In recognition that systemic anti-Black racism impacts who gets opportunities, CQL | The Council on Quality and Leadership established the Disability Research Mentorship Program for Black Graduate Students in 2020 to help Black students build up their CVs with research publications. Through the program, guidance and support will be provided to the students about conducting research and working through the process of peer-review for publication.
The 2023 Mentorship Program Students
This year we received an impressive selection of applicants and CQL is thrilled to announce we have chosen the students for the fourth cohort of the Mentorship Program. The students selected for the 2023 Mentorship Program have different academic interests and backgrounds, and yet, both are clearly committed to improving the quality of life of people with disabilities.
Tahara Coleman
Tahara Coleman is a fall 2023 University of San Diego Ph.D. student enrolled in the Education for Social Justice program. She graduated from Texas Woman’s University’s Multicultural Women and Gender Studies M.A. program and holds a B.S. in African American Studies from Eastern Michigan University and a B.A. in Human Rights and Social Justice from Arizona State University. Her research emphasizes social justice, women of color, activism, climate change, environmental justice, disability studies, and educational prison reform. Tahara’s honors include a TWU Urban Fellowship, a Don Lavoie Mercatus Center at George Mason University Fellowship, an ASU New College Scholarship, and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.
In addition, she belongs to the American Historical Association, the National Women’s Studies Association, the Association of Black Women Historians, the Human Rights Campaign, the Black Feminist Future, and the National Colored Women’s Association. She has conducted presentations on: “Black Women’s Agency, COVID-19, & Transformative Call to Action”, at Northern Arizona University Conference 2022; and “U.S. Environmental Racism and Reproductive Justice are Intersectional to Black Women’s Health Inequalities”, Northeastern Graduate Conference, 2022. In addition, she enjoys family and activism in her spare time.
Carine Luxama
Carine Luxama, PMHNP-BC, ANP-BC, MS, RN is a board-certified adult and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who has been working with underserved communities since 2002. She has over 15 years of clinical experience serving the HIV/AIDS, physical and developmentally disabled communities of the greater Boston, South Shore, and Metro -West areas of Massachusetts as a Nurse Practitioner. She has worked in both the outpatient and inpatient settings providing assessments, psychopharmacology, and crisis stabilization for individuals with physical, neurodevelopmental disabilities, dual diagnosis, and serious mental illness.
She has taught both pre licensure and post licensure nursing students at Simmons University, Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health professions as well as psychopharmacology for mental health clinicians at Springfield College, in Charlestown, MA. She is passionate about educating, engaging, empowering, and encouraging future nurses, mental health scholars, community members and leaders through teaching, precepting, mentoring, clinical practice, and research.
She is a member of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, American Nurses Association, Massachusetts Nurses Association, Haitian Mental Health Association, New England Regional Black Nurses Association, and Sigma Theta Tau. She provides community mental health clinical education and consults for local community organizations. A native of Haiti she also lends her experience to many not-for-profit organizations working to provide nursing education and mental health training to nurses and community mental health workers in hospitals and health centers in Haiti. She currently teaches and is pursuing her PhD in nursing with a focus on population health and health policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Manning School of Nursing and Health Sciences.
CQL Announces 2023 Disability Research Mentorship Students