Nicole Pulliam, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Monmouth University
Dr. Nicole Pulliam is an educator-scholar with 20+ years of higher education experience. As a full-time professor, she has trained future K-16 counselors to be social justice advocates throughout their school districts. She has developed a graduate-level curriculum for her diversity and social justice courses and created new master’s and doctoral-level courses focused on access and equity in education, where she challenges the achievement gap narratives and highlights opportunity gaps due to historical inequities.
Born to a working-class family, Dr. Pulliam’s identities as a woman of color and first-generation trailblazer are at the core of her work in K-16 spaces. Before becoming a full-time professor, Dr. Pulliam worked in college access programs, where she counseled students experiencing historical poverty, most of whom identified as Black and/or Latinx and first-generation college students. In these roles, Dr. Pulliam helped to retain and graduate hundreds of students while helping them thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.
In 2021, Dr. Pulliam was named the Inaugural Director of the Monmouth University Social Justice Academy, managing a $2-million grant, which she co-wrote, to foster educational equity in K-12 settings. Since the inception of the academy, Dr. Pulliam has built the initiative from the ground up and expanded its efforts across the state of NJ. Under her leadership, the Academy’s impact has reached hundreds of K-12 personnel, university faculty, and community partners. Through intensive anti-racist, social justice training and year-long professional development focused on disrupting educational inequities, her work has brought notoriety to her university and the regional community.
