Carlos J. Alonso
Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Vice President for Graduate Education, Columbia University
Alonso supervises the integration of graduate students into the research and pedagogical enterprises of the university, and is responsible for enhancing the intellectual quality and the diversity of the graduate school and its programs. Prior to joining Columbia as Dean, Alonso was the Edwin B. and Leonore R. Williams Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the recipient of a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. Alonso specializes in 19th- and 20th-century Latin American intellectual history and cultural production. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University and Ph.D. from Yale University.
Katherine Bergeron
President, Connecticut College
Bergeron joined Connecticut College in 2014 as the 11th president. She is a passionate teacher, an award-winning scholar and a talented administrator with a record of successful innovation in liberal education. Bergeron’s interdisciplinary research focuses on French cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on music and language. Bergeron’s teaching and research have been enlivened by performance. A singer of eclectic tastes, she has performed Gregorian chant, the blues, the court music of central Java, contemporary pop music, experimental music, and French art song. Bergeron holds a B.A. in music from Wesleyan University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in music history from Cornell University. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Liberal Education, the flagship journal of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Roger Brooks
Dean of the Faculty and Elie Wiesel Professor of Judaic Studies, Connecticut College
Brooks joined the faculty at Connecticut College in 1991. Brooks specializes in Judaic Studies and Rabbinic law. As chief academic officer he is responsible for all aspects of academic life, from curricular design and institutional planning to faculty development. He has led a significantly successful project to develop and implement new policies for hiring and retention of diverse faculty. Brooks holds a B.E.S. from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. from Brown University.
Denise Kimber Buell
Associate Dean of Faculty, Professor of Religion, Williams College
Buell recently joined the office of the Dean of the Faculty at Williams, and is a scholar of early Christian history and feminist interpretation of the Bible. She teaches widely in religious studies, with research interests including critical race and gender theory, religion and cultures of imperial Rome, Gnosticism, Queer Theory, and religion and science. Buell holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, and aPh.D. from Harvard University.
David Canton
Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History, Connecticut College
Canton joined the faculty in 2003, with a deep interest in African American urban history, civil rights, and northern race relations, particularly viewed American phenomena. Canton’s book, Raymond Pace Alexander: A New Negro Lawyer Fights for Civil Rights in Philadelphia (University Press of Mississippi, 2010), was awarded the 2011 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize from the Northeast Black Studies Association. Canton currently serves as chair of the History Department, and previously was co-director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program at Connecticut College and director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Connecticut College from 2009-2012. Canton holds a B.A. from Morehouse College; an M.A. from The Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. from Temple University.
Anthony Cascardi
Dean of Arts and Humanities,Sidney and Margaret Ancker Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature, Rhetoric, and Spanish, University of California, Berkeley
A prolific scholar, Cascardi has written extensively on such artists as Cervantes and Goya, and on issues of philosophy and aesthetics in art and literature. He has served on the boards of Cal Performances and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. His research interests include literature and philosophy, aesthetic theory, early modern literature and Cervantes. Formerly the director of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, Cascardi has been cited as a creative and successful leader, with deep understanding of the needs and ambitions of the faculty, staff and students. As dean of arts and humanities, he has earned the trust of the administration and the respect and admiration of his colleagues. Cascardi holds both master’s and doctoral degrees in Romance languages and literatures at from Harvard University.
Shirley M. Collado
Dean of the College, Senior Diversity Officer, and Associate Professor of Psychology, Middlebury College
Collado oversees and supports a dynamic student body and academic community, helping to advance the College’s efforts to create an institutional vision and environment that places diversity and inclusion at the center of the overall Middlebury experience. Since joining Middlebury, Collado has led the development of faculty diversity initiatives, the establishment of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the enhancement of The Commons and new student orientation, and the implementation of numerous diversity and inclusion initiatives. Collado earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University and a B.S. in human and organizational development and psychology from Vanderbilt University.
Carolyn Denard
Dean of the College and Senior Diversity Officer, Connecticut College
Denard joined Connecticut College in 2012. As chief student affairs and academic support officer, she is responsible for overseeing services and programs that integrate students’ experiences in and out of the classroom. She leads efforts in the college’s learning and living environment that foster the educational benefits derived from a diverse community; and reinforces students’ academic and personal growth, leadership development and community engagement. Denard received her B.A. in English from Jackson State University, her M.A. in English from Indiana University and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University.
Adam Falk
President, Williams College
Since becoming the 17th president of Williams in April 2010, Falk has focused on advancing the college’s mission of providing the finest possible liberal arts education by working with faculty to strengthen the curriculum, further enrich student residential life, and maximize the educational value derived from the growing diversity of the college’s students, faculty, and staff. A high-energy physicist and award-winning teacher whose research focuses on elementary particle physics and quantum field theory, Falk is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a winner of awards from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, the Research Corporation, and the Sloan Foundation. Falk holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He held postdoctoral appointments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 1994.
Freeman A. Hrabowski, III
President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Hrabowski joined the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the recent report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. He also was recently named by President Obama to chair the newly created President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Hrawbowski earned both his M.A. in mathematics and his Ph.D. in higher education administration/statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Tracey Hucks
Professor of Religion, Haverford College
Hucks specializes in Africana religious traditions, African American religious history, and diaspora theories of North America and the Caribbean. Her teaching spans African and Africana Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Religion, with attention to topics of slavery, antebellum America, and the writings of women of African descent. Hucks holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in Religions of the Americas as well as a B.A. and M.A. from Colgate University.
Cynthia Ladd-Viti
Graduate Outreach & Summer Research Opportunity Program, University of California, Berkeley
Ladd-Viti coordinates programs that help educationally and financially disadvantaged students and underrepresented students throughout their academic careers at Berkeley. Her work focuses on outreach to universities and colleges throughout the country, conducting informational workshops, and providing individual advising to prospective students. Ladd-Viti also works with the prestigious Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP), which promotes access to graduate education among undergraduates who have been educationally or economically disadvantaged, and who may not have had exposure to the academic environment of a research university.
Benson Lieber
Dean of Academic Support and Student Research, Amherst College
Lieber served as the dean of students at Amherst from 1984 until 2010, when he took on the new position of as Dean of Academic Support. Lieber regularly teaches a course in the English department for first-year students, focused on the reading and writing of difficult prose, paying particular attention to the kinds of evidence and authority, logic and structure that produce strong arguments.
Andrea Morris
Assistant Dean for Academic Diversity, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University
Morris oversees GSAS diversity initiatives for prospective and current graduate students, including the Leadership Alliance Summer Research Program, in which undergraduates from groups underrepresented in academia conduct research alongside Columbia faculty mentors, and the Creating Connections Consortium (C3), which provides Columbia graduate students with postdoctoral fellowships to enhance faculty diversity at liberal arts colleges. Morris came to GSAS after serving as a tenured associate professor of biology at Haverford College. A Haverford alumna, she was the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton, then completed concurrent postdoctoral fellowships at Emory University and Morehouse College before joining the Haverford faculty.
Bridget Newell
Associate Provost for Diversity, Bucknell University
A strong advocate for diversity and equity, Newell joined the Bucknell community in 2012, after serving as Associate Provost for Diversity & Global Learning and Professor of Philosophy and Gender Studies at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT. While at Westminster, Newell led the effort to establish of the College’s Diversity-focused Liberal Education requirement, the Bastian Foundation Diversity Lecture Series, the Diversity & International Center, and the Gender Studies program, among others. Originally from Pittsburgh, Newell received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, and her M.A. in Philosophy and A.B. in English from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Kirk D. Read
Professor of French, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Bates College
Read is a specialist in Early Modern French literature, with additional interests in Francophone North Africa and in bande dessinée (graphic novels and comic book culture). His book, Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (Ashgate 2011), investigates sex and gender across various literary genres, including medical and proto-anthropological discourse. Read has led both semester-long and short term study trips to Nantes, France, most recently in the Fall of 2011. He has served as Chair of the Bates Arts Collaborative, Chair of the Department of French and Francophone Studies, and Chair of the Division of Humanities. Read holds both a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures, from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Michael Reed
Vice President for Strategic Planning and Institutional Diversity, Williams College
Reed leads efforts at Williams College to catalyze critical thinking and inclusive engagement and to assure that all students thrive academically through opportunities and programs that work to eradicate racial and socio-economic disparities in higher education. A graduate of Williams, Reed previously served as Assistant Director of Admission and as Assistant Director of Alumni Relations from 1981 to 1985. Before returning to Williams as Vice President, Reed was Director of Programs for A Better Chance; Managing Director and Regional Vice President for INROADS, which develops and places talented minority youth in business and industry and prepares them for corporate and community leadership; and ran a successful consulting practice, Consulting Works. In 1993 Williams awarded him a Bicentennial Medal in recognition of his achievement in helping minority youth reach their full potential. Reed received his M.A. in Educational Psychology from Howard University in 1979 and studied at the Institute for Educational Management (IEM) at Harvard University in 1985.
Juana Maria Rodriguez
Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Rodríguez is the author of Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU 2003) and has published numerous articles related to her research interests in sexuality studies, queer activism in a transnational context, critical race theory, technology and media arts, and Latin@ and Caribbean studies. Her forthcoming book, titled Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures and Other Latina Longings, considers contemporary racialized sexual politics through the interlocking lenses of performance studies and law. Rodriguez received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from University of California, Berkeley.
Roberto Lint Sagarena
Associate Professor of American Studies, Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Middlebury College
Saragena’s research and teaching interests center on the role of religion and religious rhetoric in the formation of racial, ethnic, and regional identities in the Americas with particular attention to social relations resulting from inequality. Sagarena holds bachelor’s degrees in Art History and Philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University.
Susan Schweik
Professor of English and Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, University of California, Berkeley
Schweik is the author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (NYU Press, 2009) and is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence. A former Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education for Disability Studies at U.C. Berkeley, she has been involved with the development of disability studies at Berkeley for fifteen years. Her teaching and research interests include disability studies, twentieth century poetry, late nineteenth century American literature, women’s studies and gender theory, urban studies, war literature and children’s literature. She is a recipient of Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Schweik holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in English from Yale University.
Clayton Spencer
President, Bates College
Spencer became the eighth president of Bates College in 2012. She champions the union of excellence and opportunity as a core element of Bates’ unique and historic identity. She came to Bates after serving on the leadership team of Harvard University for 15 years, the last seven as vice president for policy. Working directly with four different presidents during her Harvard tenure, Spencer helped the university achieve integrated approaches to an array of priorities and goals, including the reshaping and dramatic expansion of undergraduate financial aid, overseeing the Harvard-Radcliffe merger, and creating the Crimson Summer Academy, a program designed to assist low-income, intellectually gifted students matriculate into the nation’s leading colleges. Prior to Harvard, Spencer served as Chief Education Counsel to the U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, where she managed the committee on Labor and Human Resources’ education staff and directed the legislative process for education legislation and policy, including federal student aid, science and research policy, the education budget, and technology in education. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and German from Williams College, a B.A. in theology from Oxford University, an M.A. in the study of religion from Harvard, and a J.D. from Yale University.
Susan Sturm
George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change, Columbia Law School
Sturm’s work focuses on advancing full participation and collective impact in higher education, education and reentry, legal education, and institutional change. She collaborates with a wide variety of higher education and community based organizations and networks involved in initiatives aimed at increasing full participation, including the Imagining America, LADO (Liberal Arts Diversity Officers), Creating Connections Consortium (C3), New York Reentry Education Network, and Harvard Business School, and the Yale Law Journal. She is the principal investigator for a Ford Foundation grant, in collaboration with the New York Reentry Education, called “Community Renewal Through Reentry Education Network Development,” and is an architect and co-leader of C3—a Mellon-funded initiative to diversify the faculty as part of advancing full participation in liberal arts colleges.
Professor Sturm’s publications and reports include: Reframing the Civil Rights Narrative (forthcoming); The Pathways of Possibility: Transforming Education’s Role in Reentry (2013); Law Schools, Leadership, and Change (2013); Succeeding and Thriving on the HBS Faculty (2013); Retooling Equality: A Theory of Change (forthcoming); Building Pathways of Possibility from Criminal Justice to College: College Initiative as a Catalyst Linking Individual and Systemic Change (2010); Full Participation: Building the Architecture for Diversity and Public Engagement in Higher Education (with Tim Eatman, John Saltmarsh, and Adam Bush), www.fullparticipation.net (2011); The Architecture of Inclusion: Advancing Workplace Equity in Higher Education, and Who’s Qualified? (with Lani Guinier, 2001). She has co-chaired a working group on Transformative Leadership, as part of a Ford Foundation funded project on Building Knowledge for Social Justice. Her research on strategies for facilitating constructive multi-racial interaction is featured on the Racetalks website, www.racetalks.org. In 2007, she received the Presidential Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia.
Peter Uvin
Provost, Amherst College
Uvin is a scholar of Africa, especially Burundi and Rwanda, and has written extensively on development, food, NGO scaling up, and the intersection between human rights, development, and conflict resolution. His book, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, received the African Studies Association’s 1999 Herskovits Award for the most outstanding book on Africa. As Amherst’s provost he is leading the strategic planning process focused on integrating research, teaching and learning, as well as curricular and co-curricular education; diversity and community, and the internationalization of liberal arts education. Prior to assuming the position of provost, he was the academic dean and the Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He holds academic degrees from Ghent University in diplomatic science and political science and a Ph.D. in political science from Switzerland’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
Abigail Van Slyck
Dayton Professor of Art History, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Connecticut College
Van Slyck is an architectural historian specializing in American architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular attention to commonplace building types constructed to house influential social institutions. Her book, A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890–1960 (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), won numerous awards, including the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award (Vernacular Architecture Forum) and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award (Society of Architectural Historians). Van Slyck currently is completing her term as the president of the Society of Architectural Historians. Serving since 2011 as Associate Dean of the Faculty, Van Slyck heads faculty development efforts and has been especially involved in curricular revision. She holds an A.B. from Smith College and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Crystal Williams
Associate Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Professor of English, Bates College
Williams joined Bates College in 2013, overseeing the Office of Equity and Diversity and the Office of Intercultural Education as well as serving as a member of the president’s senior staff. She shapes campus-wide initiatives and programming that promotes a culture of inclusiveness as well as compliance with federal and state statutes and regulations governing nondiscrimination and equal opportunity. Williams received a B.A. from New York University and a M.F.A from Cornell University.
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