8/21/22
The Sankofa Welcome
Somewhere in between residence hall move-ins and a curbside college send-off, complete with care package handoffs and misty-eyed side-hugs, dozens of new Sun Devils embraced a maroon-and-golden opportunity to jump-start their ASU journey in a culturally connected way.
Over four days and five nights — and before tens of thousands of students began their descent on ASU’s campuses en masse for the first day of classes — about 100 first-year students and their families carved out some time and space to convene and commune at the Sankofa Leadership Institute Welcome hosted by the Black African Coalition at ASU.
A student-developed, staff-supported residential program, Sankofa takes its name from the Akan West African word that expresses the idea of “looking backward to move forward.”
It was developed to help incoming students navigate a multi-campus institution such as ASU and mitigate what can be an overwhelming and isolating experience for any first-time student, which, according to studies, can be even more so for Black students at predominantly white institutions.
Read more at ASU News: The Sankofa Welcome
8/11/2022
ASU joins in celebration of Black Philanthropy Month
This year, Arizona State University will participate in Black Philanthropy Month. Throughout the month of August, ASU and the ASU Foundation will be taking time to celebrate Black donors and recognize the impact of funds that support Black students, faculty and programs.
Black Philanthropy Month is a global campaign to celebrate giving by people of African descent and promote equity in funding. The initiative was founded by Jackie Bouvier Copeland and launched in 2011 to commemorate the United Nations Year and Decade of People of African Descent. Today, Black Philanthropy Month is a program of the WISE fund, which engages more than 19 million people across 60 countries.
Read more at ASU News: ASU joins in celebration of Black Philanthropy Month
5/4/2022
Photo album sparks discovery of ASU's first female African American graduate
The story of Stella McHenry, ASU’s first female African American graduate, had long been overlooked and omitted from reports and records until a recent discovery helped to set the record straight.
Read more at ASU News: Photo album sparks discovery of ASU's first female African American graduate
1/24/22
Connecting career and community through mentorship
“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Reflecting on the words and works of Martin Luther King Jr. in the month that celebrates his life — and National Mentoring Month — members of Arizona State University’s multifaceted community continue to carry forward King’s servant-leadership legacy through service and mentorship.
YP CoNext@ASU is one such program that’s working to connect ASU students with mentors interested in helping them explore and achieve their professional goals. A community partnership between ASU and the Greater Phoenix Urban League Young Professionals (YP), YP CoNext@ASU leans into foundational pillars of leadership, life skills and community service in its aim to transition college students into high performing young professionals. Applying the innovative mentoring at scale approach developed at ASU to create a more expansive model of ASU’s virtual career assets, the YP CoNext@ASU program allows students access to help that is personalized to their interests, schedules and needs.
“Our members are professionals in a variety of industries, including physicians, engineers, lawyers, accountants, educators, entrepreneurs and elected officials,” said Ashlee Atkins, president of the Greater Phoenix Urban League Young Professionals. Atkins, who also serves in the role of diversity manager for ASU Enterprise Partners, says the partnership between YP CoNext and ASU was a natural fit when the collaboration began in the fall of 2020 when ASU President Michael Crow announced a list of 25 actions that became the LIFT (Listen, Invest, Facilitate, Teach) Initiative, designed to enhance the lived and learned experiences of Black students, faculty and staff at ASU.
1/18/2022
New library collections feature one of ASU's first Black professors
While sorting through photos in the J. Eugene Grigsby Jr. Papers, one of many collections in the backlogs at ASU Library, Associate Archivist Elizabeth Dunham often joked that Grigsby was “a total dad.”
A teacher and an artist, he traveled often to national conferences and took pictures of everything that caught his eye along the way, from random buildings “right down to the pictures out the plane window,” Dunham said with a laugh.
Grigsby’s penchant for documentation may have been considered a charming character quirk during his lifetime, but today, it’s the reason ASU Library is able to offer a unique glimpse into the life of one of Arizona State University’s first Black professors in the fine arts department.
And it’s a long time coming for members of Arizona’s Black community, said Jessica Salow, who was recently named archivist of Black Collections at ASU Library, a new role for a new collection, both created as part of the university’s LIFT (Listen, Invest, Facilitate, Teach) Initiative.
“It really was ... I'm going to use the word 'criminal' that we did not have a collection that documented Black life here in Arizona,” Salow said. “Because Black people have lived here forever, even before territory times.”
Per point 23 of a list of 25 actions ASU put forth in fall 2020 to address embedded injustices and structural problems within the institution and society at large, “ASU has committed to providing funding to sustain the Community-Driven Archives Initiative in the ASU Library in order to enhance the historical record of and the university’s and library’s engagement with underrepresented communities.”
12/21/2021
Black African Convocation 'LIFTed' by excellence, resilience
Extremophile: An organism that lives under extreme environmental conditions, such as temperature, acidity, alkalinity or chemical concentration where most others would perish, according to its dictionary definition.
It’s a noun Brooke Coley, a bioengineer and social justice scholar, also assigned to the graduating class of 2021 celebrated at Arizona State University's Black African Convocation on Dec. 16.
In her address as faculty speaker at the special interest convocation, Coley, an assistant professor in engineering at the Polytechnic School of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, rendered visibility on the group she called one of the most “invisible populations” — Black students in higher education navigating two pandemics: COVID-19 and “Racism-20.”
“This duality of being both Black and student in 2020 and 2021 was to live and navigate extreme environmental conditions,” said Coley in reference to the ongoing public health crisis that includes both interpersonal and structural racism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“You’ve been hyper visible and invisible at the same time,” Coley told the mixed group of graduates and undergraduates. “You’ve carried the burden of representation. Your role of being a student was challenged by the role accompanied with your Blackness ... You made it through, and most importantly, you made it here. You have earned the identity of extremophiles. You have everything inside of you that you need to survive anywhere.”
A time for students and faculty to celebrate en masse, the Fall 2021 Black African Convocation — like other graduation activities over the week — marked one of the first in-person graduation gatherings at ASU in two years due to the pandemic, and many were excited to celebrate the moment with classmates, family, friends and mentors.
10/26/2021
Graduate College announces launch of 2 presidential scholar programs
This fall, ASU welcomed the inaugural cohort of Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows and Presidential Graduate Assistants for 2021–22. Selected by two review committees and spread over eight colleges, the 26 presidential scholars were welcomed to ASU at a recent reception hosted by the Graduate College.
Launched as part of the LIFT Initiative — ASU's commitment to Black students, faculty and staff, and other underrepresented groups and individuals — the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship and Graduate Assistantship programs, administered by the Graduate College, were created to diversify the ASU faculty, award graduate students from underrepresented communities research and teaching assistantships and support ASU’s ongoing efforts to develop and advance a culture of belonging and excellence.
An acronym for Listen, Invest, Facilitate and Teach, LIFT is elevating conversations around the importance and significance of this transformation for the lived experiences of ASU’s Black students, faculty and staff.
“The Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship and Presidential Graduate Assistantship programs help ASU accelerate meaningful change by bringing talented, diverse students and postdocs to the university,” said Elizabeth A. Wentz, vice provost and dean of the Graduate College. “Our new scholars are advancing research that will help ASU contribute to a national agenda for social justice, a goal of the LIFT Initiative.”
ASU established the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to create a pathway to tenure-track positions at ASU for scholars from underrepresented communities. Four new fellows joined ASU this year.
10/12/2021
LIFT takes flight
In follow-up to ASU’s commitment to enhance and support the lived, teaching and learning experiences of Black students, faculty and staff, the Advisory Council on African American Affairs at Arizona State University has released The LIFT Report: Status of Black and African Americans at Arizona State University for 2021.
The report is the first in a planned series of annual reports that will document the process and progress of 25 calls to action announced by ASU President Michael Crow in fall 2020 to address embedded injustices and structural problems within our institutions and society at large.
“This is a design transformation process for ASU,” Crow said of the LIFT Initiative at the unveiling of the report during the African and African American Faculty and Staff Association (AAAFSA) meeting on Sept. 24. “Our design is not modern enough. We have an opportunity to accelerate our institution’s evolution and then subsequently impact the broader evolution of society’s aspirations of social equity and social justice. LIFT is launched, and we are holding ourselves accountable.”
A first-year overview of the implementation of the 25 launch points, the 2021 LIFT Report outlines the progress and developments being made in the effort to find solutions to issues of bias, discrimination and underrepresentation at ASU.
The work of identifying some of these issues is underway through the LIFT-inspired Faculty Inclusion Research for System Transformation (FIRST), led by Victoria Sahani, associate dean of special projects and professor in ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
At the AAAFSA meeting, Sahani said FIRST was developing data sets to review and track initiatives and policies related to the experience of inclusion and belonging among faculty who identify as Black, Indigenous or persons of color, and other identity-disadvantaged faculty at ASU. The goal, she said, was to create a research system for the transformation of the faculty experience at ASU that includes a virtuous cycle, or feedback loop.
Sahani said the in-development data set augmented by additional data in the future will help determine the effectiveness of current policies and practices and allow for adaptation to improve the experiences of faculty at ASU.
04/7/2021
Students elevating Black cultural awareness through LIFT initiative at ASU
George Floyd, the man whose death in police custody launched a thousand protests in 2020, has reignited a critical conversation about systemic racism and social injustice around the world. In 2021, almost one year after Floyd’s death, change is starting to happen.
From conversation to activation, constitution to evolution, ASU is among the global institutions rising to the challenge of change for the betterment of its community and society as whole. The voices of some determined and persistent members of the community underscored the urgency of this challenge and helped bring a new initiative to life.
In the days and weeks following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, advocates and allies of ASU’s Black student community joined the front lines of a global movement — in the midst of a pandemic — to speak up and speak out on long-standing inequalities reawakened by Floyd’s death.
ASU President Michael Crow listened. His response: a 25-point action plan to address issues of bias, discrimination and underrepresentation at ASU. Students at the front lines of the movement soon found themselves at the forefront of a new initiative — the LIFT initiative — and began work on the complex task of implementing the 25 actions alongside experienced members of ASU’s faculty and staff.
As members of the newly formed Advisory Council on African American Affairs (ACAAA), student members have taken part in meetings, created programming and carried full course loads all while answering the call for transformation at ASU.
ACAAA member Kiara Kennedy is a senior studying health sciences in ASU’s College of Health Solutions and a student-athlete on ASU’s softball team. She co-created the group Sun Devils United and the Black Student Athlete Association with other student athletes in response to the mass demonstrations for social justice in 2020. Kennedy says being selected to join the ACAAA and help carry out the actions of the LIFT initiative has been an empowering experience in advocacy and leadership development.
“My hopes for the 25 points are to see these points continually move in the right direction for the future and see a change within ASU,” Kennedy said. “I am truly grateful for this opportunity and so glad I've gotten the chance to work with these wonderful individuals.”
Among the LIFT action items elevated to high priority for student members of the ACAAA is the creation of a multicultural space on ASU’s campus. Cornelius Foxworth II, an ACAAA member and a senior studying psychology, business and criminology is looking forward to seeing the multicultural center come into being.
“Minority students at (predominantly) white institutions often get lost in the crowd or looked at as this token item of diversity and inclusion,” Foxworth said. “If we are going to have minority students at this campus feel comfortable and protected, it’s really important that we have those resources for them.”
The working group leading the efforts on the multicultural center are assessing design options for the proposed space and will be sharing recommendations in the months ahead.
Keeping in step with the LIFT action item to support student organizations and their initiatives on behalf of Black students, Foxworth and other members of the Black African Coalition student organization, for which he serves as vice president, recently unveiled a new guidebook for current and incoming students. The BAC Guidebook is a virtual pamphlet that shares resources and programming available through the 33 member organizations that compose the BAC. In March, the group also launched its first Black Excellence Experience Tour (BEET) for prospective Black students considering ASU as the next stepping stone in their education, and will be hosting another virtual BEET event in late April.
02/19/2021
Black History Month at ASU: Actions LIFT our community
Dear ASU Community:
As we reflect on those who sacrificed, contributed, and achieved for the betterment of themselves and others in this month — Black History Month — I’d also like to take a moment to recognize those who are making history every day in service to our renewed commitment to students, faculty and staff here at ASU.
The 25 actions to which we have pledged to address inequities and systemic racism have a new name and a firm resolve to confront these issues through education and participation. The LIFT Initiative, through collaboration and innovation, endeavors to Listen, Invest, Facilitate and Teach — better than we have done in the past. By “better” I mean being better attuned to the unique social and cultural experiences of the learners and educators of our diverse ASU community, and by building better bridges to support leadership learning goals and outcomes for our students, faculty and staff.
Since establishing the Advisory Council on African American Affairs last fall, we have been moving forward and quickly on these initiatives to support the success and growth of Black students, faculty and staff here at ASU. This interdisciplinary group of faculty, staff and students is actively collaborating with other talented members of our ASU community to implement LIFT’s goals through various subcommittees. We are motivated by the efforts and investments of Council members who continue to inspire and initiate participation, not only from within ASU, but in our surrounding communities as well.
It is our goal to document the efforts of these transformative actions, and efforts to do as such are well underway. We will share the results of these efforts in an annual report in the Summer of 2021 and consider new ideas that may stem from this report.
Upholding our commitment to investing resources and providing enhanced service support for Black and African American students, ASU has partnered with the Greater Phoenix Urban League Young Professionals to help create career pathways for our students. Last fall, 50 ASU students enrolled in the 12-month YP CoNext Leadership Program for one-on-one mentorship with young professionals throughout the greater Phoenix area. We encourage others to engage in programs like this and share these opportunities with friends and colleagues.
We are also working to facilitate more opportunities for personal and professional growth among students and staff. Pursuant to our commitment to offer opportunities for service engagement, we have implemented a change to our staff personnel policy to increase the number of hours of release time so that we can engage in activities and opportunities that uphold ASU’s commitment to inclusion. This includes university-sponsored trainings, workshops and conferences, as well as professional organizations, affinity groups and mentor or mentee programs.
The newly formed Faculty Inclusion Research for System Transformation (FIRST) is beginning its research into race and discrimination at ASU. Led by Victoria Sahani, professor of law in ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, this historical study will help us better address our future by looking at our past.
And we recently launched The Difference Engine: An ASU Center for the Future of Equality. Led by Ehsan Zaffar, a civil rights lawyer and educator in ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, this multi-college interdisciplinary initiative is designed to help elevate equality across the United States. Engaging talent and resources from across ASU, Ehsan and his team are creating classes and developing partnerships to transform social justice and deconstruct the structural inequality that calls for this kind of social justice work.
The LIFT initiative is a throughline of the work pioneered and advanced by the artists, the educators, the explorers, the inventors, leaders, laborers, poets and soldiers we often spotlight during Black History Month. It is an active reminder of how ordinary efforts can effect extraordinary change for the betterment of our society. Those efforts advance here through education and dedication in service of our community.
Let’s continue to lift each other up and set our sights higher to build better bridges for our communities.
Sincerely,
Michael M. Crow
President
Arizona State University
10/26/2020
To the ASU community:
In an email to ASU’s campus community on Sept. 2, I announced 25 starting actions that we have committed to in the efforts to advance meaningful change in the fight for equality and social justice at ASU and beyond. I emphasize “starting” because we know that this work is not finite. It is evolving and will continue to do so. Central to its implementation is the establishment of a new Advisory Council on Advisory Council on African American Affairs, which has already started the important work of convening constructive dialogue around the initiatives.
I am pleased to announce Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, vice president of ASU Cultural Affairs, and Jeffrey Wilson, professor in ASU’s Department of Economics, as the co-chairs of this new council. I will be working alongside Colleen, Jeffrey and other members of the Council to develop, implement and evaluate the work that we have started in response to recent events that remind us that discrimination still exists and must be dismantled. Together we will draw from our shared knowledge and lived experiences to evaluate and develop all of the possible ways that we can overcome the systemic issues of racism and injustice.
The Council invites the interest and support of all members the ASU community who are committed to ensuring the success and growth of Black faculty, staff and students. It is important to underscore that we are committed to the success and growth of all of our faculty, staff and students, but this particular moment in time calls for heightened focus on the Black community. In the months between now and July 2021, the Council will hold town hall meetings to address key areas of interest related to the initiatives. One of those meetings will include a deeper discussion about why we are embarking on this work now. A data committee will keep track of the progress we are making together, and a new website dedicated to our efforts will provide updates and serve as a connection hub for ideas and inquiries.
In focusing on the immediate issues and opportunities for Black faculty, staff and students, ASU earnestly accepts the inclusive institutional responsibilities laid bare in the ASU charter. We can do more and we will do more to acknowledge and dismantle the barriers of systemic racism in the ongoing design and evolution of the New American University.
I appreciate the voluntary collaboration and commitment of so many leaders within the ASU community as we accelerate our work in progress. I look forward to your ideas, your input and your initiatives. Let’s do this work together.
Michael M. Crow
President
Arizona State University
09/02/2020
To the ASU community:
On June 1, after the murder of George Floyd and as the Black Lives Matter protests refocused the nation’s attention on ending systemic racism and violence directed at Black people and communities of color, I reached out to voice ASU’s rejection of racism and discrimination and to reaffirm our university pledge to always pursue the highest levels of social inclusion and impact. Now, I am reaching out again, this time after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
These incidents, and countless others, remind us that we have so much more to do to achieve our common aspiration for social justice in this country. They are also a reminder to turn a mirror on ourselves to identify our own missteps, inadequacies and deficiencies and to acknowledge our institutional responsibility to do more than we ever have before in the fight for equality and social justice.
In order to accelerate meaningful change here at ASU and to contribute to a national agenda for social justice, ASU is committing to the 25 actions listed below. These 25 actions are drawn from your ideas, your expertise, your creativity and your public commentary, and each and every one of them will be launched this year. They will be undertaken with the goal of enhancing diversity, growth and opportunity for Black undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, while also expanding our academic offerings, community services and collaborative relationships to the benefit of all underrepresented groups and individuals at ASU.
I do know this list of actions will be inadequate by itself. I also want to acknowledge that many units across the university have already been hard at work at introspection and planning on how they will address racial injustice. What I want to firmly communicate to you today is that we will work harder, invest more and do more to ensure that Black students, faculty and staff — and other underrepresented groups and individuals — are provided an educational, work and living environment that is welcoming, supportive and empowering to their success, creativity and ability to achieve their personal, educational and professional goals all for the betterment of this university and our nation.
As always, I welcome your thoughts about this initial agenda of activity. We will provide regular updates on the implementation of these action items. Thank you for being a member of a diverse and inclusive ASU community, and I look forward to working with you to advance these initiatives.
Michael M. Crow
President
Arizona State University
Arizona State University list of 25 actions to support
Black students, faculty and staff
1. ASU commits to supporting ASU law Professor Victoria Sahani’s proposal to undertake a historical study of race and discrimination at the university. She will be director of the Faculty Inclusion Research for System Transformation (FIRST) initiative.
2. ASU commits to the appointment of an Advisory Council on African American Affairs, comprised of faculty, staff and students to assist the president in ensuring the success of Black faculty and staff and the growth of students while also convening and engaging the Black community at ASU, locally and nationally on a variety of issues. The advisory council will be established and convened by its chairperson as soon as possible in September 2020.
3. ASU recommits to supporting the vice provost for inclusion and community engagement in the role of convening and engaging the university community through the Committee for Campus Inclusion in support of the university provost’s efforts to achieve these and other goals.
4. The chairperson of the Advisory Council on African American Affairs and the vice provost for inclusion and community engagement will convene a regular series of discussions about the implementation of this list of 25 actions and the continued development and advancement of new ideas that would facilitate the goals and activities reflected in these commitments.
5. ASU commits to establishing a multicultural space on campus and establishing and funding a working group to assess and begin design options for this space.
6. ASU commits to publishing an annual report on all key metrics to broadly share student enrollment and graduation data and to celebrate the successes, ideas and work of our Black students, faculty and staff.
7. ASU recommits to promoting student success and well-being among Black students and all students of color as ASU constantly pursues a student body that reflects the people and changing demographics of the state of Arizona. This includes, but is not limited to, realizing undifferentiated outcomes in student retention and graduation for Black students and other students. This work is articulated in our charter, mission and goals and will be accelerated with and through the mechanisms, activities and investments reflected in the first 25 actions identified here and in the work of the President's Advisory Council on Inclusion and Success .
8. ASU commits to investing in and providing enhanced service support to student organizations and their initiatives on behalf of Black students including, but not limited to, the African American Men of Arizona State University, Sankofa, STARS and the Black African Coalition.
9. ASU commits to hosting an annual spring recruitment fair for undergraduates of color into graduate programs across all disciplines with scholarship investments in acute areas of underrepresentation.
10. ASU commits to establishing a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program funding a minimum of 30 postdoctoral fellowships from underrepresented communities over the next two years who will — presuming satisfactory performance — continue on after two years into a tenure-track position. This program will continue so that we are creating a long-term process to diversify the faculty of the university.
11. ASU commits to creating a new class of graduate fellowships (Community Fellows) for Black students and other students of color.
12. ASU commits to establishing graduate assistantships for underrepresented students to go to graduate school. ASU will support the addition of 50 new graduate assistantships over the next two to three years.
13. ASU commits to establishing a university-wide student entrepreneurship, career advising and student success initiative to inspire and assist Black students and all students of color to successfully pursue their visions for their future and to help provide pathways to the careers of their choice.
14. ASU commits to the training of all faculty and staff on all search committees to address issues such as systemic bias in identification of candidates and hiring.
15. ASU commits to more cluster hiring around leading faculty members from underrepresented groups to deepen our expertise and recruit more underrepresented faculty with a commitment to 10 positions this year and continuing in subsequent years.
16. ASU commits to advancing appointments and/or enhancing the role of academic centers in the advancement of the institution as both affirming of race and of advancing multicultural solidarity.
17. ASU commits to appointing a Black tenured faculty member to Barrett, The Honors College to serve as a resource to recruit and retain Black students in Barrett.
18. ASU commits to implementing the “To Be Welcoming” training for all continuing and new ASU employees and students.
19. ASU commits to implementing a program of service time for Black (and other) employees to serve as mentors to Black and other students at ASU.
20. ASU commits to the establishment of a new Bachelor of Arts degree in Race, Culture and Democracy to be launched by the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (School of Social Transformation) with support from the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.
21. ASU commits to the enhancement of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy as part of the Office of the Provost and under the leadership of Director Lois Brown, working under the direction of the vice provost for inclusion and community engagement.
22. ASU has committed to the appointment of Ehsan Zaffar, senior adviser on civil rights and civil liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to launch and lead a multicollege interdisciplinary initiative to help reduce inequality in the United States.
23. ASU has committed to providing funding to sustain the Community-Driven Archives initiative in the ASU Library in order to enhance the historical record of and the university’s and library’s engagement with underrepresented communities.
24. ASU commits to providing increased institutional support for the annual “A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations.”
25. ASU commits to an ASU police force on which all officers have a baccalaureate degree or the opportunity to earn a baccalaureate degree if they do not have one. ASU also will develop additional racial sensitivity and other new training for ASU police officers and further supplement the ASU police force with enhanced services to meet the many needs of students, faculty, staff and the public who call upon the university for responses to emergencies and incidents of various kinds.