American Association of Blacks in Higher Education

AABHE Annual Conference

March 25-29, 2009, Atlanta, GA

AABHE Annual National Conference on Blacks in Higher Education

Closing the GAPS in Education: Strategies for Access and Success

March 25-29, 2009

Buckhead Hotel Atlanta

Atlanta, GA

Conference AT A Glance

Conference Theme: Closing the GAPS in Education: Strategies for Access and Success

(Program Subject to Change)

Wednesday March 25, 2009

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Golf Tournament

Thursday, March 26, 2009

8:00 am - 1:30 pm

Pre-Conference Workshops

2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Black History Tour

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Opening Reception

Friday, March 27, 2009

7:30 am - 9:00 am

Breakfast Plenary

9:00 pm - 11:30 am

Concurrent Workshops

11:30 am - 1:00 pm

AABHE President's Awards Luncheon

1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Special & Concurrent Sessions

4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Vendor Happy Hour

Saturday, March 28, 2008

7:30 am - 9:15 am

Breakfast Plenary

9:30 am - 10:30 am

Concurrent Sessions

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

AABHE Business Meeting

1:45 pm - 2:45 pm

Concurrent Sessions

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Town Hall Meeting:  Hip Hop in Higher Education

6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Closing Reception and the Pocket Book Monologues

Pre Conference Workshops

Workshop I

Title: Developing a Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning at a Baccalaureate Institution

Presenters:

Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, Johnson C. Smith University

Harriette W. Richard, Johnson C. Smith University

Workshop Description:  This workshop will discuss structure, program components, and support needed for developing a Center for innovative Teaching and learning at a small undergraduate institution.  More specifically, this session will describe how a campus based program recruits and retains faculty participants, provides administrative support, creates faculty engagement activities, obtains funding, and conducts program assessment.  Participants will work in groups to share ideas and identify some program components to take home. 

Workshop II

Title: Writing to Publish in Academic Journals

Presenters:

Alice M. Scales, NER Editor-in-Chief

Shirley A. Biggs, NER Co-Managing Editor

Sharon Nelson-Le Gall, NER Advisory Editor

Workshop Description: This workshop is designed to discuss with participants how to prepare manuscripts for review. Participants are encouraged to bring draft manuscripts in hard copy (at least 2 copies) and in electronic format to the session for study. Copies of The Negro Educational Review (NER) will be available for review.  Participants are encouraged to bring their laptop computers.

Workshop III

Title: African American Women in Leadership in Higher Education

Workshop Presenter: TBD

Workshop Description: This workshop will address two higher education tracks—faculty and administrators.  The session is designed to discuss successful strategies and pitfalls that faculty can use to attain tenure and to achieve the highest faculty position possible.  The session will also provide successful strategies and pitfalls for administrators who seek to move up the ladder, and provide strategies one should use to move from being a faculty member to becoming an administrator?  

Workshop IV

Title: Establishing Campus-Wide Diversity

Workshop Presenter:

William Harvey, Vice President, Diversity, University of Virginia

Workshop Description: This workshop will discuss how to establish campus-wide polices on issues of diversity.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Belle Wheelan, Ph.D.  President, Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, will give the opening address.  During her 33-year career in education, she has held every position from faculty to the Secretary of Education, Virginia. A powerhouse of a speaker, Dr. Wheelan’s wealth of knowledge will kick off the conference proceedings.

Father Edward Branch currently serves as the Catholic Chaplain for the Atlanta University Center. In his twenty-eight year tenure in campus ministry he has regularly facilitated and initiated student involvement in HIV prevention and AIDS awareness. 

Carlton E. Brown, Ph.D. recently became Clark Atlanta University’s third president.  A seasoned administrator and a change agent, for nine years Dr. Brown previously severed as president of Savannah State University, and as vice president for planning and dean of the Graduate College at Hampton University, Virginia.

2009 AABHE AWARDS RECIPIENTS

Harold Delaney Exemplary Educational Leadership Award and Lecture

Johnnetta B. Cole’s stellar career in higher education includes being the only individual to have served as the president of two historically Black colleges for women in the United States—Bennett College for Women, where she currently serves as the president emerita, and Spelman College.  Her vocation as an educator and humanitarian has earned her 52 honorary degrees and numerous awards.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Charles V. Willie is the Charles W. Eliot Professor Education Emeritus, at Harvard Graduate School of Education.  During Dr. Willie’s distinctive career he has served as chairman of the Department of Sociology and vice president of student affairs at Syracuse University. President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the President's Commission on Mental Health.  His commitment to education is reflected in his numerous publications that include the subjects on race, gender, and family relations.   

President’s Pacesetters Award

Roy Jones, director, Call Me MISTER, Clemson University is a 20-year veteran of education who sought to reverse the staggering national statistics of the crisis of young black males—high prison, expulsion, and drop out rates.  Since 1999 the Call Me MISTER program has successfully recruited, trained, mentored and retained future black male teachers.

Exemplary Award for Public Service

Benjamin F. Quillian was recently appointed as the vice chancellor, administration and finance, for California State University. Prior to his appointment at the CSU, Dr. Quillian served as the Senior Vice President for Business and Operations at the American Council on Education (ACE) for over five years; and as Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer at California State University-Fresno for nearly a decade.  An active member of the AABHE he has been an avid supporter and presenter of the AABHE Leadership and Mentoring Institute.

Distinguished Cultural Award

Jabari Asim, author, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why, he is editor-in-chief of the NAACP's "The Crisis" magazine. He spent 11 years at "The Washington Post," where he was a deputy editor of the book review section and a syndicated columnist on political and social issues. 

SPECIAL EVENTS

TOWN HALL MEETING

Hip Hop in Higher Education

Since its inception the hip hop culture has had a tumultuous relationship with the academy.  While ignoring the positive images that derived from the culture, society jumped at the opportunity to embrace the negative portrayals of black youth who also pumped those images out.  Higher education, at first hesitant to embrace this swaggering new genre, eventually did so engaging in empirical research and sociological studies to determine the impact that the Hip Hop culture had made on society.  Many institutions currently offer courses and majors in Hip Hop leading one to question, has the academy finally accepted Hip Hop culture?

Ben Chavis, president, Hip Hop Summit Action Network whose mission seeks to harness “the cultural relevance of Hip-Hop music to serve as a catalyst for education advocacy and other societal concerns fundamental to the empowerment of youth.”

Stephanie Shonekan, ethnomusicologist and professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies; and director, Black World Studies, Columbia College Chicago.

Mark Anthony Neal, professor of Black Popular Culture, Department of African and African-American Studies; and director, Institute for Critical U.S. Studies (ICUSS), Duke University. 

THE POCKETBOOK MONOLOGUES

Sharon K. McGhee

The PocketBook Monologues are poignant narratives of black women’s intimate emotions that are rarely shared with others.  While viewing Eve Ensley’s, The Vagina Monologues,” author, Sharon K. McGhee, asked herself, “where are our stories.”  That question led her to interview dozens of black women and to publish their stories.  The women constantly used the term “pocketbook” referring to their most cherished parts.  This is a powerful yet fun-filled piece that engages the audience through tales of sexuality, intimacy and responsibility. “Baby, keep your pocketbook closed!”