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Veronica Womack

Veronica Womack
Associate Director of High-Impact Teaching
she/her/hers
Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching
847.467.3046

Veronica joined the Searle Center as an Associate Director in April of 2022. She is charged with shaping the vision, setting goals, designing leading-edge programs, and leading the strategic plan priority to promote student success and instructor vitality.  She is also a Lecturer in the Department of Black Studies. Veronica earned her doctorate in psychology from Howard University and completed an epidemiology-focused postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

In her previous role as a Senior Project Administrator and Research Associate at Northwestern University, Veronica engaged in qualitative research and created faculty trainings and resources for STEM educators that promoted inclusive teaching practices and culturally aware mentoring. As an Adjunct Instructor, Veronica taught Social Psychology, Fundamentals of Statistical Methods, Research and Practice Evaluation, and Mindfulness Studies to a diverse population of future social scientists at numerous local institutions including: Lake Forest College, Chicago State University, Governor’s State University, and St. Augustine College.

Her teaching philosophy is rooted in the belief that the best way to grasp and retain knowledge from coursework is to make it meaningful, connecting the information to one’s life on personal, interpersonal, and societal levels. She centers this humanizing, transformation-oriented approach in her teaching style by posing reflective questions and presenting timely examples to promote lively discussion and critical thinking of the course topic. She has committed her research and engagement around academic and workplace-based initiatives to the cultivation of environments where individuals feel seen and reassured that they can show up as their full, authentic selves.

Selected Citations

Womack, V.Y., Onyango, L., Campbell, P., McGee, R. (2023). ‘In the Back of My Mind’: A Longitudinal Multiple Case Study Analysis of Successful Black Women Biomedical Graduate Students Navigating Gendered Racism. CBE – Life Sciences Education 22(3), 1-16.

Watson-Singleton, N. N., Womack, V. Y., Holder-Dixon, A. R., & Black, A. R. (2022). Racism’s (un)worthiness trap: The mediating roles of self-compassion and self-coldness in the link between racism and distress in African Americans. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 28(4), 557–566.

Womack V.Y., Wood C.V., House S.C., Quinn S.C., Thomas S.B., Byars-Winston, A. (2020) Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty. PLOS ONE 15(8): e0236983

Womack, V. Y., & Sloan, L. R. (2017). The Association of Mindfulness and Racial Socialization Messages on Approach-Oriented Coping Strategies among African Americans. Journal of Black Studies, 48(4), 408-426.

University Committees