Faculty Liaisons to Promote Diversity

Four faculty members have been selected to serve as faculty liaisons for 2012-13 by the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity. They will spend the academic year promoting diversity and inclusion at the university.

The new liaisons are:

Rajade Berry-James
Director of graduate programs and associate professor of public administration

Berry-James has particular interest in increasing diversity among graduate students. She is coordinating the 12^th annual Social Equity Leadership Conference, which will be held at the Hilton Raleigh Brownstone in June. The conference theme is “Globally Engaged, Locally Responsible: New Challenges for Social Equity,” and is hosted by the NC State Institute for Nonprofits, the School of Public and International Affairs, and OIED.

Maria Correa
Professor of epidemiology and public health

Correa provides leadership for recruitment, retention and campus climate issues for Hispanic/Latino students and faculty. She coordinated the Hispanic/Latino UNC System Faculty Forum at the Friday Institute last October. The Forum was sponsored by OIED and the UNC system Division of Academic Affairs.

Wendy Krause
Associate professor of textile engineering chemistry and science

Krause facilitates discussions about interrupting unconscious bias in the faculty search process. To date, she has worked with all 12 of the search committees for the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence program.  She is available to work with department faculty search committees to explore these issues and enhance efforts to recruit and hire faculty who are historically underrepresented in your discipline.

Monica Leach
Associate professor and interim head of the Department of Social Work

Leach focuses on the recruitment and retention of African-American faculty and in developing an external advisory board for OIED. She is a member of the Black Faculty Representation Working Group, charged by Provost Warwick Arden to identify two or three specific actions that NC State could take that would result in measureable progress in increasing the representation of black faculty. She is also a member of the At Home in the World Committee and Women of Welch Living and Learning Village, which is centered around social justice and empowerment.