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1/23 We Shall Overcome

We Shall Overcome

Thursday, January 23rd, 2020

07:30 PM - 09:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts

A Celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Featuring Damien Sneed

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., We Shall Overcome showcases repertoire from across the African American music traditions that electrified generations of civil rights activists with interwoven spoken word from Dr. King’s recorded speeches. Producer and Musical Director Damien Sneed ties together a living lineage of music and culture that includes traditional and modern gospel, classical, jazz, Broadway and spirituals. From Duke Ellington to Stevie Wonder; Aretha Franklin to Wynton Marsalis; Nina Simone to Donny Hathaway; and traditional spirituals and music from The Wiz, Sneed covers a lot of musical ground in one evening.

Sponsored by the UConn Office for Diversity and Inclusion in collaboration with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Living Legacy Convocation

Media Sponsor: WFCR/NEPR

TICKETS: https://jorgensen.uconn.edu

Contact Information: Jorgensen Box Office, 860-486-4226
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1/29 NCORE Webinar Series: When the ### hits the fan: Reactionary Programming Toolkit

NCORE Webinar Series: When the ### hits the fan: Reactionary Programming Toolkit

Wednesday, January 29th, 2020

04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Class of 1947 Conference Room [HBL, Plaza level]

Presenters: Monica M. Johnson, Ph.D., Rory Gregg James, and Brian Richardson | Indiana University, Bloomington

Annually, higher education professionals and student leaders approach the upcoming academic year with grand plans for timely programming and community engagement. These plans are often disrupted and “trumped” by a series of unexpected and ever unfortunate occurrences. Whether we find our communities facing the planned invasion of Neo-Nazis, consistent struggles with sexual assault, mass shootings, or the ever-present uncertainty of the next presidential tweet, higher education practitioners and student leaders must remain alert and prepared to build programming that supports their communities appropriately. This workshop intermingles case studies, simulations, and group dialogue in efforts to provide participants a substantial tool kit for crafting impactful reactionary programming to suit their campuses needs in time of division, crisis, or direst.

Contact Information: diversity@uconn.edu
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2/5 NCORE Webinar Series: “There's a Drama to It": Innovative Way of Teaching about Resistance, Power, and Social Justice Through Sports

NCORE Webinar Series: “There's a Drama to It": Innovative Way of Teaching about Resistance, Power, and Social Justice Through Sports

Wednesday, February 5th, 2020

04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Class of 1947 Conference Room [HBL, Plaza level]

Presenter: Rudy Mondragón

This session should particularly benefit scholars and student affairs professionals interested in learning about the role and possibilities that a critical paradigm of sports curriculum can play for teaching about social justice, power, resistance, identity, and athletic activism. The presenter will provide a grounding and contextualization about the idea of an athlete activist identity by drawing on the history of the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith and Jean Carlos, Muhammad Ali, and Wilma Rudolph as well as present day examples. Insights from the presenter's research on boxing and the ways in which boxers use the ring entrance as a platform to express themselves will be shared. The purpose of this is to emphasis the point that the pre-fight moment in boxing serves as an important political site of struggle where stories about power, resistance, identity, and complicity with the status quo can be excavated. Finally, this session will conclude with a discussion about the possible roles that student athletes can play in on-campus activism and the need to build bridges between them and politicized student organizations.

Rudy Mondragón is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles working on a dissertation that looks at the sport of boxing and the ways in which Black and Brown boxers politically and culturally express themselves via the ring entrance spectacle. He is the co-founder of Blood Money Boxing, a blog that provides critical commentary beyond the results and statistics of the sport and has written on the sport of boxing for Remezcla and We Are Mitú and has been quoted in CNN and Bleacher Report articles and interviewed by ESPN Deportes Seattle. Academically, Mondragón has written reviews of the boxing documentary "Champs" for the Journal of Sports History (2018) and Louis Moore's "I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood 1880-1915" for the International Review for the Sociology of Sport (2018) and a book chapter titled, "The Son of God and The Ghost: Colorblind Christian Struggles and Sonic Spaces of Liberation in Boxing" for a forthcoming sports anthology with the Ohio State Press. Along with Gaye Theresa Johnson and David Leonard, Mondragón is a co-editor of the proposed anthology "Rings of Dissent: The Performance of Rebellion in Boxing."

Before his doctoral studies, Mondragón served as the Intercultural Relations Specialist at Gonzaga University and Coordinator of Diversity and Leadership Training at the University of Washington. While at Gonzaga, he implemented the Diversity Monologues, an ongoing program that showcased the creativity and imagination of students to address diversity and social justice issues through poetry and personal monologues. Mondragón is the recipient of the prestigious University of California Cota Robles Fellowship, NCAA Ethnic Minority Enhancement Postgraduate Award, and Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports-Scholar Award. Most recently, he was a F

Contact Information: diversity@uconn.edu
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2/26 NCORE Webinar Series: From Woodson to Wakanda: Emancipatory Pedagogy & The Miseducation of the Negro in American Higher Education Today

NCORE Webinar Series: From Woodson to Wakanda: Emancipatory Pedagogy & The Miseducation of the Negro in American Higher Education Today

Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Class of 1947 Conference Room [HBL, Plaza level]

Presenter: Dr. Terrell Strayhorn

In February of 1926, Carter Goodwin Woodson, born December 19, 1875 to two former slaves, established “Negro History Week” as a time to celebrate the achievements and contributions of Black people to society and to offer Blacks inspiration about their ancestry, legacy, and strength. Woodson, the 2nd African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University would go on to found the Journal of Negro History and the Association for the Study of African American Life & History; in 1933, he published “The Miseducation of the Negro,” which offered a solid critique of American education and schooling for Black kids. He argued that the system was designed to miseducate them about themselves, their history, their potential and place in society. In many ways, he argued for educational reform that righted the wrongs of miseducation, giving Black students accurate information about their predicament, their potential for freedom, and the power of their history. Fast-forward to 2018, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther—a story about T’Challa’s heroic return to the African nation of Wakanda to assume his rightful place as king—is reminiscent in many ways of the goals of Woodson’s book. In this interactive session, Dr. Terrell Strayhorn, a leading voice on issues of race, equity, and diversity, will draw bright lines of connection between Woodson’s book and Coogler’s film to advance the need for “Emancipatory Pedagogy (EP),” a form of teaching/advising that empowers the disempowered, documents the undocumented, and liberates the learner to the place of possibility. Using a smooth blend of theory, social commentary, empirical evidence, and anecdotes, Strayhorn will offer specific strategies for doing EP in higher education. Come to learn, to be challenged, provoked, and inspired; leave ready to enact what’s learned in social justice work, to make a difference for students, and to create change as an educator! This session particularly benefits higher education professionals charged with developing, managing, or carrying out a race or social justice agenda like faculty researcher, chief diversity officers, multicultural services staff, graduate students, and K-20 outreach workers.

Dr. Terrell Strayhorn is Founding Chief Executive Officer of Do Good Work Educational Consulting, LLC. He also serves as the Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs and Professor of Urban Education at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, TN. Previously, Strayhorn was on the faculty at The Ohio State University, where he served as Professor & Director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise (CHEE).

An internationally-recognized student success scholar and “a foremost authority on issues of equity and diversity,” Strayhorn is author of over 10 books and more than 200 book chapters, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. His most popular book, College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Succes

Contact Information: diversity@uconn.edu
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3/4 NCORE Webinar Series: The Dehumanization of Indigenous Women

NCORE Webinar Series: The Dehumanization of Indigenous Women

Wednesday, March 4th, 2020

04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Class of 1947 Conference Room [HBL, Plaza level]

Presenters: Emma Allen, MA | Stephanie Cross, MA

According to the FBI, Indigenous women are three times as more likely to experience rape or sexual assault than Black, Latina, and European-American women in North America (Perry, 2004). Historically, Indigenous women have and continue to experience both racism and sexism through the colonization of North America. We contend that Indigenous women are viewed as less than human, that is, they experience dehumanization by non-Native people. Thus far, no empirical research has investigated the objectification of Indigenous women through the dehumanization framework (Haslam, 2006). Through both quantitative and qualitative research methods, we will investigate various ways that Indigenous women experience dehumanization and the mechanisms underlying how they are dehumanized by others. This session will examine the effects of dehumanization on Indigenous women and their lived experiences both in and outside of the University of Oklahoma. After a discussion centered on these issues, the presenters will discuss the implications that dehumanization has for Indigenous women inside higher education. The presenters will then offer recommendations for best practices when incidences of racism and sexism (i.e. dehumanization) occur on campus and how to support and empower Indigenous women through relationship building. This session should particularly benefit those working with and advising Indigenous students (student affairs and academic affairs).

Contact Information: diversity@uconn.edu
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3/25 NCORE Webinar Series: Seeking Tenure While Latina: Experiences of Latina Faculty at Research 1 Institutions

NCORE Webinar Series: Seeking Tenure While Latina: Experiences of Latina Faculty at Research 1 Institutions

Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

04:00 PM - 05:30 PM

Storrs Campus
Class of 1947 Conference Room [HBL, Plaza level]

Presenter: Julie Henriquez Aldana, Ph.D.

Struggles related to involvement, unwritten expectations and cultural taxation (Padilla, 1994), play a role in the underrepresentation of Latinas in tenured positions. This presentation will unpack the experience of Latina faculty seeking tenure at R1 institutions. The presenter will discuss reported experiences, emergent themes related to involvement and engagement, and practical implications for faculty of color, especially Latinas, as they navigate the tenure process. This presentation should particularly benefit underrepresented faculty members seeking tenure or seeking a career in academia. Additionally, findings from the study can be informative for underrepresented students, faculty, and staff as they provide insights into institutional dynamics and challenges that many underrepresented groups face, particularly in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Participants will:

• Analyze factors that contribute to high attrition in the number of underrepresented faculty members seeking tenure at Research 1 institutions.
• Discuss current institutional climate and systemic challenges that perpetuate the current underrepresentation of POC in the professoriate.
• Identify strategies that can improve the minority faculty experience as they seek tenure.
• Identify strategies to fuel the pipeline of students into careers in academia and higher education.

Julie Henriquez Aldana serves as an Administrative Assistant Professor of Women’s Leadership and Director of Student Leadership and Engagement for the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University. She earned a B.S. in International Trade and Finance (2003), M.S. in Human Resource Education (2005), and a PhD in Human Resource Education with a concentration in Human Resource and Leadership Development (2017) from Louisiana State University.

Dr. Henriquez Aldana's dissertation research focused on the experience of Latina faculty as they navigate the tenure process, specifically on the role of engagement in successfully achieving tenure. As a Latina and emerging Human Resource Development and Leadership scholar, Dr. Henriquez Aldana’s research interests focus on multicultural leadership, cultural competence, and organizational culture in the workplace.

Dr. Henriquez Aldana has presented her research at regional and national conferences, including the Association of College and University Housing Officers – International (ACUHO-I), NASPA, and the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education (AABHE) annual conferences. She has served as the Louisiana State representative for the NASPA Region III Latinx Knowledge Community. Dr. Henriquez Aldana currently teaches Women Leading New Orleans, an interdisciplinary seminar which focuses on social justice, intersectionality and leadership.

Contact Information: diversity@uconn.edu
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Women’s Affinity Group Event – Envision Your 2020
The start of a new year is always a good time to think about goals and dreams for the future. The Women’s Affinity Group invites you to join us in making your very own 2020 vision board (a visual tool used to help clarify, concentrate, and maintain focus on a goal or goals) while enjoying […]
Posted on January 7, 2020

100 Years of Women Scholarship – Now Accepting Applications
The University of Connecticut’s Women’s Center is pleased to announce the granting of the 100 Years of Women Scholarship Award for the twenty-seventh year. The 100 Years of Women Scholarship Fund was established in 1992 to honor a current matriculated UConn undergraduate or graduate student or a high school senior planning to enroll in the […]
Posted on December 19, 2019

Women’s Advance Conference – Call for Proposals
UConn staff, faculty and community professionals are invited to submit proposals that cover a wide range of topics including, but not limited to communication skills, cultural competency, negotiation skills, organizational time-savers, professional networking, leadership development, workplace climate, navigating the tenure process, global engagement and work/life flexibility. Selection Criteria Sessions should provide in-depth information, practical […]
Posted on November 22, 2019

Volunteers Wanted for a Research Study
The Contradictions of Female Body Ideals (Body Image Workshops for Marginalized Communities)
Posted on October 18, 2019

Student Health Adjustment and Relationship Experiences (SHARE) Study
The Student Health Adjustment and Relationship Experiences (SHARE) Study aims to evaluate undergraduate students’ perceptions of campus life and experiences with relationships. There are two surveys – one for undergraduate students and one for staff and faculty. Participants have the chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card. For more information and links […]
Posted on September 17, 2019