Fay Yokomizo Akindes, Ph.D.

Director, Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID)

Carleen Vande Zande, Ph.D.

Associate Vice President, Academic Programs & Faculty Advancement

University of Wisconsin System Administration

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Internationally known as a scholar of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, she is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. Most recently Teachers College Press published Critical Race Theory in Education: A Scholar’s Journey (2021), a collection of Dr. Ladson-Billings’ most influential and widely cited writings. She is the immediate past president of the National Academy of Education and president of the American Education Research Association (AERA) in 2005-06. In 2018 Dr. Ladson-Billings was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Activist- scholars Drs. Chapman and Wong will lead this session focused on processing, responding to, and taking action on Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings' presentation on Critical Race Theory (CRT). This event asks you to reflect on CRT, examine anew, or for the first time, its transformative power, and to determine next steps for supporting and serving students through an equity and racial justice lens. The presenters will also share their own strategies for teaching CRT in ways that lead to transformations both of students and the classroom and the importance of doing so at this critical historic moment when CRT is under attack. They are both alumnae of UW- Madison.

This session was curated by OPID’s Anti-Racist Pedagogies Committee chaired by Jordan Landry (UW-Oshkosh). Committee members: Valerie Barske (UW-Stevens Point), Amber Handy (UW-Parkside), Bryan Kopp (UW-La Crosse), Mary Lee-Nichols (UW-Superior), Megan Schmid (UW-Madison), Amanda Tucker (UW-Platteville), Susan Wildermuth (UW-Whitewater), Houa Xiong (UW-Oshkosh).

Co-Directors of OPID’s Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars (WTFS) offer a space to discuss the new thematic direction of the program as well as the newly emerging field of “equity-minded SoTL.”   This thematic pivot broadens the scope of SoTL to include research questions that address inequities in our institutions.  We seek to further a greater understanding of “equity-minded” practitioners as those who “question their own assumptions, recognize stereotypes that harm student success, and continually reassess their practices to create change” (USC Center for Urban Education 2022).  We view an equity-minded approach to SoTL as an invitation to welcome scholarly teachers from all disciplines to participate in a more collaborative community of practice.  In the end, we hope this panel begins a salient dialogue about where participants might see themselves fitting into such a community where equity may be embraced as central to all teaching.

Heather Pelzel WTFS Co- Director (Director of UW-Whitewater’s LEARN Center and Associate Professor of Biology), Valerie Barske WTFS Co- Director (Coordinator of International Studies and Peace Studies and Professor of History, UW- Stevens Point)