Goal 3: Scholarship & Teaching

With a transformational set of gifts totaling $17 million from Harold and Carol Kohn and the Kohn Charitable Trust, the Ford School will establish the Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy, a resource hub to catalyze innovative, interdisciplinary research on policy that promotes social equity and inclusion for all U.S. residents. A total of five new professorships will form the core of the Collaborative. The Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professorship in Social Policy and Social Justice is currently held by Luke Shaefer, a nationally recognized expert on anti-poverty policy and director of the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions. The Harold Kohn Professorship will support economic research that furthers social equity and inclusion. The Carol Kakalec Kohn Professorship will advance social equity through U.S. education policy. The Karl and Martha Kohn Professorship of Social Policy will advance societal equity and inclusion. The Arlene Susan Kohn Professorship of Social Policy will address the rights of the disabled. The Kohn Collaborative will also fund two Rackham Master’s Awards at the Ford School, and provide core funding for collaborative research and policy engagement.

The Student Opportunities for AIDS/HIV Research (SOAR) Program, a two-year experience for juniors and seniors, aims to prepare students for graduate education and eventual careers in behavioral and social science research involving HIV, with a focus on sexual and gender minority communities of color. The Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) was successful in its first submission for a $1.2 million R25 training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the program, scheduled to launch in September. The five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR) will support implementation of this innovative academic and research mentoring program for undergraduate students across the U-M’s Ann Arbor campus. This marks the first time that NIMH/OBSSR has funded an HIV-focused undergraduate training program located at a midwestern university; provided a two-year pipeline program to support the transition from undergraduate to graduate education; or focused on sexual and gender minority and other minoritized students.

Multiple units on campus engaged in notable efforts to advance anti-racism across curricular and research domains. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts hosted a public conversation to reflect on the resulting trauma and activism. Ultimately, this led to the launch of Community Conversations, focused on the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. Many departments across LSA, including 22 units in Undergraduate Education, hosted reading groups throughout the academic year. Undergraduate Education also created an anti-racism faculty development series for Fall 2021. In addition, the College launched an Anti-Racism Task Force composed of faculty, staff and students with deep expertise in anti-racism work which surfaced a list of far-reaching recommendations for curriculum design, hiring/promotion/supervisory practices and admissions. Finally, LSA implemented policy changes that are more transfer-friendly and support student success. The School of Education continued its Anti-Racism Colloquia series in which students and faculty collaborate to present research related to pressing DEI issues in education and to support research and teaching centered on educational justice. In addition, SOE created Anti-Racist Mini-Grants for students seeking to work on education research and scholarship that advances capacity to create an anti-racist environment. Direct grants to students totaled $10,000. The School of Information expanded the mandate and membership of its DEI Committee to focus on creating an anti-racist curriculum and developing anti-racist approaches across the school. This followed engagement with student and alumni members of Black@SI, who met with School leadership over the summer to set an agenda for action on anti-racism. Key accomplishments of the past year included a set of anti-racist course design guidelines for instructors, a Race and Technology reading list, a series of workshops on anti-racist instruction and facilitated focus groups exploring issues impacting Black students at UMSI. The Ross School of Business formed its DEI Curriculum Task Force in Fall 2020 to develop and facilitate implementation of proposals designed to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion in the Ross curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate programs. Task Force membership comprised faculty, staff and students—both undergraduate and graduate–who formed subgroups to work on specific domains. These groups reviewed current course offerings and instructional practices and met with other faculty and students throughout AY 2020–21 in order to develop recommendations for metrics, courses and course materials, inclusive teaching practices and co-curricular activities.