Dr. Imandeep Kaur Grewal, ਡਰ. ਅਮਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਗਰੇਵਾਲ, is a distinguished scholar and educator with a steadfast commitment to justice, joy, healing, and liberation. Dr. Grewal actively resists dichotomies and thrives in the hyphenated spaces between research-teaching-practice-learning-scholarship-healing-and living. In these intersectional spaces, Dr. Grewal has dedicated her life to empowering herself and others to live a life they value and have reason to value. She undertakes this work as seva – a way of being and doing taught to her by her family and faith, in which purpose and process are interconnected and shaped by radical love and mutuality. Collaboration, representation, integration, love, food and community are foundational practices for Dr. Grewal’s seva. As a path-creator, Dr, Grewal is committed to struggle persistently with purpose, disrupt constructively, love deeply, celebrate joyfully, sustain radical hope, dream bravely, and be a solutionary!
Dr. Grewal serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Director of the Office for Place-Based Education as well as the NEXT Scholars program at Eastern Michigan University. Over decades of teaching, Dr. Grewal has encouraged, inspired, and supported countless students to be audaciously authentic, develop strong sense of identity, be boldly original, and teach with and for love of community. As an arts-based, de-colonial, post-qual researcher Dr. Grewal has guided PhD students to critically expand and revise the traditional gold standards of research and scholarship. Sikhya: Strengthening the Voices and Choices of Girls Through Education is a non-profit Dr. Grewal established as an outcome of her own dissertation research. Sikhya provides wrap-around mentoring and financial support to girls as they exit poverty and reclaim their ability to make essential choice in their lives. She has written and produced an hour-long documentary titled “Bridge Over Destiny” on the importance of education in the lives of girls living in poverty in India. Based on her collaborative mentoring model, Dr. Grewal created and directs the NEXT Scholars program, a place-based program designed to increase the recruitment, retention, and success of students from historically marginalized communities into teaching. In addition, she has designed and oversees the Hope Partners program which radically redesigns the student-teaching experience for students from historically marginalized communities to be a long-term, mentoring and identity-based learning experience.
Dr. Grewal is an experienced community-engaged educator and scholar having designed and led several projects with local organizations such as Neutral Zone, 826michigan, SEMIS, and United Way of Washtenaw.
Dr. Grewal is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the John W. Porter Endowed Chair for Urban Education, Dale Rice Award for Academic Innovation in AS-L and Community Engagement, the MAC Outstanding Faculty Award for Student Success and the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty award for service. She has presented and published extensively. In her 2024 publication – Seva+: A Framework for ASLCE Dr. Grewal shares her theoretical framework that underpins her research, teaching, service, practice, and living.
Dr. Grewal’s proudest accomplishment and greatest source of joy are her two sons: Tej Grewal Bergin and Kabir Grewal Bergin. Having no sense of rhythm does not deter Dr. Grewal from joyfully dancing! She loves bringing family and friends together around food, exploring new places, storytelling, learning, reading, being in nature.