Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson spoke during the final session of the public Black Minds Matter online course. Throughout the eight-part webinar series, Black Minds Matter covered the experiences and realities of Black males in education, connecting the Black Lives Matter movement and the ways that Black minds are engaged in the classroom.

Dr. Jackson was joined by Dr. Ivory Toldson from Howard University, Vanessa McCullers from Moms of Black Boys United, and Dr. Robert Simmons III from Campaign for Black Male Achievement. To learn more about the course, click here. You can also connect with Dr. J. Luke Wood, creator of the course, on Facebook here.

The Wei LAB and the Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male at The Ohio State University announced that the 6th Annual International Colloquium on Black Males in Education (ICBME) will be held in Toronto, Canada on October 4-6, 2017. The event will be preceded by the Pre-Colloquium on October 2-3, 2017.

Toronto, named as the world’s most diverse city in a recent BBC study, provides a unique opportunity to explore issues related to equity and inclusion for Black men, not just in the city, but around the world.

“We are excited to engage in critical exchanges that positively impact the educational outcomes of Black males in Toronto, our neighbor to the north,” said Dr. LaVar J. Charleston, Colloquium Planning Committee member and Director of the Graduate School Academy. “As a city widely celebrated for its diversity, Toronto is an ideal location to share meaningful, asset-based approaches to the holistic development of Black males around the globe.”

Since 2012, the first convening of the Colloquium, ICBME has allowed researchers, practitioners, policymakers, students, and concerned citizens to come together for careful discussions on the key issues facing Black boys and men in education. Previous meetings were held in the United Kingdom, U.S. Virgin Islands, the United States, Jamaica, and Bermuda. Over the last five years, the Colloquium has grown from an intimate congregation of scholars and practitioners into a weeklong affair offering a wide range of events suited for a variety of participants interested in the education of Black males.

“With a focus to be more than just a research-oriented event, the Colloquium has expanded its Pre-Colloquium offerings with the intent to have a lasting impact on the host city,” said Christopher Moss, Coordinator of the Colloquium. “In Bermuda last year, Pre-Colloquium events, such as the Colloquium Conversations for parents and educators, and the College and Graduate School Academies for high school and undergraduate students, drew more than 300 Bermudian participants. This demonstrates the Colloquium has flourished into not only a significant academic assembly, but also a large-scale community-focused gathering that involves more than 500 people on both a local and international level which will directly impact the citizens of the greater Toronto area, as well as other parts of Canada and the world.”

Dr. Jerlando F. L Jackson and Dr. LaVar J. Charleston, along with Northern Illinois University Assistant Professor of Adult and Higher Education and UW-Madison School of Education graduate Cornelius Gilbert, served as editors for Advancing Equity and Diversity in Student Affairs: A Festschrift in Honor of Melvin C. Terrell.

The book highlights how student affairs have changed in response to student diversity on higher education campuses. It also honors the career and life of Dr. Melvin C. Terrell, a key figure and advocate for equity in the student affairs profession.

The book opens with a discussion on the history of student affairs, including a focus on African American contributions to the field and the role of diversity from a historical perspective. The book then transitions to current issues that impact students, such as the benefits of extracurricular activities, leadership involvement, and study-abroad opportunities for racially and ethnically marginalized students.

Other topics covered in the book include a discussion on programs and initiatives on college campuses that address diversity within student affairs, as well as professional and personal development opportunities beyond the university.

Dr. Shaun R. Harper, Clifford and Betty Allen Professor of Education at the University of Southern California, and Gregory Roberts, Former Executive Director of the American College Personnel Association, wrote endorsements for the book.

Advancing Equity and Diversity in Student Affairs can be ordered online here.

Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson delivered a keynote address at the Accelerating Data-Driven Collaboration for Large Scale Progress conference. The conference was held April 3-5, 2017 in Kansas City, MO. The event focused on identifying new ways to gather data and make evidence-based decisions in research projects.

Dr. Jackson’s keynote address was on the first day of the conference, alongside Vice President of Research of Student Veterans of America Dr. Chris Cate, at the opening reception framed around the theme “Driving Change Through Data.” The opening reception focused on explaining how to use databases to inform and assist with decision-making processes, as well as methods and tools that can be used to measure the success of these programs. Dr. Jackson’s address was entitled “Responding to the National Mandate to Diversify the Scientific Workforce: A Decade of Research on African Americans in Computing.”

The conference was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discovers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) awards. The event was conducted in collaboration with the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Institute for Human Development and UMKC School of Computing and Engineering, a recipient of an INCLUDES grant.

NSF INCLUDES is an initiative that works to broaden the participation of minority students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Thirty-seven projects were selected to receive an INCLUDES grant, including one that was awarded to Wei LAB staff members.

For more information about the conference, click here. For more information on the NSF INCLUDES grants, click here.

Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson attended the Atlanta Collective Impact Backbone Design Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia on March 2-3, 2017. The two-day workshop was for NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot grantees to “learn how to develop backbone functions for their Computer Science/STEM education focused Collective Impact initiative” and “develop strategies to maximize CS/STEM education outcomes for diverse community based initiatives.”

The workshop featured opportunities for the grantees to share their proposals and receive peer and expert feedback, as well as learn more on how to design backbone functions for their projects and move forward in their research endeavors.

The training workshop was aimed at NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot grantees. Dr. Jackson serves as Co-PI for one of these grants, awarded in September for a project titled “The Consortium of Minority Doctoral Scholars (CDMS).” Dr. Jackson also serves as the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wei LAB Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate Dr. LaVar J. Charleston serves on the Social Science Research Team as Senior Personnel for the grant.

The goal of the project is to broaden the participation of minorities in the STEM fields.

To learn more about the workshop, click here.

Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson and Wei LAB Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate Dr. LaVar J. Charleston traveled to Tampa, Florida to collect data for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) Consortium of Minority Doctoral Scholars (CMDS) project at the McKnight Annual Research and Writing Conference on February 24-25, 2017.

The INCLUDES CMDS Project focuses on researching mentoring strategies used to address recruitment and retention concerns with women and ethnic minority populations, specifically for African Americans and Latinas pursuing doctoral degrees in STEM. Data was collected from in-person interviews to understand the mechanisms that non-traditional mentoring programs, like McKnight, use in order to support minority students. The McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program was one of three programs that will be used to collect data for this project. The other two programs are the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the National GEM Consortium.

“McKnight, SREB, and GEM have moved the bottom line for underrepresented groups pursuing PhDs in the United States,” Dr. Jackson said.

The purpose of this research is to understand the collective impact of McKnight, SREB, and the National GEM Consortium on minority doctoral students. The project aims to better understand the experiences related to participation and to identify successful mentoring strategies that can be used to increase the number of minority Engineering and Computer & Information Sciences students who go on to obtain a PhD and research and faculty positions.

“With national mandates to broaden participation in STEM, particularly at the doctoral and faculty levels, we have the opportunity to glean critical attributes of these interventions that have a proven track record of success. The implications of this work may have broader impacts to institutions around the country aiming to diversify their scientific faculty,” Dr. Charleston said.

The McKnight Mid-Year Annual Research and Writing Conference was developed for the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program and provides opportunities for its fellows to present research and receive professional advice, as well as collaborate with peers and receive assistance on exam preparation and dissertation proposals. The McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program is part of the Florida Education Fund (FEF), a non-profit corporation established in 1984.

To learn more about the McKnight Fellowship program, click here.

Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson presented at the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals (NASAP) 2017 conference on February 17, 2017.

The 63rd annual conference was held February 16-18, 2017 in Durham, North Carolina.

Dr. Jackson led a session titled “Honoring the Legacy of a Former NASAP President and Student Affairs Stalwart: A Tribute to the Career of Dr. Melvin C. Terrell” along with Fred Bonner from Prairie A&M University, D. Jason DeSousa of Morgan State University, Sharon Holmes of Binghamton University, and Lemuel Watson of the University of South Carolina.

The session honored the work and accomplishments of former NASAP President and Editor of the NASAP Journal, Dr. Melvin C. Terrell. The presenters all co-wrote the book Advancing Equity and Diversity in Student Affairs: The Applied Scholarship of Melvin C. Terrell.

For more information on the NASAP Conference, click here.

The Wei LAB sponsored 10th annual Asa G. Hilliard III and Barbara A. Sizemore Research Course on African Americans and Education was offered during the 2017 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Participants in the course learned the fundamentals of developing a research career focused on African American populations in education. They also had the chance to work directly with researchers on questions and methods to guide their research studies. The course included sessions on manuscript development and research design techniques.

Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson and Belk Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair Chance Lewis of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte will serve as directors of the course.

Dr. Jackson commented, “I am honored to have answered the call 10 years ago from Senior African American scholars in education that felt an initiative was needed to support graduate students and early career scholars who want to focus their research on the experiences of African Americans in education.”

The course will took place on Thursday April 27, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the AERA annual meeting in San Antonio, TX.

The course is sponsored by the Wei LAB, Urban Education Collaborative, Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, and the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network.

To learn more about the program, click here.
For further questions, please email us.

Wei LAB Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate Dr. LaVar J. Charleston presented his research project “Double-Sided Mirrors: The Media’s Impact on the Academic Identity Development of Black Male Student-Athletes” at the Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference (EQRC) on January 31, 2017. The paper is co-authored by Raul Leon from Eastern Michigan University.

Their research focuses on how Black male student-athletes form their identities and how the development of their academic identity is influenced by media messages. Data was collected through focus groups and one-on-one interviews with Black male student-athletes at a Midwestern NCAA Division I institution. The study highlighted that students make conscious efforts to combat media stereotypes by succeeding academically and socially; areas that are both outside of athletics.

EQRC is an annual national research conference for presenting qualitative research. This January marked the research conference’s 29th annual meeting. This year, the conference was sponsored by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) College of Education.

To learn more about EQRC, click here. To watch a YouTube video of the presentation, click here.

Wei LAB Director and Chief Research Scientist Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson and Wei LAB Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate Dr. LaVar J. Charleston presented their project: “Beyond the Game: A Passport for Collegiate and Career Success” at the Black Student-Athlete Summit on January 6, 2017.

Their research examined the Beyond the Game™ (BTG) initiative designed by the Wei LAB. The project addressed concerns and challenges that Black student-athletes face, and how to promote academic and social success for these students. This year marked the third annual Black Student-Athlete Summit. Hosted by the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, the annual summit brings together scholars, athletic directors, coaches, academic advisors, and professional and student-athletes to discuss critical issues surrounding Black student-athletes.

Previous conferences have focused on varied challenges and opportunities that Black student-athletes face both inside and outside the classroom. Last year’s conference was titled “Success Both On and Off the Field.”

The Wei LAB served as a sponsor for this year’s event.

More information on the Black Student-Athlete Summit can be found here.