Dr. Jodi Kelber

Dr. Jodi Kelber (she/her) was appointed to the Maryland Commission for Women in 2024. She is the Associate Director of the Honors College at UMBC, where she oversees day-to-day operations of a degree program for approximately 500 undergraduate students. Before joining the Honors College, she was faculty in UMBC’s Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies and she continues to do research in the field, specializing in critical gender and race studies; social movements, social justice, and activism; representation, and LGBTQ studies. She has been at UMBC for 21 years and brings her expertise in administration, student engagement, and project management to her role, which involves leading the Honors College’s admissions process, holistic student advising and extracurricular programming, and teaching. Dr. Kelber’s research work includes an oral history project featuring activists from the 1970s women’s and Black liberation movements in Baltimore, and an analysis of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Always a proponent of social justice-based and experiential education, Dr. Kelber regularly collaborates with non-profits in Baltimore City so that students in her courses are directly involved in completing projects for, learning from, and volunteering with these organizations. She also collaborates with Baltimore City high schools by maintaining a research mentoring program between high schools and UMBC faculty and staff.

Known for her commitment to strengthening Title IX work on campus, Dr. Kelber is principal investigator for a gender-based harm prevention project at UMBC that she created with colleagues from diverse departments across campus. She co-developed and teaches a unique course for first-year students that explores the cultural and social aspects of gender-based harm, including sexual assault, coupled with skill development classes in effective communication, values-driven decisions on sexual activities, and bystander intervention techniques. The project includes a robust research program that measures the course’s effects on campus culture. This project continues to grow, and she and her team are currently working with senior leadership to expand it.

She is committed to serving her city, having been appointed to the Baltimore City Police Department’s Community Training Review Committee (part of the consent decree), and as a member of the Human Services Committee of Brandon Scott’s mayoral transition team in 2020-21, and served as gender consultant for B’More Fit for Healthy Babies (an infant mortality reduction project). She is also active in Maryland politics, having been a founder and board member of Stonewall Democrats of Central Maryland, which resulted in the highest number of out LGBTQ people elected to the Maryland State Legislature. In 2009, Dr. Kelber was recognized by the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore (now the Pride Center of Maryland) with a Maryland LGBT Community Builder Award.

Dr. Kelber holds her Ph.D. in cultural studies and her M.A in art history from the University of Arizona. She received her B.A. in psychology from Connecticut College. Originally from Boston, she lives in Baltimore City with her wife and has two adult sons.