars in grant funding supporting research and education and has a national reputation for programs that promote inclusive excellence in graduate education. Rutledge serves on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Board of Trustees. She formerly served on the Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program Advisory Committee, the CGS Board of Directors, and the GRE Advisory Board (serving as Chair 2017-18).

8. Dr. Maria C Sanchez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0992-730X University of Maryland Baltimore County [biography]

   Dr. Maria C. Sanchez is currently serving as the Director of the Engineering and Computing Education Program (ECEP) in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She obtained her B.S. degree from La Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia and her M.S. and Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic University in Blacksburg, Virginia. She has held faculty positions at California State University, Fresno (CSUF), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). She also served as Project Coordinator of the t-STEM Initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, at UMBC. She is actively engaged in research and program development in the areas of Engineering for Social Change, increasing the accessibility of STEM education to under-represented groups, social responsibility thinking, and accreditation activities. Her technical interests are in the areas of Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and Energy Systems.

9. Mrs. Yarazeth Medina University of Maryland Baltimore County [biography]

   Assistant Director of Graduate Student Development and Postdoctoral Affairs with extensive experience in student recruitment, retention, and success initiatives in higher education, particularly for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Her work centers on advancing equitable access and outcomes in STEM, with a strong focus on supporting historically excluded populations, including first-generation students and women in science. She designs and delivers programs in career exploration, academic preparation, and professional development, with an emphasis on pathways to academic and research careers. She also brings expertise in grant budget development, administration, and financial oversight, having managed multi-institutional NSF-funded initiatives such as PROMISE AGEP, LSAMP, and RISE UPP INCLUDES, as well as national collaborations like the PROMISE Engineering Institute.

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