UREAG: Reimagining CIES Participation for Underrepresented Groups

Leslie Graybeal
UREAG Secretary
Doctoral Candidate Social Foundations of Education
The University of Georgia

The Underrepresented Racial, Ethnic, and Ability Groups (UREAG) Committee awarded seventeen travel grants for participants to attend the 54th Annual CIES conference held the first week of March in Chicago. While one of the primary functions of the UREAG Committee is to attract people from underrepresented groups to CIES and facilitate their participation in the annual conference, the UREAG Committee also sponsored a lively panel organized by Deborah Curry, Joan Oviawe, and Clancie Wilson. The yearly UREAG panel has come to be known as the Village Dialogue, and this year’s presentations and discussions addressed the experiences of minority graduate students dealing with racial profiling on campus and the especially apt topic of institutional budget cuts in higher education and their disproportionate impact on underrepresented programs and personnel in the academy. The presentations by our generous panelists inspired an engaging discussion for all who were present.

The UREAG Committee also had a dynamic business meeting, in which new leadership was elected as the terms of the previous Chair, Moses Oketch, and Vice-Chair, Deborah Curry, were ending. Kelly McFaden, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia and previous UREAG Secretary, was elected Chair, Emefa Amoako, a doctoral student at Oxford University, was elected Vice-Chair, and Lesley Graybeal, a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, was elected Secretary. In addition to electing new leadership, those present at the business meeting also had the opportunity to hear from Professor Mobin Shorish as he shared some of his experiences as a previous UREAG Committee Chair and as an active CIES participant since the 1960s. A representative from the Gender Committee, Rachel Anderson, was also present and opened up the possibility of the UREAG Committee partnering with the Gender Committee for future Village Dialogue topics.

The new UREAG Committee leadership met following the business meeting to address possible future directions for the committee and ways to build a supportive membership base and remain active and visible in the CIES community. In the coming year, we hope to be active in recruiting participants from HBCUs, Tribal Colleges and universities, and organizations for exceptional individuals in order to increase the participation of people from underrepresented groups and establish a broader applicant base for the UREAG travel grants to serve. We are also excited about including outreach to increase the participation of LGBTQIA people and research topics in future UREAG Committee work with CIES.

One action that the new leadership has already taken is to establish a UREAG email listserv. We hope that this list will serve as a discussion forum, and it is open for anyone to subscribe and post messages. Anyone interested in joining the list can send an email to listserv@listserv.uga.edu with the command “subscribe UREAG” followed by their first and last name, or contact the UREAG Secretary to have your name and email address added. The UREAG Committee thanks the CIES Secretariat for its continued support of increasing participation by members of underrepresented groups and exploring academic topics relevant to underrepresented people around the world. The UREAG Committee also congratulates those scholars who were supported by UREAG travel grants in 2010, and we hope you will continue to participate through your presence at UREAG meetings and panels and contributions to discussions through our new listserv forum.

UREAG: Reimagining CIES Participation for Underrepresented Groups

Leslie Graybeal UREAG Secretary Doctoral Candidate Social Foundations of Education The University of Georgia

Leslie Graybeal
UREAG Secretary
Doctoral Candidate Social Foundations of Education
The University of Georgia