October 5, 2006
Conference for higher education faculty, staff, set for Nov. 1-3
Not a lot of UW people have attended the annual Washington State Faculty & Staff of Color in Higher Education Conference over its 11-year history — but maybe that will change this year.
The conference is being held at the Vancouver, Wash., Hilton Nov. 1-3. As every year, the conference offers speakers, resources, contacts and breakout sessions on building understanding and community, retaining faculty, staff and students of color, fighting bias and hate crimes, discussions of race and equity, and much more.
“It’s a huge opportunity for us to network with peers at other universities and colleges across the state,” said Chesca Ward, diversity specialist for Human Resources, who will attend the conference for the first time this year. “It also gives us a chance to showcase what we are doing here at the UW, and learn from other people what they’re doing that we are not.”
The stated missions of the conference are to create more and better networking, development and career opportunites for faculty and staff of color in higher education; to promote policies that improve institutional climate, access and educational quality; to promote ethnic and racial diversity and combat racism which pursuing excellence in higher education.
The conference is the brainchild of Rhonda Coats, vice president for student services at South Puget Sound Community College. Coats recalled being part of a conversation among people in higher education administration when the idea first came up. “Several of us had been talking about this for a couple of years,” she said.
“Many people of color, especially back then, were isolated on campus and needed support,” Coats said. The idea of the conference, then, was “to have an opportunity for people of color in higher education to get together to network, to build their reputation with counterparts and and to provide professional development.”
The conference, she said, features speakers of national reputation in a way that makes it possible for people to attend without expensive, cross-country travel.
She said the first conference, held in 1995 at Central Washington University, “had just a tremendous response.”
Through many years of the conference, Coats said, UW participation has been small. But she said when Namura Nkeze came to the UW to be an academic counselor in the Gateway Center, she brought her interest in the conference with her. Jai Elliot, director of the Business Educational Opportunity Program in the School of Business, also is on the conference’s organizing committee.
Coats said the conference is designed to be accessible, and not “hierarchical” in structure. “You see no titles, we all have the same issues — awareness building, and even within communities of color, we can learn from each other.”
Ed Taylor, UW vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, attended last year’s conference, which he called “a wonderful experience.”
Taylor said, “This conference is a real opportunity to join colleagues from around the region and address issues relevant to all of our higher education institutions. I most appreciate that the conference is about sharing knowledge, innovations and ultimately, sharing stories about our work. The conference is indeed about faculty and staff of color in higher education and in the end it is about solidarity in our work.”
For more information about the conference, visit online at http://apps.sbctc.ctc.edu/FSOCC/default.aspx.
