There is an entire team behind the Academy for Teaching and Learning Excellence: 3 co-directors and 2 graduate students. Find out more about them below.
Co-Directors
A. Naeem Bajwa
(pronouns: he/him/his)
Co-director since 2023
Dr. Bajwa is an Associate Professor of Management in the Department of Management, Marketing, and Technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Dr. Bajwa holds a Ph.D. in Operations and Management from The University of Alabama. He has been a faculty member at UA Little Rock since 2013. Prior to this, he worked in the industry in a variety of roles including senior leadership positions in project management, supply chain planning, and management consulting a wide range of industries. He brings with him a breadth of professional experience in planning, manufacturing, and customer service.
His research focuses on cross-functional interfaces between Operations and Marketing functions within an organization. His teaching interests include Production and Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Negotiation Skills, and Business Strategy. He is an active member of various professional and academic organizations and volunteers in social work.
Dr. Bajwa received the College of Business Research Excellence Award in 2019. He has also received multiple Student Advocate Awards, and the Teaching Fellow Certificate at UA Little Rock.
He is passionately involved in hiking, running, traveling, and the financial markets.
Dr. Bajwa joined ATLE as a co-director in the spring of 2023, and will complete his three-year term in the spring of 2025.
Contact Dr. Bajwa: (501) 916-6759 anbajwa@ualr.edu
Adriana Lopez-Ramirez
(pronouns: she/her/hers)
Co-director since 2024
Adriana Lopez-Ramirez is an associate professor of sociology in the School of Human Inquiry at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physical anthropology from the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in sociology with a specialization in demography from Brown University. Since joining the faculty at UA Little Rock in 2009, she has brought her expertise from her previous roles as a research associate at the Mexican Census Bureau and the Mexican Population Council.
Her research interests include population aging, international migration, and families and living arrangements. She teaches courses on social statistics, research methods, family, minority groups, population studies, and introduction to sociology.
In her free time, she likes to read and try new recipes.
Dr. Lopez joined ATLE as a co-director in the fall of 2024, and will complete her term in the spring of 2026.
Contact Dr. Lopez: axlopezrami@ualr.edu
Hong Li Wang
(pronouns: she/her/hers)
Co-director since 2024
Dr. Hong Li Wang is an Associate Professor of Biology at the Donaghey College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She has been a faculty member since 2000.
Dr. Wang holds a bachelor’s degree from Xinjiang University in Ulumuqi, China, and a Ph.D. in Plant Sciences from the University of Newcastle at Newcastle, Australia. Dr. Wang was the first Katherine Esau Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis. To improve crop yield and nutritional quality, she undertakes research in Plant Cell and Molecular Biology, Plant Physiology, Plant and Microbe Interactions, and Plant & Human Nutrition. She passionately teaches the Science of Biology, Plant and Human Nutrition, and the Function and History of Plants, which explores how plants evolved and colonized the land and how the impact on CO2 concentration changed from more than 5000 ppm five million years ago to less than 400 ppm today.
Dr. Wang also loves to garden, read, think, and write poems. She impassions to be a teacher as Kahlil Gibran described:
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple among his followers gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
Dr. Wang joined ATLE as a co-director in the fall of 2024, and will complete her three-year term in the spring of 2027.
Contact Dr. Wang:(501) 916-6531 hxwang@ualr.edu
Graduate Assistants
Nusrat Jahan
(she/her)
Saima Parveen
(she/her)
