Dr. Annice Fisher, American University's first antiracist pedagogy scholar.
Fisher has a gift-- the ability to fluently cross sectors and find creative and empathetic ways to promote change and growth. Now, Fisher is using that gift at American University (AU), where she holds the title of the school’s first antiracism pedagogy scholar. Through Fisher’s work and a deeply supportive leadership in the university's School of Education, AU is beginning the transformation of its entire pedagogy to be antiracist, building better teachers and leaders for the future.
The dean of the school of education, Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, has been working to achieve schoolwide antiracist, equitable practices and policies since 2016. But the summer of 2020 and the wave of racial reckoning solidified an institutional support for Holcomb-McCoy’s vision. While other schools and institutions were trying to figure out where to begin their diversity, equity, and inclusion work, Holcomb-McCoy had set AU ahead of the curve, according to Dr. Corbin Campbell, associate dean of academic affairs and associate professor in the School of Education.
“The entire school redoubled our thinking around how to do antiracism in everything we did,” said Campbell. “Dr. Fisher has been a deeply important component of making a start on culture change across our school, and we’ve made significant, tangible strides due to the seeds that Dr. Fisher has been sowing.”
Through Fisher’s guidance, AU has created a new tenure promotion guide and new antiracist course assessments. Next on their agenda: updating hiring processes and admissions standards to be antiracist.
Before becoming the antiracist pedagogy scholar, Fisher was working at AU as an adjunct professor. She designed and taught Exercising Conscious Leadership, a course she purposefully built outside of traditional methods by “blowing up leadership as we know it” to talk about the work of women, people of color, and “the way leadership, equity, fear, doubt, healing, love, and the roles our families and community play in helping us become who we are,” said Fisher.
Those core beliefs guide Fisher as she helps AU faculty develop antiracist policies and practices.
