Dara Naphan-Kingery’s trajectory from graduate school to her current position as an assistant professor of Sociology at WNMU has not been a straightforward one. After earning her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno, she felt she needed additional experience before aiming to become a professor. “I knew that I always wanted to teach,” she said, “but I needed to beef up my CV a little bit, so I ended up doing a postdoc at Vanderbilt University.”
This postdoctoral research position became much more than just a CV-builder for Naphan-Kingery. “I worked with this group that was focused on broadening participation in engineering, specifically focused on black engineers,” she said. “I had done my dissertation on women in engineering. I got interested in that because engineering is just such an exclusive field. It can be a chilly climate for a lot of women and minoritized groups. … I was interested in things like sense of belonging and how people develop a sense of self-efficacy in that kind of environment.”
The postdoctoral research “was a really great experience,” she said. “I had a split appointment between the School of Engineering and the Department of Teaching and Learning. I was in a totally new kind of environment. I worked with a bunch of really amazing people, and we did mostly qualitative research.”
In addition to that research, she also helped to manage a coaching program that aimed to help black engineers. The people seeking mentorship “were all doctoral students or postdocs,” she said. “We paired them with one social science coach and one engineering coach that were black faculty anywhere in the U.S. who served as mentors. The whole point of that was to help them get faculty jobs. “
While she enjoyed the postdoctorate experience, the two years focused on research confirmed for her that she wanted to go into teaching, and she joined the faculty at WNMU in 2019.
She was drawn to the position partly because WNMU is a smaller, regional university and is teaching-focused. But the curriculum was also interesting to her, said Naphan-Kingery, citing a course on the sociology of food as an example. “I am teaching that right now, and I love it. It is just my favorite.”
“We go over the industrial food system and how things have changed in the last century or so,” explained Naphan-Kingery, “We talk about globalization and how the food supply chain has become longer and longer. … We just looked at food insecurity, which is a huge problem here, in the face of all of this food waste.”
Developing innovative curriculum is something that she has had an ample opportunity to do since starting at WNMU. Working in a small department has made curriculum development easier. “It is just me and one other sociologist, Dr. Andreea Nica, and we both started at the same time—both of the previous faculty had left—so we have really been developing the program from the ground up,” said Naphan-Kingery.
One academic offering that they have focused on reviving is the minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “We just last year hired our adjunct professor, Cinda Gillilan,” she said, “who is teaching a lot of the courses for that program.”
Naphan-Kingery noted that she has very much appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with faculty in other disciplines through the university’s Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences (ALAS) courses. “I have taught the social sciences ALAS course every semester that I have been here,” she said, “so when COVID hit, we themed the class around COVID.”
She and the other faculty teaching the course looked at COVID from the perspectives of psychology, political science and sociology. “It was super interesting,” she said.
She also appreciates the ability to co-teach classes. “I am really grateful for that,” she said.
“I really like our interdisciplinary department and getting to teach with people from a different perspective and to learn from them.”
Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, she team-taught an ALAS class on reproductive rights with Assistant Professor of Political Science Michael Cook and Professor of History Scott Fritz. “I think for the most part students really enjoyed it. It is such an important topic, and it pertains to all of us.”
ALAS allows for the exploration of “All of the big questions,” she said, noting that one of the ALAS questions in particular, “What is justice?,” was a thread through the entire course on reproductive rights.
The course also became highly personal to Naphan-Kingery when she gave birth to her daughter mid-semester. “Becoming a mother gave me a new perspective on reproductive rights, for sure,” she said. She said it also gave her a renewed appreciation of the many WNMU students who are parents and juggle the many demands of parenting and education.
While becoming a parent has created all sorts of new demands, Naphan-Kingery said that overall the experience has been “amazing and wonderful.” Her partner, Assistant Professor of English Luke Kingery, has been critical to making it possible to balance career and parenthood. “I don’t understand how single parents do it,” she marveled.
Whether in her teaching or in balancing work with her personal life, Naphan-Kingery said she felt lucky to be at WNMU. “There has been so much support from the institution,” she said.