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2024 Alumni Award Recipients in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

CLASS Alumni Award of Distinction for Global Engagement

The distinction for global engagement is awarded to alumni who make a global impact. Whether working domestically or abroad, these alumni have acquired the cultural proficiency and skills to improve the lives of people where they are and impact their lives in a significant way.

Dr. Hasnul Insani Djohar

MA in English, 2013

Closeup image of Hasnul Insani wearing a pink shirt and hijab.Presenting the Alumni Award for Global Engagement to Dr. Hasnul Djohar is a bit like giving a fish an award for swimming. For a fish, swimming through the water is muscle memory. Likewise, for Dr. Djohar, global engagement is second nature. It’s just what she does, instinctively, insightfully, impactfully, and enthusiastically.

Consider her career as a scholar-teacher, which spans three continents and a variety of languages and cultures. A citizen of Indonesia, Dr. Djohar earned her MA in English here at CMU in 2013 and remains a loyal Chippewa. “CMU first inspired me how to achieve my dreams,” she says. 

Armed with her MA in English from CMU, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Dr. Djohar is now an Associate Professor of English at the State Islamic University of Jakarta, Indonesia, where she has also served as the Chair of the English Department. Most recently, Dr. Djohar was back in the USA as the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Southern Utah University.  She also gave a Fulbright guest lecture here at CMU in Spring 2024.  

Dr. Djohar is an accomplished scholar whose work is profoundly interdisciplinary as well as multicultural, multilingual, and transnational.  In short, her scholarship is global in outlook and global in impact. In August 2024, for example, Ohio State University Press published her book titled Rewriting Islam: Decolonialism, Justice, and Contemporary Muslimah Literature. In this groundbreaking scholarly work, Dr. Djohar examines how Muslim-American women writers portray Muslim women fighting for gender and social justice while living as minorities in prosperous countries such as the United States. Djohar investigates how the literary works of these writers contribute to larger debates about gender,  globalization, and justice for immigrants and refugees.  

Thinking back to her years at CMU, Dr. Djohar singles out the Park Library and the CMU Writing Center for particular praise, saying, “the writing center shaped my words every week and taught me how to be a professional writer who can change ordinary words to eloquent words, attracting readers to enjoy my writing.” 

Dr. Djohar also thanks her professors in the English Department, especially Professors Jeffrey Bean, Darrin Doyle, and Gretchen Papazian.  “Without them, I would never have completed my Ph.D. and book,” she says, and then adds, “Thank you so much, CMU!”

CLASS Alumni Award of Distinction for Professional Practice

The distinction for professional practice is awarded to alumni who are highly skilled practitioners in their field. These are people who make a difference in the lives of people every day through their craft and deep understanding of the human condition. 

Dr. Dennis Hand

BS, 2006; MS in Experimental Psychology, 2008; PhD in Applied Experimental Psychology, 2012

Closeup image of Dennis Hand wearing a blue shirt and grey suit jacket.Why do psychologists study animals? The answer is that by studying animals, we get to know about humans and develop techniques to benefit human lives. When he was at CMU, Dr. Hand worked in Dr. Reilly’s lab conducting research on animal models of ADHD using rodents. At CMU, he earned his BS degree in 2006, MS degree in 2008, and Ph.D. degree in 2012. After graduating from CMU with his Ph.D. degree, Dr. Hand extended his knowledge of animal behavior to help humans overcome drug addictions. Dr. Hand’s journey and accomplishments after graduating from CMU have been nothing but impressive. After graduating, he served as a post-doc fellow at the University of Vermont and then became assistant professor of Pediatrics as well as Obstetrics and Gynecology at Thomas Jefferson University in Pennsylvania. He became associate professor in 2022 at Jefferson College of Nursing at the same university. In terms of his research productivity, Scopus lists 41 publications by Dr. Hand, with a total of 805 citations.

Dr. Hand is now Executive Director of Maternal Addiction Treatment, Education and Research (MATER) at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Hand's leadership roles at MATER include strategic planning and program development with particular emphases on the care management and pharmacological treatment components of substance use disorder treatment. Dr. Hand also conducts research and mentors medical students, residents, and fellows on pharmacological treatment of opioid use disorder in pregnancy, treatment of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, treatments for tobacco and polysubstance use disorders among pregnant and parenting women and increasing access to comprehensive reproductive health services among individuals with substance use disorders. His center, MATER, is now designated as Edge Runner by the American Academy of Nursing, which is an honor awarded to a center that is “evidence-based, nurse-designed models that demonstrate significant clinical, financial, community, and policy outcomes with proven sustainability and replicability. Each of these programs highlights nurses’ ingenuity and collaboration in developing new methods to provide care and promote health equity” (American Academy of Nursing). 

CLASS Alumni Award of Distinction for Public Service

The award of distinction for public service is awarded to alumni who broadly serve the public good. Their involvement at the local, state or national level shapes public practices and they are effective change agents. These alumni value diverse perspectives and aim toward a more fair and just society.

Christina Otto

BSW, 2014

Closeup image of Christina Otto wearing a black shirt and sweater.Christina Otto is a clinical therapist for the Residential Treatment Center of Behavioral Health at the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Mount Pleasant. After attending Mid-Michigan Community College, she transferred to CMU and graduated with a BSW, double-majoring in Social Work and Psychology, in 2014. She started her MSW at Michigan State in 2016 and graduated two years later. But she wants to be sure that everyone knows that she would have gotten her MSW at CMU if we had had a Masters program! MSU was her plan B. 

Christina is a proud member of the Phi Alpha Honor Society for Social Workers, in both CMU and MSU Chapters. 

As clinical therapist at the Residential Treatment Center, Christina is a critical part of a community-based program providing for the needs of those who want to begin their journey to recovery. Treatment at the Center consists of individual and group therapy, case management, mindfulness, auricular acupuncture, energy healing, Traditional Healing, life skills, and a variety of other services. These programs support both the community and individuals as they work towards personal goals related to their spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. 

More particularly, Christina’s professional social work practice provides her with avenues to support healing in the face of generational trauma. But her service to her community extends beyond interpersonal work. In 2023 she was elected to the Tribal Council of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, for a two-year term. As the Council’s seargent-at-arms, she plays an important role in ensuring the Council is effective as it governs and advocates for the SCIT as a whole. Before serving on the Tribal Council, she served on the Board of Regents for the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College.

CLASS Alumni Award of Distinction for Scholarly Activity

The distinction for scholarly or creative activity is awarded to alumni who have contributed to our understanding of the human condition. They are experts in their field and share their knowledge widely.

Kidada E. Williams

BS in History, 1996; MA in History, 1998

Closeup image of Kidada Williams wearing glasses and a green shirt.Kidada E. Williams is a professor of history at Wayne State University who researches African Americans' experiences of racist violence. She earned a Bachelor of Science from CMU in 1996, double-majoring in History and Political Science, and went on to graduate with a CMU Masters in History two years later. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2005.

At Wayne State, Dr. Williams teaches African American history, U.S. history, and historical research methods. Like the earliest proponents of African American history, who intended their research to reach the broadest possible audience, Williams tries to bridge the gap between academic history and public knowledge through teaching, lectures, media appearances, and contributions to platforms like podcasts and documentary films, aiming to educate a broader audience about the historical and ongoing impacts of racist violence. She began this work as a graduate student researching the Underground Railroad in Washtenaw County, and co-creating a bus tour. 

Dr. Williams has given talks at a variety of public institutions. She has contributed to NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes and was on the Zinn Education Project’s roster of People's Historians, both of which helped K-12 teachers broaden their understandings of U.S. history and develop new strategies for teaching challenging subject matter. She appeared on Skip Gates's award-winning PBS series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War, Nikole Hannah-Jones's The 1619 Project series on Hulu and rebroadcast on ABC, NPR's "Morning Edition" and "On Point," WDET's "Detroit Today," and "BackStory with the American History Guys." Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, DAME, Slate, and Bridge Magazine. This work contributed to Dr. Williams’ 2024 election to the Society of American Historians.

Lately, she has been extending her commitment to African American history by sharing her expertise on survivors of anti-Black violence on podcasts, like Scene on Radio's The Land That Has Never Been Yet, Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes, MSNBC's Into America with Trymaine Lee, and Slate Academy history series Reconstruction. She was the host and co-producer of Seizing Freedom, a podcast docudrama created by Kelly Hardcastle Jones, that covered the epic story of African Americans' fight for freedom during the Civil War and beyond.

Dr. Williams’ research investigates African Americans' testimonies about their traumatic injuries from racist violence after slavery. She is the author of I Saw Death Coming (longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Nonfiction and 2024 winner of the Organization of American Historians’ Civil War and Reconstruction Book Prize) and They Left Great Marks on Me (2012). She has published "Legacies of Violence" (in the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Make Good the Promises), "Writing Victims' Personhoods and People into the History of Lynching," "Never Get Over It,"  "Maintaining a Radical Vision of African Americans in the Age of Freedom," "The Wounds that Cried Out," and "Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching." Her research has been supported twice by fellowships from the Ford Foundation.