Leading Voices Lecture: “Architecture of Full Participation”

Body

A lecture series titled “Leading Voices in Higher Education” launches Oct. 15 with a talk by Susan Sturm, the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility at Columbia Law School.

Image
Columbia Law Professor Susan Sturm

Susan Sturm is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility at Columbia Law School.

In a talk called “Building the Architecture of Full Participation,” Sturm will be discussing how institutions can build inclusivity into the fiber of their social and administrative structures. The event, set for 4:30 p.m. in Moore Hall, is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity.

“Susan Sturm is a thought leader for how institutions of higher education can bring about real and lasting change that authentically includes broadly diverse voices,” says Denise Anthony, vice provost for academic initiatives, whose mandate includes an initiative to increase diversity within the faculty. “Her insights will amplify the work we’re already doing and provide new ideas. I’m delighted that she will be inaugurating this series.”

The lecture’s theme is especially timely, says Anthony, because the College has begun collecting responses to a college-wide community survey, an effort to gauge the current climate of living, working, and learning on campus. Anthony, who chairs the Dartmouth Community Study working group, encourages all students, faculty, and staff to participate.

The “Leading Voices in Higher Education” series aims to engage the Dartmouth community around one of the key goals of the Moving Dartmouth Forward plan: building and sustaining inclusive, diverse environments in teaching and learning. The series will feature one lecture a term for the 2015–2016 academic year.

As the founding director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change, Sturm has focused on advancing full participation and collective impact, higher education transformation, education and re-entry, legal education, and institutional change.

Sturm is the co-principal investigator for a Ford Foundation grant, in collaboration with Hostos Community College, on “Building Corridors to College in the South Bronx,” and a principal investigator on a Ford Foundation grant on “Building Learning Communities at the Intersection of Education and Criminal Justice.”

She is also the principal investigator for an Aspen Ascend Grant to develop a multi-generational approach to education for communities affected by involvement in the criminal justice system, and is an architect and co-leader of C3, an initiative to diversify faculty as part of advancing full participation in liberal arts colleges, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

The College has sponsored similar lecture series in the past that have brought top thinkers in critical areas to campus. From 2011 to 2013 a series that was also called “Leading Voices in Higher Education” featured 19 prominent figures in higher education as part of Dartmouth’s strategic planning process. A summer “Leading Voices” series, sponsored by the President’s office and associated with sophomore courses, also ran from 2011 to 2013, on themes that ranged from foreign policy to the future of energy.

Hannah Silverstein, MALS '09