Ebonee Johnson is an assistant professor of community and behavioral health in the College of Public Health. She is originally from rural Louisiana and is a self-described huge Harry Potter fan.

What shaped your interest in your discipline? 

I came to academia from Psychology and Counseling and then that path led me to Public Health. I started out attending two historically black colleges in Louisiana; Xavier University, which is a small HBCU and a Catholic college where I received my degree in Psychology, minoring in Chemistry. I thought I was going to medical school, but it didn’t quite work out that way; I pursued a different path. After that, I attended Southern University, which is another historically black college in Louisiana and received my Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. 

Southern University had a strong partnership with the University of Wisconsin, Madison, through collaborative grants. During my master’s program, my mentor, the late Dr. Alo Dutta, brought me with her to a grant writing workshop where I met Dr. Fong Chan, who was a professor and research methodologist at UW Madison. We developed a mentoring relationship and from there I was able to apply and receive a full fellowship and funding. I received my PhD from UW Madison. After that, I went back to my alma mater, Southern University, and worked there for four years in Counselor Education. 

What attracted you to the University of Iowa?

I loved my job there, but my vision was a little bit bigger than the infrastructure was able to support. I started looking for additional places and at that time mentors would say “we think you would fit nice at a research-intensive university”. I applied to Iowa in Counselor Education. 

I applied for a HIV and substance use prevention grant through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that has huge public health elements. So, I started looking into options to find a better fit for me for the work that I was doing. The College of Public Health provided that fit and I’m thankful to the support of collegiate leadership, including Deans Clay and Parker; and my DEO. 

I think that's the mission of public health and community and behavioral health, so, this place has been a really good fit. 

Tell us about your hometown; how did it shape you?

I'm from a very small town called White Castle, Louisiana. It's rural. One red light. We had Family Dollar. You had to drive 15 minutes to get to Walmart or 45 minutes to get to the capital city, which is Baton Rouge. That really shaped me; the rural roots. My original home, my grandmother, raised me. We had a sugar cane field in the backyard, but when I started my 7th grade year, her eight children all got together and bought her home. We lived in government subsidized housing until that point and then her children made enough financial moves in life to be able to build her home. 

From there, I moved to Baton Rouge to live with my aunt Jennifer and went to a magnet school in Baton Rouge. I moved from the country to the city and that really made a huge difference, but my small-town life allows me to relate a lot to Iowans. I know what it's like to have sugar cane fields around me. Rural health disparities in terms of access, are similar. I still remember the one physician that had what almost looked like a trailer for an office. When I was younger, I was climbing - you know, we were precocious - and fell backwards, hitting my head really hard, and having to be rushed to a hospital, but the hospital was a longer commute. Those memories for me, are really salient in terms of access to care. Those stories are a huge part of who I am now, so rural health matters a lot to me. 

Can you share a recent book/movie/performance that you found compelling and why?

I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. This is a Harry Potter cookbook. One of my students just gave me this as a thank you. In terms of things that I like, I'm giving her a shout out because this was a mentoring gift. I know the movies are older, the book is older, but it's one of those stories that I think transfers across time, battle of good versus the evil, the little guy can defeat the big, the power of the collective friendship. 

What is the best advice you received as a student and do you still follow that advice today?

Dr. Fong Chan has given me so many pockets of wisdom, I call them Chanisms in my head. One is outside the academic realm, but it’s “be kind to self”. That is something I've been focusing on a lot with the students I've been mentoring because this is a high pressure environment and oftentimes, we can be harder on ourselves than anyone else could ever be. That's something he saw in me as a student, and I see in myself now and I'm starting to see it in my own students. They’re rising to the challenge. But I think the competitive nature of academia can really get to you, so being able to take a second to say, be kind to self, the way you speak to yourself, matters. So, that piece of advice, I think, is salient across settings, across people. So, just be kind to self.

How would you explain to a child what you do?

My kids never know what I do. They know the teaching aspects, but for research, I tell them I like to listen to people's stories and help to shape them into a larger narrative that can be utilized to serve a greater purpose and then working with communities to figure out what that greater purpose is; and helping them figure out how to package that narrative to various stakeholders to get their needs met. 

In what ways have you engaged with professional activities outside the institution (local, regional, national)?

So much of what I do is partnerships and mutually beneficial partnerships. What I've learned is a lot of times we'll go to community-based organizations with an “ask” and an ask can be, “can I recruit participants for this study?” But really figuring out a way to embed myself within the communities that I care about and so for me that's K -12 students. I care about college students and their sexual health and wellness, and then I care about really vulnerable niche communities such as those who have been incarcerated. It's better for me to see how I can embed myself in those communities in a natural way, and then I'm not asking for an ask. So, when research stuff comes up, I've already made those connections. That's something I think I've learned over time. If there are subpopulations that I'm going to do work with, I first ask how I can engage in some type of volunteerism, consultation, revising a grant that you're submitting, then it's not to benefit my programmatic line of research it is to be of service.

What surprised you the most about the university?

I thought it was going to be a lot like Madison. But it's not, but I don't think that's a good or a bad thing. It's just different. I just thought Midwestern research intensive university in different cities, and it would be the same, and it's not. I think Iowa has a unique culture, but that isn’t a negative spin. You have to get to know the place and the people and the culture. We've been here for 7 years. My husband doesn't want to leave. My kids grew up here, so Iowa is home. Louisiana is home for me. But for my children, Iowa is home. That kind of Iowa identity is really a part of my household. 

What piece of advice would you give to today's students?

Be open to opportunity, because I think we come in with a different path and then that closes us off to opportunities that are available. There are some students that we talked to, that say, this research opportunity or volunteer opportunity or study abroad opportunity is here and then with tunnel vision say no, this is my path. I think that there is merit to that, but there's also merit to being open because you never know what those other opportunities can unfold for you. I think me being open is what led me here. There's the disappointment of not taking that original medical school path, but the collaborations between my HBCU and UW Madison, and being able to capitalize on those, really put me in this position. If I had been closed off, I would still be trying to wait for MCAT scores and this door would have never opened up for me. I think it's really important for students to weigh the pros and cons and be open to opportunity. It's good to have vision, but don't be so tunnel focused that you close yourself off to opportunities that could really change the way you think about your work or think about what your future will look like.

How do you see your work impacting your field?

I see my work closing the research, practice, and policy gaps across school and collegiate health outcomes.  I hope to disseminate over the next few years the processes, rewards, and challenges of community-engaged research and adding to that body of knowledge with niche populations. I hope to build on the legacy of pioneers in this community-engaged research, including our own Dean Parker and Dr. Rima Afifi. 

In closing, what words of wisdom would you like to share, what quotation or person inspires you, what does the next chapter look like? Give us your "off the top of your head" responses to these or other summary thoughts.

From my personal life, my grandmother, she is 90, she's living, unfortunately right now with dementia, but she only made it up to 11 grade education. Education was a pathway out of poverty; and she instilled that in her eight children and so that's why they were able to her purchase her home. If you look at her family web, if you look at our tree, it's K-12 educators and staff, professors, attorneys, engineers, optometrists. Her grandchildren and great grandchildren’s lives look a lot different than her life did, and I'm just so thankful for her bringing me to the library she would walk me to the library and I developed a love of reading and I wouldn't be here without her. She did the best that she could and I'm so thankful for everything she poured into all of the generations that followed. We are here because of her. 

As I mentioned before, Dr. Fong Chan because he took a chance on me and mentored me and didn’t just throw me from an HBCU into Madison and leave me  there. I remember he let me find my way but he also was a guiding force. He still is that kind of guiding force and I don't always listen and when I don't, if I would have listened, it would have been an easier pathway. But I'm just so thankful because he, and others such as Dr. Carliss Washington at Southern University, instilled in me to “lift as you climb” and to reach out to those institutions that may not have the infrastructure that you have. And so that is important for me being at the University of Iowa to forge those partnerships with minority serving institutions particularly because those pathways and pipelines, they really make a difference. I want to be tenured; and I want to be in a position where I can say I'm bringing in three students from an HBCU to do a summer training or to get their PhD here that's fully funded, that's how I would want my mid-career to late-career to look like.