2008 Advancing Diversity at Virginia Tech
January 8-9, 2008
Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center
Agenda
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
8:00 am Continental Breakfast
8:30 am Welcome and Introductions
Mark McNamee, Provost, Virginia Tech
Kevin McDonald, Vice-President for Multi-Cultural Affairs and Equity, Virginia Tech
8:45 am Status report on AdvanceVT
9:15 am Opening Keynote: Reflections of Pre-Tenure Faculty
Cathy Trower, Co-PI, Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education
10:15 am Break
10:30 am Interactive Theater Presentation and Discussion
12:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Afternoon Keynote: An Inclusive Excellence Model for Institutional Transformation
2:00 pm Break
2:15 pm Workshops
- Recruiting a Diverse Faculty (Sonel Shropshire, The Academic Network, Inc.)
- Inclusive Excellence (Damon Williams, U. Conn.)
- Resources for creating and maintaining a positive department climate
3:45 pm Networking Reception
4:30 pm Adjourn
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
8:00 am Continental Breakfast
8:30 am Follow-up workshops
- Career Development Issues for Pre-Tenure Faculty (Cathy Trower, COACHE)
- Recruiting Diverse Graduate Students (Sonel Shropshire, The Academic Network, Inc.)
Note: This session is intended for pre-tenure faculty only, and will end at 11:00 am.
This session is scheduled to end at 10:00 am.
Featured speakers:
Damon Williams
Dr. Damon A. Williams
Dr. Williams is the assistant vice provost for multicultural & international affairs at the University of Connecticut, where he serves on numerous committees and taskforces throughout the University and works with the vice provost to provide leadership to OMIA and the university broadly regarding matters of diversity, multiculturalism, and equity. His scholarly interests are in the areas of organizational change and management, diversity in higher education, and ethnic and racial identity.
He is also a leader in the American Association of Colleges and Universities' initiative on Making Excellence Inclusive: Diversity, Inclusion, and Institutional Renewal, and co-author of Toward a Model of Inclusive Excellence and Change in Postsecondary Institutions.
Cathy Trower
Dr. Cathy A. Trower
Dr. Trower is co-principal investigator of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) at Harvard, a joint initiative to improve the quality of faculty work life. COACHE is a collaboration of colleges and universities committed to gathering the peer diagnostic and comparative data academic administrators need to recruit, retain, and develop the cohort of faculty most critical to the long-term future of their institutions. Virginia Tech participated in this study for the first time in 2007. Trower has published numerous articles and several book chapters about faculty work life, and edited a book entitled Policies on Faculty Appointment: Standard Practice and Unusual Arrangements (2000).
Sonel Shropshire
Mr. Sonel Shropshire
Mr. Shropshire is president of The Academic Network, Inc., a diversity consulting and academic admissions counseling firm which served over 300 clients last year. After receiving his Juris Doctor from the University of Florida College of Law in 1997, he became Director of Graduate Minority Recruitment and increased the number of minority applicants to the graduate school by 25%. He has also served as Interim Director of Admissions for Stetson University, and held similar positions at Texas Wesleyan, Loyola, and UCLA.