Lincoln (Neb.) - April 6, 1998 - The third annual award- winning conference focusing on issues facing people of color in predominantly white educational institutions will be April 23-24 at the University of Nebraska Clifford Hardin Nebraska Center for Continuing Education, 33rd and Holdrege streets.
The conference, "People of Color in Predominantly White Institutions," recently won the Conferences and Professional Programs Exemplary Award, a national award from the University Continuing Education Association. The association is the principal professional organization for continuing higher education in the United States.
This year's conference features Blandina Cardenas-Ramirez, a longtime activist for education reform; Ella Edmondson Bell, a researcher and educator in organizational behavior; and Quintard Taylor, a historian of African Americans in the United States.
More than 60 presenters with a variety of ethnic backgrounds from 33 U.S. institutions will explore issues and represent the perspectives of students, faculty and staff members in several educational settings.
Bell, an associate professor at Belk College of Business Administration, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, will open the conference at 9 a.m. April 23. She is an expert in organizational change in the management of race, gender and culture. Along with her colleague, Stella Nkomo, Bell is writing a book, "Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women's Paths to Success in Corporate America," to be published this year. Before joining the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1996, she was assistant professor of organization studies for five years at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has a doctorate in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University.
Taylor, the preeminent scholar of African American Western history, will speak at noon April 23. He is a professor and head of the department of history at the University of Oregon. Taylor wrote "The Forging of a Black Community: A History of Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era" (1994) and "In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1529-1990" (1998). "Forging" is the fifth book selected since 1968 for the Emil and Kathleen Sick Series in Western History and Biography. "Search" is the second book (and the first in two decades) that examines the region's African American population. Taylor has a doctorate from the University of Minnesota.
Cardenas-Ramirez, a longtime activist for education reform and equity who has served two terms on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, will speak at 9 a.m. April 24 . She is chair of the board of trustees of the Education Testing Services in Princeton, N.J., and associate professor of education leadership and administration at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Cardenas- Ramirez is a former head of the Office of Minorities in Higher Education at the American Council on Education. Under her directorship, the office became a locus of information on minority higher education programs around the country. Cardenas- Ramirez holds a doctorate in education administration from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Concurrent session topics include racial identity and academic achievement, networking strategies, mentoring programs, popular and traditional culture, affirmative action, creating community through diversity, recruitment and retention, and dealing with racism, classism and sexism.
The conference is cosponsored by the University of Nebraska African American and African Studies program, athletic department, chancellor's office, management department, Institute for Ethnic Studies, Latino and Latin American Studies, multicultural affairs, Teachers College and the Division of Continuing Studies' academic conferences and professional programs department.
Registration is required. Discounts are available for
University of Nebraska students. For more information, call
academic conferences and professional programs at (402) 472-2844.
For conference updates, check the World Wide Web page at
(http://www.unl.edu/conted/acpp/).
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