Associate Professor in Deaf Studies at California State University Northridge
About
Dr. Lissa D. Ramirez-Stapleton is an associate professor at California State University Northridge in the Department of Deaf Studies and core faculty for the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program. Her research focuses on equity and access, identity development, and the educational history of Deaf students, faculty, and staff with a particular interest in the intersections of race, gender, and disability.
Her desire to support Deaf college students of color, led Ramirez-Stapleton to pursue her doctorate at Iowa State University. She graduated in 2014 with her PhD in education with an emphasis in higher education and social justice and a minor in women's studies. She won the 2015 Melvene D. Hardee NASPA Dissertation of the Year award, and is a 2018 Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and Penn Center for Minority Serving Institution Elevate Fellow.
Previously, Ramirez-Stapleton worked in student affairs at various institutions and with Semester at Sea. She is involved with the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the National Black Deaf Advocates. She earned her MSE in college student personnel from the University of Dayton and BS in social work from Wright State University.
Current Work:
Currently, Dr. Ramirez-Stapleton’s primary research agenda is investigating the connections between Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Black Deaf education. She is specifically looking at the role space, place and time played in the relationship between three HBCUs, Southern University A&M, Hampton University, and West Virginia State University, and the development and sustainability of Black Deaf education between 1920-1950.
Some of her ongoing work, includes a community engagement project with the Black Deaf community in Louisiana to collect, document, and preserve the memory of the Black Deaf school, Louisiana State School for the Deaf and exploring Black Deaf women’s roles in educational activism using a critical hope lens.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Deaf, students of color, higher education, disability, history
