THE CHALLENGES OF INCREASING FACULTY DIVERSITY
 Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Ph.D., Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity and Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University |
Friday February 5, 2010
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Crawford Hall - Room 9
Inamori Center
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues,
Many universities are making continually more extensive, and public, efforts to increase the racial and gender diversity of both the communities of university faculty and students. The challenge involves not just recruiting diverse groups but creating an environment in which students or faculty from underrepresented groups can and do succeed. This task is generally perceived to be especially challenging for science- and engineering-oriented universities.
The National Science Foundation has created programs to assist universities in the institutional transformations needed to achieve greater diversity. CWRU was the first private university to be awarded a major grant through this program, and our ACES (Academic Careers in Science and Engineering) program included a variety of promising innovations. (http://www.case.edu/admin/aces/) The University has now hired a distinguished scholar, academic administrator, and alumna, Dr. Marilyn Mobley, as Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity. So there has been a lot of effort and commitment -- but results have been rather modest.
Why is it hard to increase the racial and gender diversity of faculty? Are race and ethnicity different problems from gender? How much of the challenge is due to obstacles outside the university (such as competition for small pools of candidates) and how much due to obstacles within universities (such as members of unrepresented minorities being excessively recruited to committees)? This is a riddle that needs to be looked at from many angles. Dr. Mobley will offer some thoughts about the challenge as she sees it, and then many of us should be able to offer observations from our own experience.
As usual, we will gather in Room 9 of the Inamori International Center
for Ethics and Excellence, on the lower level of Crawford Hall, for
free cookies, beverages, and brown bag lunch.
Best regards,
Joe White
About Our Guest
Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Ph.D., was appointed the inaugural Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Case Western Reserve University on January 5, 2009.
Prior to this appointment she served as Provost at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Prior to her provost appointment, she was the Associate Provost for Educational Programs at George Mason University and a tenured Associate Professor of English, where she was also a faculty member for 19 years. She founded the African American Studies Program at George Mason and served as its first director for six years. She has taught at Howard University, Marygrove College and Wayne State University. She has a Ph.D. in English from Case Western Reserve University, a master's degree in English from New York University and a bachelor's degree from Barnard College of Columbia University.
She is a published author and Toni Morrison scholar, whose first book—Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison: The Cultural Function of Narrative (LSU Press, 1991)—was one of the first cross-cultural studies on the Nobel Prize winning author. Dr. Mobley is the former president of the Toni Morrison Society and now serves as a member of its advisory board. Her teaching, research and scholarship in literary studies, cultural studies and higher education have all focused on race, gender, diversity and inclusion and she consulted in these areas for more than 25 years. Her two books in progress include Spaces for the Reader: Toni Morrison's Narrative Poetics and Cultural Politics and The Strawberry Room: And Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself, a volume of reflections on a woman's passage from family trauma to spiritual recovery.
Dr. Mobley is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and is the proud mother of two adult sons—Rashad and Jamal—and two grandsons. She resides in Beachwood, Ohio.
Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
February 12: Long-Term Care in the United States and the Netherlands. With M. C. Terry Hokenstad, Ralph S. and Dorothy P. Schmitt Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
February 19: An Actuary's View of Health Care Reform Estimates. With John Bertko, former Vice President and Chief Actuary, Humana Inc.
February 26: Is Deindustrialization Bad for America? With Susan Helper, AT&T Professor and Chair, Department of Economics; David Clingingsmith, Assistant Professor of Economics; and Joe White.
March 5: Ohio's State Budget: Now What? With Zach Schiller, Research Director, Policy Matters Ohio.
March 12: Spring Break, No Discussion
March 19: Science in the Courts. With Wendy Wagner, Joe A. Worsham Centennial Professor, University of Texas School of Law.
March 26: Observations in Beirut. With Bill Marling, Professor of English.
April 2: Abortion, Health Care Reform, and the Moral Dimensions of Political Compromise. With Susan Dwyer, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland.
April 9: Business and Sustainability. With Roger Saillant, Ph.D. Executive Director, Fowler Center for Sustainable Values, Weatherhead School of Business.
April 16: : Does Environmental Responsibility Mean the Elderly Should Accept “Natural” Deaths? With Felicia Nimue Ackerman, Professor of Philosophy, Brown University.
April 23: What the Health Care Reform Law Will Do; or, Why Health Care Reform Failed; or, Health Care Reform: What Next? or, All of the Above. With Joe White, Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy
The Friday Lunch discussions are held on the lower (ground) level of Crawford Hall. Visitors with mobility issues may find it easiest to take advantage of special arrangements we have made. On most Fridays, a few parking spaces in the V.I.P. lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel are held for participants in the lunch discussion.
Visitors then can avoid walking up the hill to the first floor of Crawford by entering the building on the ground level, through the garage area under the building. The further door on the left in that garage will be left unlocked during the period before the Friday lunch. On occasion, parking will be unavailable because of other university events.
For more information about these and other Center for Policy Studies programs, please see http://policy.case.edu.
