So they're the only two years in and I'm still muted on. Good afternoon everyone. Charlie written as president for research, scholarship and innovation. Pleasure to welcome you to the final research Town Hall of the semester. I want to make it clear at the outset that the choice of music throughout all of these Town Halls has never been mine. And in recent town halls, I've only come to learn that a certain Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs has been conspiring with rest and university Media Services to come up with the music. So actually I appreciated the selection this time. So Matt and Steve, thank you for that. So I will go ahead and share my screen as we always do and welcome you to today's town hall. Really excited about the presentation. We'll get to in just a minute from the co-chairs of the University of Delaware anti-racism initiative. But before that, just a few reminders that please use the Zoom Q&A function to submit your questions as they come up, either during the presentation by the co-chairs of you Dory or questions for me in the latter part of the programming. And we will take it from there. Just a couple of updates and news around campus I wanted to highlight a last week we brought together a number, but certainly not all of our UD inventors in the past year. The first time since pre pandemic that we're able to gather in person under the leadership of the Office of Economic Innovation and partnerships and particularly the new associate vice president there, Julius clearly. So here's a picture from up above in the lobby of the amine Minnesota building. It was great to see folks in person again for the first time in quite some time. I'm also you'll have the opportunity later this week on Thursday, either in person and the Audi on at the start tower or online to join the semi-annual Board of Trustees Meeting, which is Thursday at 3PM. And again, that's either in person or joining online. Also coming up very, very quickly. Of course, our university campus wide commencement events of which there are tens of different ceremonies throughout campus in the next couple of weeks, with the campus-wide UT Commencement being the morning of Saturday, May 28th. And as everyone knows, our alum and current US President, Joe Biden will be the commencement speaker. Please take a look at the logistical expectations for all of our different events which are available on the commencement website, highlighted here. Generally speaking, tickets are required for all of these events, both for the tickets for the graduates and as well for the guess. The commencement ceremony on the morning of May 28th in Delaware stadium, as one would expect, given that will be honored by the President, honored by the presence of the President of the United States. Security and planning for that is, is rather robust. And so plenty, get there early and be comfortable in your seats before the programming starts. So as I mentioned, yeah, it's a great pleasure. Oops, went too quickly there to welcome three leaders across campus who about two years ago started the gory effort, the UD anti-racism initiative, with some really profoundly important and timely and really I think very helpful and creative programming. So it's my pleasure to welcome the three co-chairs. Professor Lynette, over B, Professor Alice and Parker, and Professor Earl Smith. I will turn it over to them and for their presentation. And my role will be to advance the slides. So when that Allison and URL over to you and welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It like to advance to the next slide. That would be great. And maybe than 11. So I else and Parker and I'm one of the co-chairs of the ET anti-racism initiative. And we started initiative as a grass roots endeavor to bring together faculty, staff and students around campus to deal with and think seriously about the problem of anti-black racism on campus and in our world. At the time. The impetus in the spring and summer of 2020 was the response, wanting to have a response to George Floyd's murder and to thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement. And how our campus could be part of that. Unfortunately, we're meeting here today right after we had yet another huge tragedy this weekend in Buffalo with an explicitly white supremacist and anti-black racism as it's motivating factor. And so this is an ongoing issue and a problem and something that we want as a university to be doing the research into racism, structural racism, solutions to these problems. And we need to think about how we can solve some of the problems with our own racism on campus in terms of even just the structure of who Welcome whose peasant in a predominantly white space. And so these are the kinds of things that we're here to work on. And if you could advance to the next slide, early smiths will take over and talk about some of our goals and missions. So my name is Earl Smith and I'm a sociologist. And how's currently in the Women and Gender Studies Program. I'm going to say two or three things here. One, you diaries mission is to infuse anti-racist work into each of the core principles of the university. Things that we say we treasure the most. Teaching, research, creative activities, service, and community engagement. That those are the pieces in which you diaries mission is built around. The goals of your diary ought to contribute through each of these core principles. Teaching, research, and service to the reduction of systemic racism on campus and in the communities that we work in. In terms of the next slide, please. Structure and function. I don't see the slide. I'm looking for structure and function. We have three chairs. We were introduced earlier, Dr. Parker, Doctor Lynette over B and myself, Earl Smith. One of the things we do in terms of the structure and function is to focus on research that is being done by faculty and students that were involved with. These are undergraduates, graduate faculty, early professors, and professors who are actually along in their work. In the humanities and the social sciences. We're doing a lot of work. And these are in our estimate disciplines that are often neglected. When we discuss research at the university, we hear a lot about stem disciplines and less about humanities and social sciences. For example. Under the leadership of Professor Dale underway, he has graduate and undergraduate students and his history classes doing archival research. It says a specific methodology in humanities and history in particular. And they are also collecting oral histories among black residents of New York in order to learn more about the various forms of freedom and what they call unfreedom that blacks living in and around and working on campus have experience since the founding of the university. One of the projects, myself and colleagues, three undergraduate summer scholars, three faculty and women and gender studies, specifically in the Center for the Study and prevention of gender-based violence. We're doing an ethnographic study and the City of Wilmington. And we're looking at families, families of color who are experiencing intimate partner violence, and how the criminal legal system deals with these people. So we're doing not only ethnography, which structured interviews, and also some quantitative. We're looking at 911 calls in in these communities and Wilmington. Thank you. Next slide, please. Okay. I'd like to talk a little bit more about some of the activities that we have. One of the things that we do is we have a set of committees. And the committees are committees that were formed starting on the very first day when we had our initial meeting in August of 2020. And some people who had already been working on issues on campus, such as prison education projects to try to help find a way to eventually help incarcerated inmates to become. Students in the AAP program to get degrees and to transfer into the main campus of ED. And this is something that had been going on. But they joined as a committee of, as part of the UD anti-racism initiative and got an infusion of members. And also we're able then to put together some funding proposals and some internship proposals. So in some ways, it was about highlighting and pulling together work that was being done across the campus. But in a way that could bring an infusion of energy into, and then sometimes resources into these committees. So that is an example of one of them. Another one that came fully formed from the initiation of you Dari was the Indigenous Programming Committee, which has done a remarkable amount of really excellent work, including by creating a living land acknowledgment with specific action steps that are attached to it. And for the committee and the UD anti-racism initiative, the idea that the land acknowledgment is something that has something more specific attached to it that talks about how can we not only just do programming, but how can we potentially provide education for indigenous people from the Delaware area to come to Udi at, at costs without having to pay that, these kinds of things. So there are some plans in place and many discussions about how to move forward on these. Professor Smith, I already mentioned the legacy of enslavement and dispossession committee because that's the one that's headed by Dale Norwood in history and also Laura Hilton in English. And what's remarkable about, about what they've done so far is they were helpful in encouraging the university to apply for and become a part of the University Studying Slavery Consortium that's developed out of the University of Virginia. And this is an attempt for us to look at our land records and at other records and really find out who were the people who gave the money and the land to Udi? And what do we know about their record of enslavement or the way that they were using long-term indentured servitude all the way up through the 870 is in fact, some of the work that they found. We've had presentations, it's the scholars in the library as the students have done those work, the work. And there's a course called racial inequality in Delaware. That's a team taught interdisciplinary course that's cross-listed in multiple departments. And so these are really specific examples of how we are moving forward to engage students and to really encourage people to think seriously about the history here. Next slide, please. What we've done each year is had access to grants. First year was from the provost's office. And the second year it's been mainly through the Office of Institutional Equity. And we've been able to use the monies that we've received from the institution to create a series of small grant proposals. In the first year, those small grant proposals went to the committees within the UT anti-racism initiative to put on specific programs. So for example, the committee that works on anti-Asian hate on campus and in the broader community, put on a series of meetings where there was a film screening. Then the directors and or participants in the documentaries and other films were brought into a conversation with AuD students and faculty. And they were very enriching and rewarding events. So these kinds of things can be funded through these small grants. The other thing that we've done is we've had a series of grants that went to faculty fellows over the summers last year we had four, we also funded graduate students to do research. Some of them are in the sciences, some of them were in the humanities. And we've had undergraduate researchers working as well. These are all things that we announce through the UD anti-racism listserv, which if you go to the site of the uji anti-racism initiative, which I've put into the chat a couple of times. So I think at this point, you all have, I can do it one more time. But that site has a section on the homepage under I think about where it says that there's an interest form that you can fill out and then you can either join a committee and be a full member of the UT anti-racist initiative. Or you can say that you're interested as a supportive ally, but you don't feel like you can be on a committee at this point. And if that's the case, we'll put you on the listserv and then you'll at least get all of the information about the various events that we're holding across the campus. And so this is a, this set of grants. We did a kind of similar version this last year for 2021, 2022. And we're especially funding quite a few students, graduate students and undergraduates for research over the summer through the Summer Scholars Program. And with CGI engaging with us as well. And we also have to Faculty Fellows if you could advance to the next slide. And this year the two recipients are two assistant professors, Dr. Kishor posture and English and Dr. Christian hues in sociology and criminal justice. And we're very excited to promote their work and give them a chance to spend the summer on it with some summer funding. So those are the kinds of things that we've been able to do thus far with r. And there's a whole series of events, programming and other kinds of things that we've been doing as well. But that's the basic idea about the grants that we've been able to do. So if you could advance the next slide. So I think I'll turn it over to when it over b now. I thank you. Allison. Yeah. My name is Lynn at over beehive, faculty in the Department of Theater and Director of our community engagement initiative. And I began working with Allison and then later URL as 2020. At that time I was vice president of the Faculty Senate. And we were also grappling with what we could do as far as response to the George Floyd murder and the UD, are you diary? Initiative began at that time. So as URL and Alison had mentioned, we have been able to, as our goal was to reach faculty staffs, undergraduate students, and graduate students and have them take action. Think about projects and programming that would promote a deeper understanding of these racial issues specifically occurring in Delaware, but also beyond. So we have some goals for the future. And that is now we've have enough project that we really think we can have a symposium, our showcase, and then response to some of the projects that have occurred. And to talk about next steps, What else should we be doing? The critical race theory, as you know, is very much in the news in academic settings. Or we want to have a series of conversations about critical race here in this upcoming academic year. Talk about how we're, can be a voice in university diversity dialogues and decisions. One thing we talk about the fact that yes, we're, we're doing research. We're involved in teaching and curriculum, but also a response to current issues and to be a voice at the table. When these issues come about. For example, we know that there are groups who come on campus. They target specific groups with languish this inflammatory. And how should we respond to that? That was one of the recent issues that we were discussing. And this most recent one with the killing of the individuals and Buffalo on another area that we are at the table and trying to help with the conversations that need to go on now. And this last one talks about, yes, we are grassroots, but we also need the institutionalization for the funding so that we can be responsive. We can provide grants, we can provide support. But at the same time, we can listen and be a voice to those who are in need of explaining, understanding, discussing, describing issues regarding race and racism at University of Delaware, MBI. So I think now that we, we want to, I guess we'll close out the slides and open it up for questions for anyone. Or further discussion comments. And we're always looking for suggestions for improvement of our work. Will lead that and URL and Allison, thank you so much for joining us today. There are a few questions. I know you mentioned your grants program and you have that on your website, you have information about some of the recent recipients. Can you give folks an idea of what the funding amounts are and are you planning to continue that program in 2022 and beyond? Yes. I can certainly talk a little bit about About about that. So are the grant, the funding level I'll talk about for the summer scholars. So we, we built it into our community engagement summer scholars program for undergraduates and for our graduates. And so they are receiving 4 thousand undergraduates, 5 thousand graduates. Our faculty receiving a little more. And Alice, and maybe you can remind me about how much the faculty are receiving. But it's there in that, in that range. And we do, um, is something we plan to do in the future. And we also have funding for the subcommittees, so they come up with projects and they are looking for funding. We were able to support them. Bring in speakers or for various programs. Yes. So we do intend to continue that, right. Great. Thank you. Also a question about these faculty lead trainings and teaching about race and confronting racism. Will you expect to offer any of those programs over the summer months or what's kind of the cycle for that. And how would faculty be alerted about those opportunities? Yes. So can we take that slide down so we aren't I that possible that we all can come back. Great. Yeah. So yes, uh, we we were able to collaborate with other groups on campus and in the previous discussions and we plan to do more in the future. And have Alison, did you want to speak more to that? I think it's true that we have received a lot of questions and interest in how to teach about race and anti-racism among people who are doing it and finding that they're encountering issues and problems. Whether it's students saying something or using language that, you know, you're kind of hoping that they wouldn't be using in the classroom. But then how do you deal with it when it does happen? And just kind of nuts and bolts types of questions that faculty sometimes have. And then the faculty in stem, we're saying, Well, you know, sometimes we don't teach about race at all in any way whatsoever. And so what does it mean to even think about it in the context? So we had people who were stem faculty give a training where they were also talking about, how do you even maybe come up with notions about inclusivity in terms of the syllabus or other ways where instead of thinking of a class as a class to weed people out, you're trying to use it as a way to pull people in. So there's even some very subtle things that can really change the way that a person who's maybe, you know, a, a woman or present color who's not necessarily feeling welcome to feel slightly more welcome, even if it's a so-called hired science where people are finding it hard to think about race in the way that we do in the arts and humanities and social sciences, right? So these are the kinds of things that we've dealt with this year. And we do plan on having comparable types of things going on next year. Very good. Thank you. And I know you mentioned projects are all that are underway and new arch and also in Wilmington. Are there any other counties of Delaware just wanted to ask the question on Alison, we've got Dharma and memory. As far as I know. No. But that doesn't mean that they can't be. I think a lot of what we see happening here has to do with where, where people are not only working but also living. I think I remember a conversation where some faculty with talking about doing some work south of of Newark. But I'm new to Delaware, so I don't know exactly when that might be. But I did hear people talking about some projects south north or south of Dover. And then we have people who are doing more kind of national kind of projects as well are are are beyond Delaware. I've just looking at some of the undergrad projects where we have a student who's contributing to an anti-racist curriculum, book, curriculum for social studies teachers. And and then another H2S. Looked at poetry, but incarcerated artists and they're bringing that together to share on a larger venue. And then the Asian American art and material culture. One of our graduate students is working on creating a digital materials based on that. So I think we do have very specific to to Delaware, but also beyond with some of the projects that they're they're taking on. Right. Great. Thank you for those examples. And then I don't see wait a minute, there is a question. I believe I'm a wall wall. Well, I see Micheal Vonn made a comment. We might mention the work with the Lewis historical society. That's right. We have a lot of undergraduate and graduate students doing internships with local history and other museums in, throughout all of Delaware, working on, trying to think about how to interpret that collections in a more expansive way. Talk about the sites in a way that includes understanding all of the people who lived there, which could include enslaved people. Previous data, also, Native Americans, whole variety of things. So the students have been helping with that. And it was actually really exciting time for the projects that were taking place during the pandemic particle was able to happen. We're online reinterpretations of the materials that, that the smaller institutions in Delaware had online and trying to think about what we could do with that. But then the UD anti-racism initiative has also worked really closely with the Delaware Historical Society in its project on racial inequality in Delaware. Trying to find the historical records of basically trying to document the history. And then in some cases, see if we can figure out what what next steps need to happen, including whether it's a plaque or some kind of monument. So it's been going on in a variety of contexts. The other way that this is showing up is that we have a couple of interns who are working on what they call a Story Map, which is going to help. This is with librarians in the Digital Humanities Collection. And they are working with the students to create maps with our campus tours committee. And the campus tours committee is trying to think about how we can put together supplement and, or suggest changes for the campus store based on including different sites. Bringing in black history, thinking about how we can talk about Newark and the surrounding areas. These are the kinds of things that students have been engaged in and are still working on with the librarians. The summer, for example. A great, great, it sounds wonderful. Now I know Alison, you put into the chat a couple of times the link to your website. Is there any other way you want folks to reach out to you? Is there an e-mail or should they go to one of you versus another? If they have questions? Well, you can go to any of us. And hopefully all of our emails are pretty easy and accessible from behind is a parkour at u del.edu. But yeah, but I think the website has that interests form and that's another clear way of doing it. So we can track that and get people signed up that that yet I think there are lots of A's to see that the way that we're making connections across the different parts of the university. I'm one of the things that we've been doing is we've been participating through Dr. Roger Horowitz is class on black oral histories and Delaware to have a series of interviews that the students in his class did with black Delaware Aryans. And especially if this was all organized by Denise Hayman. And she is one of the founding members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, which was, is a black sorority that was formed for the first time in a chapter on our campus in 1975. And now the sorority is in the process of working to donate artifacts from, it's from their members collections to Udi, to the university archives. This is a very big and exciting development and that should be happening. This. But wow, what a great, Well, best of luck to all of you and thank you so much for participating today, Charlie, we've covered all the questions that have come in, so handed it back to you. Great, Thanks so much Tracy and two professors over B, Parker and Smith, I want to thank you both for a very clear and informative presentation this afternoon, and also very importantly for your leadership in launching, sustaining, and as you noted, now working to institutionalize you, Dari saw him. I'm really excited to see the programming they'll take place over the course of the summer and then. The next academic year. So thank you all for joining us and for your leadership. Thank you for the invitation. Or so, let me go back to sharing and just very quickly run through a few updates before we open up any final questions that our community may have. I don't have to tell you probably that the positivity rate is is ticking up both locally and nationally. So I have put on the right hand splat part of the slide the positivity rate for the State of Delaware and each of the monthly Town Hall dates we've had since the beginning of 2002. We're currently at 16.4%. That's the highest since back in early January when we're up at 28%. So in a global sense, we're certainly nowhere near the peak of the omicron spike in December and January, but numbers are certainly increasing both in terms of cases and hospitalizations. Well, on campus. Similarly, we are seeing a bit of an increase, as you can see. So last week, a 162 positive cases, both among our employee and student populations. So a good reminder for folks as we wind down this semester and have a lot of important work to take place in the next few weeks, both finishing class's final exams, all sorts of commencement exercises, as we talked about that testing is critically important part of our layering approach to keep COVID at bay and in particular the latest variant at bay. Just a reminder on product for protocols on campus, masking is no longer required in non-classroom spaces. That is required in the classrooms on our transportation. Ud buses, for example, as well as UD health care settings. But while masks are not required, there's certainly encouraged. I myself, I find myself wearing a mask much more frequently in the last week or two that I had in the past, driven by the increase in numbers that we're seeing across campus and across New Castle County as well as the state. So just as a reminder, those face masks are required. The daily health screening should be completed every day that you're on campus, will continue to make PCR testing available and Harker lab and toll May 26th, that's the last day of PCR testing plan. That's again, that's a sin to implement asymptomatic testing on campus. And so there are no plans for summer surveillance testing. There continue to be a large number of antigen self-tests available and folks can contact Environmental Health and Safety. Mark c for the group will help get you access to antigen tests should you need them. And just a reminder that the Harker lab is for asymptomatic, as I said, and appointments registration is required. This is the 48th and last Town Hall of this semester. It's a Fourier town hall since COVID pandemic began, our first one was on March 16th, 2020. And all of you have contributed significantly to keeping campus safe, keeping our educational, research and service and outreach missions of the institution moving forward AND, and, OR some really challenging times. I can't thank everyone who has participated. It has really been helpful, but I did want to just take a moment and thank the individuals whose pictures you see on this screen have been a core group of leaders and collaborators and partners as we put these town halls together and tried our best to provide information to the campus community, provide actionable information and to address all of your good, sometimes very challenging and important question. So Dave bars Zack, I should also give a shout out to Dave bars act because I understand he, in addition to MacKenzie and Steve literate, start to blame or two more. Sincerely be responsible for the music selections during the Town Hall. So thanks for all of that data as well as all your work with the slides. Tracy Bryant, who you've heard from Weekly, has been a fantastic partner. Steve literacy, I've already mentioned from university media services, not only with music selections, but always ensuring that we're very well organized on time and all of the zooming works well. And then, of course, from a content and Student Health Services perspective, we were fortunate when the pandemic commenced that we had Tim Dowling to rely on. We were quite I speak for myself. I was quite concerned For us when Tim announced his retirement. And while I think that concern was understandable, we did we literally did not miss a beat as Student Health Services transitioned from Tim to Kelly Frick. They're really two outstanding medical health care professionals that we've been fortunate to have leading our campus during these very difficult times. So with that, I will turn it over to Tracy to see if there are anymore questions that can be addressed. And if not, we can move on. But Tracy, are there any questions? Surely there are actually some comments here. We don't take comments, Tracey. Well, yeah. Now today we are oh go my goodness sake. We're saying thank you so much, Charlie for host and knees. Thank you for keeping us informed this year. Well, my goodness, I can't believe we haven't done nearly 50 of these. But we have. And you've done a great job. It's been a lot. It's been it's been wonderful to work with all of you on this. I guess probably the last message is inserted. Any questions good, that I will pass on. And in the form of a public service announcement is we do have a forecast of some potentially very intense weather in our community. So please be whether conscious over the next couple of hours and pay attention to any alerts and take them with all seriousness that they weren't. Somebody like myself spent 4.5 years in Kansas. Tornado warnings are much more frequent out there, but no less serious than when they're made here. So please be careful and pay attention to those weather alerts as they come across your screen. And we can certainly put those pictures down now Dave, part SEC. Even with whoever is responsible, how can you get to see everyone on a calculator that's out there. Countries. Hold on a minute, Charlie. We just wanted to thank you for all the leadership and serving the research community. I'm sure that I speak on behalf of everyone, that you've been just done a wonderful job here. We will miss you terribly, but we do wish you all the best moving forward. So thank you so much. And do you see the news while clapping hands going on here? I think I do see those, Dave. And thumbs up. Thank a burglar. All links a lot, Charlie, externally, arithmetic.
Town Hall - May 16 2022
From David Barczak May 16, 2022
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A town hall hosted on May 16, 2022, provides important updates for the UD research community, from campus operations to grants administration, and ways you can help our local community at this time.
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