Tristana Harvey
FDI Scholar in the Department of Counseling
Tristana Harvey has been a professional counselor for four years, since graduating from a CACREP program. In this time, she has obtained national counselor certification and Pennsylvania counselor licensure.
She is a first-year doctoral student in the counselor education program at Penn State University. Her primary interest is program development and evaluation of multicultural services. She recently received human subjects approval for her research study titled "Ethnic Minority Students' Expectations of the Multicultural Resource Center." From the study, she hopes to derive ways to improve services provided by the Multicultural Resource Center, including outreach methods, needs assessment measures, and program development.
She is currently on a leave of absence from her position as counselor in the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) to pursue her doctoral studies full time. In her position as an MRC counselor, she assisted students with making the adjustment to Penn State and the State College community. In addition, she worked on a regular basis with student affairs and residence life, as well as academic departments.
She has prepared several collaborative programs with other units in the university. This included developing a series of academic workshops with the Academic Advancement Programs for incoming freshman. She has conducted workshops on creating community, working in diverse groups, and cross-cultural communication. In addition, she has co-taught two seminar courses for students titled Scholarship and Community and Life after College.
Harvey's goal for doctoral study is to learn program development and evaluation methods to improve services and support for minorities and other diverse groups in various organizational settings.
Trimiko Melancon
FDI Scholar in the Department of English
A native Louisianian with a love of writing and fine arts, Ms. Melancon received her B.A. in English with an interdisciplinary minor in Music and Art, and graduated with honors from Xavier University of Louisiana. Upon completing her baccalaureate, she entered the doctoral program in African-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where her academic training has incorporated traditional and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning in the fields of 20th-century African-American literature and culture.
She is an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and is the recipient of a number of grants and fellowships, including a Woodrow Wilson/Andrew Mellon Travel and Research Grant, Social Science Research Council/Andrew Mellon Research Grant, Cornell University/Ford Foundation Institute on Engendering Africana Studies Fellowship, and a Department of Afro-American Studies Graduate Fellowship.
Over the past summers, Ms. Melancon has conducted archival research and participated in internships with Houghton Mifflin and Educational Testing Service. She has presented at professional conferences hosted by the African-American Literature and Culture Society (AALCS), American Literature Association (ALA), Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and Purdue University.
Her dissertation, "Oppressed But Not Defeated: Transgressive Black Women in Modern African American Women's Fiction," examines unconventional representations of black women in post-civil rights novels. Her interests include 20th-century American and African-American literature, modern and contemporary Black women's fiction, Black and Comparative Women's Studies, Literary Criticism, and Critical Theory.
Greg Wiggan
FDI Scholar in the Department of Sociology
Greg Wiggan was born in Toronto, Canada, and raised in Jamaica and South Florida. He completed his undergraduate studies at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduate training at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He received his doctorate degree from Georgia State University, where he studied jointly in the College of Education and the Sociology Department. For his dissertation entitled "Student Achievement and Students as Knowers: A Study on School Engagement Among African-American Students," he examined the meaning of student achievement among students as well as the processes that promote high achievement in schools.
His research interests include globalization, global inequality, and wealth, as well as understanding the consequences of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies in developing countries. He is also interested in racial and ethnic relations and sociology of education, with an emphasis on urban education and school inequality.
His honors include Statler Foundation Scholar (two times), United Negro College Fund/Bryan Gumble Scholar, Golden Key National Honor Society, Morris Brown College and Support Services Honors, Nation's National Deans List, Phi Beta Delta Award (for international scholars), and United Parcel Services Community Service Scholar.
Currently, Mr. Wiggan is researching and writing on neighborhood effects on student achievement (forthcoming in the book Beyond Acting White). He is also doing historical work on the Socioloy of Education as a discipline (forthcoming Urban Encyclopedia chapter), black higher education in Atlanta (article in progress), and the impact of IMF structural adjustment policies on public services in developing countries (work in progress).