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The 2021 Sarah Goddard Power Award and Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Award Ceremony

February 10, 2021 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Virtual

Please join us for the annual Sarah Goddard Power & Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Awards Ceremony. This event celebrates the legacies of Sarah Goddard Power and Rhetaugh Dumas by recognizing current staff, scholars, and units that are carrying forward shared values through named awards.

The Sarah Goddard Power & Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Awards are presented on behalf of the Academic Women’s Caucus, which was founded in 1975 with the charge ”to develop an inclusive organization of all women faculty members of the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses of the University of Michigan which will serve as a forum for the exchange of information about the status of faculty women at the University and as a focus for action necessary to the investigation and resolution of their special concerns.”

Please note that this event will be recorded.

2021 Sarah Goddard Power Award

Sarah Goddard Power was widely acclaimed as a major contributor to the advancement of higher education, an advocate for affirmative action and human rights, and a champion of freedom for the international press. As a Regent of the University of Michigan for more than 12 years, Sarah Goddard Power worked tirelessly to advance the position of women and minorities in faculty and administrative roles.

Regent Sarah Goddard Power originally suggested that the Academic Women’s Caucus present awards to such individuals. In 1984, an Awards Committee was established to select the first recipients of the Academic Women’s Caucus Awards. Thus, it seemed appropriate that the Academic Women’s Caucus Award be renamed to honor Regent Power. In 1988, Regent Philip H. Power graciously consented to allow the Caucus to rename its awards the Academic Women’s Caucus Sarah Goddard Power Award. In 1998, President Lee Bollinger enabled the Award to be offered with an accompanying stipend. Each year, nominations are selected for the Sarah Goddard Power Awards.

2021 Sarah Goddard Power Award Recipients:

Isis Settles is a Professor of Psychology, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan. She received her BA from Harvard College and her PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan. Using an interdisciplinary, intersectional framework, her research focuses on the experiences, perceptions, and consequences of unfair treatment directed at devalued social group members, especially Black people and women, and protective factors that counteract the effects of those experiences. Dr. Settles is a fellow of the Society for the Psychology of Women, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race. She has received several awards for her research including the Committee on Women in Psychology Leadership Award and the Carolyn Payton Early Career Award. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.

Dawn M. Tilbury received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992 and 1994, respectively.  In 1995, she joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is currently a Professor, with a joint appointment as Professor of EECS. Her research interests lie broadly in the area of control systems, including applications to robotics and manufacturing systems.  In June of 2017, she became the Assistant Director for Engineering at the National Science Foundation, where she oversees a federal budget of nearly $1 billion annually and will return to her position at the University of Michigan in June of 2021. She has published more than 200 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ASME, and a Life Member of SWE.

2021 Sarah Goddard Power Distinguished Service Award Recipients:

Sonya Jacobs is the chief organizational learning officer for the University of Michigan and the senior director for Faculty and Leadership Development at Michigan Medicine. As U-M’s first chief organizational learning officer, she is responsible for creating curricula and strategies to build the capabilities of staff, faculty, and leaders across the university. This includes the development of education, training, interventions, and programs to further the university’s initiatives around creating an inclusive and equitable environment.

As the senior director of Faculty and Leadership Development, she is responsible for supporting faculty in achieving their professional and career goals, the recruitment, on-boarding, and retention of a diverse faculty, and leadership development for both faculty and staff. Sonya oversees strategic planning and implementation of organization-wide career and leadership development, as well as coaching and mentoring support. Her dual appointment allows her to spot opportunities to strengthen collaboration, identify available resources, and replicate best practices across all three campuses and Michigan Medicine. In addition, she holds a leadership role for the design and implementation of a new leadership development framework and succession planning process across the health system.

Sonya is the co-founder of the Leadership Summit for Women in Academic Medicine and Healthcare and the Rudi Ansbacher Women in Academic Medicine Leadership Scholars Program. She also founded the Executive Coaching Certification program at Michigan Medicine. She serves on the Key Bank Key4 Women Advisory Board, as well as the Institute Advisory board at Simmons University, and is a member of The Ann Arbor (MI) Chapter of The Links, Inc. She also serves on the state of Michigan’s Implicit Bias Training Rules Advisory Workgroup, responsible for promulgating rules to establish implicit bias training standards for all health professionals in Michigan and to ensure such training can be facilitated in a meaningful and impactful way.

Sonya was awarded the Michigan Chronicle Women of Excellence award in 2020, which celebrates local African American women who inspire others through their vision and leadership, exceptional achievements, and participation in community service. Sonya was also chosen by the Academic Women’s Caucus as a recipient of the 2020-2021 Sarah Goddard Power Distinguished Service Award. Sonya holds a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Michigan State University and a master of science in human resources and organizational development from Eastern Michigan University.

Ellen Judge-Gonzalez is an innovative, equity-minded leader with extensive experience in program management, student mentorship, intergroup dialogue, college teaching, and academic support for diverse student populations.

Since 2008, Ellen has directed the SOAR program on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus. SOAR offers support, opportunities, advocacy, and resources for nontraditional returning adult learners experiencing socioeconomic barriers. Under her leadership, SOAR has doubled enrollment, improved retention and graduation rates, expanded nontraditional student engagement in high impact practices, increased community partnerships and program visibility, increased the number of SOAR students applying to graduate school, and created internships geared to nontraditional learners.

Understanding that not being able to afford college is the number one predictor of nontraditional student attrition, Ellen works tirelessly to find funds to support SOAR student success. She has partnered with institutional advancement to secure SOAR specific endowed scholarships and major gifts including funds to launch and maintain a successful laptop loan program, ensuring all SOAR students have access to a working laptop and a donor-supported textbook loan program, now in its 10th year that has provided over $100,000 in textbooks to first-year SOAR students. Ellen has also written and been awarded over $200,000 in grants for SOAR program initiatives and critical difference funding for students.

Known for her ability to engage students, successfully lead collaborative institutional initiatives, and reduce barriers to student achievement, Ellen has served on numerous campus committees including co-chairing the recent university strategic planning committee on reducing student barriers to success, serving as project lead on retention planning in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, and taking a lead role in the formation of UM-Dearborn’s non-trad student-friendly integrative studies major. Ellen frequently presents at local and national conferences on best practices in supporting nontraditional learners utilizing an equity framework.

Prior to her arrival at UM-Dearborn, Ellen taught in the communication department at Washtenaw Community College and credits that experience, along with time at Madonna University doing academic supervision in the TRiO program, and her own experiences as a first-gen, nontraditional student with informing her guidance of the SOAR program and its students. In addition to directing SOAR, Ellen continues to teach at UM-Dearborn as a LEO lecturer in Language, Culture, and Communication and also in Liberal Studies where she teaches an academic renewal seminar for returning adult learners.

2021 Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Award

The Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Award supports a long-standing vision of increasing the number of diverse women in the academy. Named after late Vice Provost Rhetaugh Dumas, it recognizes outstanding institutional initiative in demonstrating notable progress by academic units in achieving ethnic, racial and gender diversity among those pursuing and achieving tenure as professors, clinical professors, research professors, and research scientists.

Rhetaugh Dumas was an esteemed leader with vision, insight, and wise counsel who had a major impact in the advancement of nursing, healthcare, and academic programs at U-M. Vice Provost Dumas was only the second African-American to hold the position of a Dean at the University of Michigan when she was appointed in 1981, and the first African-American to be named a Dean. She was reappointed Dean of Nursing in 1986 and 1991 to second and third terms. Prior to that appointment, she was the first woman and first nurse to serve as a deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Dumas was Deputy Director, Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (1979-1981) and before that Chief, Psychiatric Nursing Education Branch of the Division of Manpower and Training Programs (1972-1976). She was also a founding member, a Charter Fellow, and a former president of the American Academy of Nursing. Dumas served the University of Michigan for over 20 years with vision and a commitment to excellence.

2021 Rhetaugh G. Dumas Progress in Diversifying Award Recipient:

School of Information
Over the last five years, the School of Information (UMSI) has made significant strides to increase faculty diversity, while working to foster a climate that helps faculty to thrive and advance their careers. To achieve these goals, UMSI has developed focused efforts in recruiting diverse candidate pools for all faculty positions and participated in the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program over multiple years. UMSI has also included important diversity, equity, and inclusion goals into the school’s retention and promotion processes and continued faculty development and mentoring practices designed to encourage professional and personal growth.

The results of these efforts are reflected in the makeup of the 21 untenured, tenure-track UMSI faculty, 52 percent of whom are women, while 19 percent are underrepresented minorities. Of ten faculty promoted to tenured Associate Professor in the past five years, three are underrepresented minorities and five are women.
UMSI leadership sees faculty diversity as essential to its success as an interdisciplinary school with a mission to “create and share knowledge so that people will use information—with technology—to build a better world.

 

This event is cosponsored by Human Resources and Affirmative Action, CASL UM-Dearborn, the Office of the President, and the Office of the Provost.