James Holly

Dr. James Holly, Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and core faculty member within the Engineering Education Research program at the University of Michigan. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University and a master’s degree from Michigan State University, both in Mechanical Engineering. He earned his doctorate in Engineering Education from Purdue University. He sees his teaching, research, and service as promoting pro-Blackness—affirming the humanity and epistemic authority of Black people—in engineering education. His academic trajectory has been motivated by a desire to overcome the challenges of STEM education in urban learning environments. He spent two years as an Assistant Professor within the Teacher Education Department at Wayne State University, in this role he worked with pre-service STEM teachers to uncover the racialized epistemic norms of science and mathematics instruction.

Dr. Holly, Jr.’s scholarship draws upon the legacy of ingenuity from Black peoples throughout human history to portray the urban context as a modern landscape of resilient intelligence. I am committed to pursuing epistemic equity in engineering, which involves shaping institutional cultures, structures, and practices to identify and address racial exclusion of Black scholars from full participation in the construction and distribution of engineering knowledge. Current projects include: (i) working with Detroit high schoolers to explore recasting engineering knowledge through the lens of Black folks’ everyday experiences in urban spaces, (ii) analyzing Black intellectualism in order to re-politicize engineering faculty’s pedagogy and counteract epistemic violence, and (iii) establishing a network of Black academics across institutions to understand existing institutional/structural supports and barriers for the success of race-conscious engineering education research.