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Urban Institute for Racial, Economic & Environmental Justice

UIREEJ Leadership

Jan Furman
Executive Director
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Jan Furman professor emerita of English leads the activities of the UIREEJ. A distinguished UM-Flint faculty member, Professor Furman directed the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies. She has served on faculty committees at all levels of the university in one of a number of efforts to make excellence inclusive. Professor Furman studies American literature with emphasis on narratives of national identity and representations of race and gender, which shape and challenge those narratives. Her research has led to many essays, books, and edited volumes, including Toni Morrison’s Fiction (1996), John McCline’s Life During Slavery and the Civil War (1998), Song of Solomon:  A Casebook (2003), “American Romance, the Moral Imagination and Toni Morrison: A Theory of Literary Aesthetics” (2012), “Telling Stories: Evolving Narrative Identity in Toni Morrison’s Home” (2014), Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Expanded Edition (2014). Professor Furman earned a bachelor’s in English at Tuskegee University, a master’s in English at Bucknell University, and a PhD in English at Florida State.

Andre Louis 
Program Manager
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Andre is a Research Program Manager in the Office of Research and Economic Development. He is primarily responsible for managing the initiatives in place to support undergraduate research. Andre established the University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program in 2005 and has sustained the program every year since its inception. He also manages the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience fellowship program, two tri-campus student research conferences (the Meeting of Minds Undergraduate Research Conference and the Flint Student Research Conference), and the University’s undergraduate research student endowed funding. Andre recently completed his second term on the University’s Staff Council where he served as both Chair and Past Chair. Additionally, he has served on several committees including DEI and the Strategic Plan Survey Subcommittee.

Affiliate Faculty

Toko Oshio
Assistant Professor
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Toko Oshio, Ph.D. studies child development, from infancy through youth, taking an ecological perspective that emphasizes interactions between people and their environments. Her primary research interest is the socio-emotional development of children and youth and how that development is shaped in contexts where crucial interactions happen, particularly in families, schools, and communities. Through her recent work leading the Provider Empowerment Program (PEP), she and her team have uncovered various unmet needs among Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) child care providers in Flint and have examined the gaps in policies affecting such providers. Prior to PEP, Professor Oshio completed a study on undocumented and DACA recipient youth and their families in Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in Child Development at Michigan State University.