Associate Vice President, Institutional Equity & Belonging

Peony is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity & Belonging and a member of CC's three person ADEI Leadership Team. Previous positions held at CC include Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Equity & Inclusion, Interim Director of the Bridge Scholars Program, and Director of the Crown Center for Teaching. In addition, she has (co) developed and (co) facilitated several development programs for faculty at CC including the ADEI Development Program for Faculty Searches, The Equity and Power Course Development Program, and the Mentoring Alliance Program (MAP) for faculty. She began her administrative career in higher education as the program director of the African, African American, Diaspora studies program and then chair of the psychology department at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She also served as the inaugural Associate Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development and co-founded Wheaton College’s Diversity Equity & Access Leadership (DEAL) institutional structure. 

Peony is a developmental psychologist who studies racial identity in educational settings. She is part of a research team that developed the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS, Vandiver, Fhagen-Smith, Cokley, Cross, & Worrell, 2002), a measure that assesses racial identity patterns among Black American adults using Cross' (1991, 2001, 2021) Nigrescence Theory as a framework (see also Worrell, Vanidver, and Fhagen, 2023).  This team also developed the Cross Ethnic/Racial Identity Scale (CERIS, Worrell, Fhagen, Vandiver, & Cross, 2020), a measure that assesses racial identity patterns among people from all US ethnic/racial backgrounds. Peony has studied racial identity development in family contexts among adolescents and young adults who are African American (Fhagen-Smith et al., 2010; Fhagen, 2016) and biracial (Fhagen-Smith, 2003; Fhagen-Smith 2010; Fhagen, 2015). She also co-created a life-span development model of racial identity (Cross & Fhagen-Smith, 1996, 2001). Most recently, she published research on DEI work in higher education in relation to student needs (Fhagen, et al., 2020) and faculty learning communities and anti-oppressive pedagogies (Whitaker & Fhagen, 2023).  She is currently co-authoring a textbook on multicultural dynamics. 

Along with being an administrator and engaging in scholarship, Peony deeply enjoys teaching. She has taught courses at CC on racial identity development and the science of microaggressions and co-taught a seminar on peer mentoring for the Bridge Scholars Program. At Wheaton Colege, MA she taught courses on Adolescent Development, Multicultural Psychology, Social & Emotional Development, Laboratory in Qualitative Inquiry, Laboratory in Child Development, First Year Seminar on the Psychology of Selfies, First Year Seminar on Cultural Identity & History Lessons, and a January Abroad Program in Botswana and South Africa. 

Peony lives in Colorado Springs with her partner Jim, two dogs, Doc & Shuri, and Billy, the cat.  She enjoys hiking, walking, and yoga.