New round of NCID-funded projects truly diverse

Updated 12:30 PM May 16, 2007

New round of NCID-funded projects truly diverse

By Valerie Johnson
National Center for Institutional Diversity

Building partnerships to develop national exemplars that foster multilevel engagement and sustainable innovation is a central aim of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), which recently announced its funded projects for 2007-08.

The NCID promotes revolutionary approaches to diversity challenges and opportunities within the University, other major social institutions, the nation and the world, says Phillip Bowman, NCID director. Since 2005, the center's annual funding cycle includes faculty fellowships, a community practitioners program, and joint support for landmark diversity-related conversations or events.

"It's both gratifying and imperative to help advance innovative projects that promote excellence through diversity in its richest, broadest sense, and that demonstrate how diversity is an arena for bridging scholarship with real-world engagement and institutional impact," Bowman says. "We are especially pleased by the growing number of NCID partners from U-M schools and colleges with commitments to cosponsor emerging diversity exemplars, which reflect a remarkable disciplinary breadth—one that expands with each cohort of fellows and projects," Bowman says.

"These campus partnerships also provide a basis to further expand related NCID external partnerships at multiple levels—community, state, national and international."

Faculty Fellows

• Elizabeth Cole, professor of women's studies and psychology with an adjunct appointment in the Center for Afro-American and African Studies, will study how diversity-themed courses change student attitudes and behaviors. In collaboration with a team of doctoral students, she will take particular interest in processes beyond positive inter-group contact that facilitate such changes, as legislation in many states threatens to minimize student opportunities for experiencing diversity via interaction with colleagues.

• In partnership with administrators from Scarlett Middle School in Ann Arbor, as well as a team of graduate students, Stephanie Rowley will examine the ways awareness of the achievement gap affects African American and Latino parents' interaction with their sons and daughters and the children's subsequent educational attainment. An associate professor of psychology, Rowley anticipates the project will inform future diversity initiatives in higher education and result in local focus groups and workshops to identify protective familial mechanisms to help parents bolster their children's school performance.

• Terri Sarris, senior lecturer in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures, will collaborate with community practitioner Sultan Sharrief and Professor of Social Work Larry Gant, in the development of a course titled "Collaborations in Media: Community Filmmaking." Sarris and her team will build upon the success of the EFEX Project (Encouraging the Filmmaking Experience), a collaborative endeavor between the Screen Arts and Cultures Department and Beyond Blue Productions that enabled the creation of the feature film "Bilal's Stand" with U-M undergraduates, students from Metro Detroit public schools and Detroit community leaders. Ultimately, the course should serve as a national model for university-community engagement and innovative K-16 pipeline strategies in higher education.

• Identifying environmental factors that improve the educational climate for women students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is the focus of Denise Sekaquaptewa, associate professor of psychology. Her study, which will compare samples of women students participating in the Women in Science and Engineering Residence Program to women enrolled in STEM courses but not participating in this program, will offer important guidance to researchers and educators nationwide with interests in the recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM.

Community Practitioners and External Partners

• Victoria Kovari, veteran Detroit community organizer, will collaborate with Greg Markus, professor of political science, and the Center for Social Inclusion, the Kirwan Institute for Race and Ethnicity, and the Mid-East Territory of the Gamaliel Foundation to develop a curriculum for the Harriet Tubman Institute for Organizer Recruitment and Development, based in Detroit. With an emphasis on reframing diversity issues that threaten to polarize communities, the curriculum will be shared with participating universities across five states.

• Sultan Sharrief, writer of the screenplay for "Bilal's Stand" and founder of the Encouraging the Filmmaking Experience (EFEX) Project, will develop a package to enable replication of the EFEX Project in other metropolitan communities, including a DVD of "Bilal's Stand," a handbook for creating successful university-community arts collaborations, and a documentary that traces the progress of the project. Based on Sharrief's own life story, the feature film will premiere this fall in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Los Angeles. With a breadth of support from the Detroit community and U-M units, Sharrief will work with professors Terri Sarris and Larry Gant to expand external eng

Diversity Conversations

Collaborative Diversity Conversations

• Caroline Constant, professor of architecture and urban planning and a team of faculty members will enact a lecture series titled, "Making the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning a National Leader in Reflecting the Diversity of American Society." Spanning the next academic year, this series will be systematically integrated with other exemplary activities to encourage further institutional innovation within TCAUP.

• Larry Gant, professor in the School of Social Work, will work with Sharrief and Sarris to launch a series of workshops for Metro Detroit middle and high school students, taking special responsibility for planning innovative formative evaluation research strategies. This traveling exposé will include a screening of "Bilal's Stand," which raises issues of educational opportunity, community abandonment versus community improvement, and urban versus suburban spaces, followed by a discussion intended to encourage underrepresented students to pursue higher education.

• Carol Hollenshead, director of the Center for the Education of Women (CEW), will build upon CEW's pioneering studies of the gender and racial impacts of anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives. In collaboration with the NCID, CEW will organize a series of local, statewide and national conversations to consider how the intersection of race and gender affects theoretical knowledge and influences the overall life chances and everyday experiences of individuals, and how social justice and institutional diversity can be promoted in the context of Proposal 2.

• Jeanne Yhouse, managing director of the Griffith Leadership Center at the School of Public Health, will work with the Women's Health Program at the U-M Health System and Catalyst, Inc., to hold a conference titled, "Women in Healthcare Leadership: State of the Knowledge." This event will function as a key component of a broader national research project on the role of gender and race in the career structures that shape advancement into mid- and executive-level management positions in the healthcare industry.

• Roland Zullo, assistant research scientist at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, will collaborate with the U-M Labor Studies Center and local unions to build leadership diversity in the new labor movement. After holding its Summer School for Women Workers with an expanded participant base and transforming its training model to address the needs of a more diversified labor force, Zullo and the team will work with the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO to develop a comparable emancipatory education program tailored to its constituents.

Cosponsored Diversity-Related Events

• John Burkhardt, director of the National Forum for Higher Education and the Public Good, and collaborators will present a Community Partnerships for Education event. It will gather individuals from specific Michigan neighborhoods and national communities to join with U-M faculty, staff, and students to examine the ways in which regional social, economic, and institutional factors influence educational decisions.

• Dorceta Taylor, professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, in concert with the Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, has organized a national research symposium on faculty diversity and environmental justice, including an environmental justice tour of Ypsilanti, Dearborn and Detroit. Funding from the NCID will help support evaluation and dissemination strategies to further enhance the project's national impact.

"As we complete this third cycle of funding awards, we can really see momentum building at the NCID," Bowman says. These partnerships can help move NCID further toward national prominence as a catalyst, venture fund, and incubator, as well as clearinghouse, publisher and think tank. In the end, they can help to better focus extended community efforts between scholars, practitioners, and leaders in the development of exemplary national models of successful, robust institutional diversity."

New round of NCID-funded projects truly diverse

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