Jeffrey Milem, dean and professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, is the featured speaker for the Dean’s Diversity Lecture Series at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development. Milem’s lecture, “Education, Diversity, and Democracy: How Can We Fulfill Higher Education’s Promise to Prepare Citizens for an Increasingly Diverse Democracy?” will take place at 4 pm on April 2.
At this lecture, Dean Milem will discuss the ways in which higher education stakeholders can work together to create equitable, vibrant, engaging institutions that prepare citizens for an increasingly diverse democracy. The lecture will build upon three decades of scholarship regarding race relations and education, the outcomes of diversity in higher education, and the essential components of diverse and equitable learning environments.
Prior to coming to UCSB, Milem was the Ernest W. McFarland Distinguished Professor in Leadership for Educational Policy and Reform in the College of Education at the University of Arizona. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and has been awarded the American College Personnel Association’s Contributions to Higher Education award. Professor Milem’s research focuses on the ways in which colleges and universities can be organized to enhance equity, access, and success for all students; the racial context within higher education; and the relationship between how colleges and universities organize themselves and student outcomes and faculty role performance. As a widely recognized expert in the area of racial dynamics in higher education, Milem has been commissioned to do research by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the American Educational Research Association’s Panel on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education.
With his colleagues Mitchell Chang and Anthony Antonio, he co-authored Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research Based Perspective, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which translates research demonstrating the educational benefits of diversity to develop a “roadmap” for college leaders of the conditions that must be in place if they are to maximize the opportunities for teaching and learning that racial diversity provides. Milem contributed to two of the three books that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited in her majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger as being influential in helping to document the university’s claim regarding the educational benefits of diversity. He also worked closely on amicus briefs for both iterations of the Fisher v. Texas case.
With a genealogy dating to a one-room Nashville schoolhouse in 1785, Peabody College today is a world-class college of education and human development, long ranked in the Top Ten of education schools in the United States. The college offers seven undergraduate majors, including human and organizational development, Vanderbilt’s second most popular major. Professional programs enroll students in 18 master of education or public policy (M.Ed. or M.P.P.) programs, and three doctor of education (Ed.D.) programs. Through the Vanderbilt Graduate School, Peabody offers six doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) programs, including the nation’s first interdisciplinary doctorate in educational neuroscience. Combined enrollment at Peabody exceeds 2,000 students, including more than 1,100 undergraduates.