Our vision of professional development is about promoting institutional environments where white people can move beyond their fears and join with black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) in the work of reflective justice, an essential element of our mutual liberations. In short, our work is about decentering whiteness in institutional spaces so everyone can thrive.

Launched in 2013 at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Critical Identity Studies (CRIS) is a unique curricular project that doubles down on intersectionality (as opposed to privileging any singular identity category like gender or race or sexuality). CRIS draws its analytical frameworks from women's/ethnic/queer/disability/indigenous studies to interrogate our culture's historical legacies and contemporary operations of interlocking systems of power and oppression. Using a combination of classic and cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship relevant to contemporary social movements and current events, CRIS asks how can liberal arts curricula and other sites of human development create spaces of thriving for those who sit on the margins. By naming anti-blackness, recognizing settler colonialism, seeing the operations of class-based oppression, and de-centering whiteness, CRIS provides the knowledge and support for students to develop equity-based interventions into the injustices they see and experience in their everyday lives. Duties have included: on-going research, writing, leadership in higher education at national and local levels; engagement and leadership in academic and activist communities devoted to equity and justice; promotion of this deep intersectional approach to inter/disciplines in higher education through public presentations; supervision and mentoring of junior and affiliated faculty; and consulting work as an external reviewer for departments and academic programs seeking to update and innovate and attract 21st century prospective students to their respective institutions.

Funded through a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Decolonizing Pedagogies Project (DPP) has sought to nothing short of the transformation of diversity and inclusion work within higher education. At Beloit College, that has meant: 1) a co-facilitated reading series, 2) team-led course development workshops with peer coaching, and 3) collaboratively-run research and action teams that pair faculty/staff with student researchers, the DPP has enhanced the overall living and learning experiences and educational outcomes of all Beloit students. We teach faculty and staff to recognize and--where possible--dismantle the structural barriers that prohibit equitable access to our college mission for underserved and underrepresented students. Through the curriculum, teaching, operations, and culture at our historically white college, this slow and deep method of leadership development is proactive and sustainable in that it empowers people to intervene in the unquestioned traditions and settled practices in their respective institutions. While the DPP utilizes a model that lasts between one semester and one-year (with opportunities for participants to repeat various pieces of the project), we have also facilitated workshops that draw on these methods for workshops that last from 90 minutes to two days. Duties include: Grant writing; program vision development with a leadership team; facilitation of difficult dialogues; conflict management; individual consultations.

Working in partnership with the Associate Dean of Student Affairs, the Initiatives Program led faculty and staff through a eight-month process that fostered hands-on planning, development, and execution of state-of-the-art liberal arts curricula and advising practices for first year and sophomore students. Grounded in the relative assets and needs of the increasingly diverse (by way of race, class, gender expression, sexual identities, immigration status, etc. ) entering college classes, our training focused on both "the big picture" (educational backgrounds, current economic and cultural trends, diverse social identities and regional contexts) as well as the relevant idiosyncrasies (contemporary parenting practices, latest social media, mental health/disability profiles) of our newest students. The idea was to build the pedagogical and mentoring capacities of faculty and staff to meet 21st century student needs, which often fall outside the purview of faculty and staff disciplinary training and expertise. By fostering difficult dialogues about fears and promoting risk-taking beyond disciplinary comfort zones, the Initiatives Program benefitted all Beloit students’ broader liberal learning by investing in the deep development of those who teach them.Duties included: Developing vision professional development learning goals in consultation with the Provost, student affairs personnel, faculty, staff, and students; researching latest trends in student development in higher education; planning and implementation of workshops; recruitment of faculty to teach first year seminars; cultivating and working with donors; budget planning; assessment and updating workshops to be responsive to participant needs.