| VIEW IN BROWSER |
| Staff Newsletter | April 2022 |
Dear colleagues,
I want to begin this month's newsletter by acknowledging the important work of our administrative staff and thanking them for their dedicated service to our units and to Northwestern. As we adjust to life in online and hybrid environments, administrative staff have increasingly served as the connective tissue that affirms our ability to coordinate and collaborate across workspaces and units.
Administrative Professionals Day falls on April 27 this year, and I'm excited to share that we're going to mark the day by kicking off a series of events focused on career development for staff in the Office of the Provost.
We will start this new series with a presentation by Professor of Management and Organizations Loran Nordgren, an award-winning researcher on decision-making and well-being, from 4-5 p.m. April 27 in Lutkin Hall. His talk will focus on the hidden forces working against innovation and how to overcome them. This will be an in-person presentation open to everyone in the Office of the Provost's units, and I hope you are able to attend this and future events. We will send a calendar invite soon.
As you read this month's newsletter, I encourage you to think about everyone who makes these events and accomplishments possible. Whether you do so today or on April 27, please join me in thanking our administrative professionals for their commitment and service to our units and to Northwestern's mission.
Thank you,
Kathleen Hagerty |
Awards and recognition |
‘The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States’
Director for Faculty Joan Johnson, who is a historian and prolific writer, has published a new book. “The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States” highlights the efforts of working-class women, wealthy women, Black suffragists and other women of color, examines the role of racism in the movement, and shows both how and why women worked to win the vote. The book is intended for use in college classrooms. |
All about the staff |
Meet Rocio Mendez-Rozo
This month’s featured colleague is Rocio Mendez-Rozo, graduate assistant for the Office of the Provost’s Strategy and Policy team. Rocio, who is on track to complete Northwestern’s Master of Higher Education Administration and Policy program this summer, also serves as a graduate assistant with Student Enrichment Services. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern in English Literature and Latinx Studies.
What do you like about working at Northwestern? The people! I’ve had the pleasure of working with several staff and administrators across this campus for several years now, and I’m always heartened by people’s commitment to students.
What can you tell us about your master's degree project? My research question is: How does a highly selective private university in the Midwest’s formal communication play a role in undergraduate student activism and the BIPOC student experience on campus in light of national racial tension from 2016-2021? I’m interested in studying formal communication rhetoric, BIPOC student belonging, and what role, if any, communication plays in campus protest and activism, especially the rise in campus protest over the past several years.
Where do you see yourself in five years? I see myself working in a leadership capacity for an organization that believes in uplifting marginalized voices in higher education. I hope to feel closely connected to the organization’s mission alongside a team of dreamers and doers. In five years, you might also find me out of state! I’ve grown up in Chicago and worked here my entire life, so my partner and I are open to new higher ed opportunities outside of Illinois. On a fun note, my family’s dream is to own property in Cartagena, Colombia. They are originally from Bogota, but we’ve fallen in love with Cartagena’s warmth and charm. I hope that in five years you can find us spending part of our summer there.
Brag about your teammates! We feature one staff member in each newsletter. Nominate someone by emailing the Office of the Provost and telling us, in a sentence or two, how your colleague contributes to Northwestern’s mission and why everyone in the Office of the Provost should get to know them.
New staff arrivals
Block Museum
Center for Civic Engagement
Center for Leadership
Chicago Biomedical Consortium
Financial Aid
Graduate Financial Aid
Health Professions Advising
Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion
Office of Equity
Office of FGLI Initiatives
Office of the Provost
Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching
Portable Caregiving Grants
Human Resources has launched a Portable Caregiving Grant that is intended to help mitigate financial and accessibility burdens for caregivers. The program, which provides single-payment, taxable grants of up to $1,500, complements Northwestern’s center-based fee assistance program and may be used for care at centers outside center partnerships as well as for home daycares and in-home care. |
News and notes |
Preserving Black voices
With support from Northwestern’s Racial Equity and Community Partnership Grant Program and The Graduate School, the Office of the Provost's Center for Civic Engagement and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) will embed Ph.D. students within Chicagoland cultural organizations to support projects that preserve and amplify Black histories through the Black Metropolis Graduate Assistantships initiative. BMRC is a Chicago-based membership association of libraries, universities, museums and community arts organizations.
Communicating through art
The Block Museum of Art and the Northwestern University Center for Audiology, Speech, Language, and Learning (NUCASLL) have partnered on an innovative clinical study centering on art-based discussion in the treatment of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a condition that involves progressive deterioration of language functioning. Working together, the units developed the trial program “Conversations Through Art” as a clinical treatment case-study. The nine-week program provided facilitated conversations on artworks in the museum collection, led by NUCASLL faculty and graduate students, as part of a clinical treatment plan for patients with PPA.
Women’s Center Shujaa Award
On International Women’s Day, March 8, the Women’s Center presented its annual Shujaa Award to Amy Hauenstein, Director of Curriculum and Non-Degree Programs for the School of Communication's MSC program and Adjunct Faculty for the program. The Shujaa honors a member of staff whose service to the work of gender justice, equity and inclusion demonstrates courage, tenacity and an ethic of care.
Gabrielle Foreman opportunities
Internationally renowned Black history, literature and digital humanities scholar Gabrielle Foreman will participate in a series of campus events May 2 to 6. Foreman is professor of English, African American studies and history at Penn State University, where she holds the Joseph Paterno Family Chair in Liberal Arts. She is the founding director of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) website, which preserves the records of seven decades of early Black convention organizing and features interactive historical exhibits, documenting what was then called the Colored Convention movement. Northwestern’s public events on May 2 and May 4 will showcase Foreman’s interdisciplinary expertise in Black history, art, poetry and digital humanities and her accomplishments at bringing Black history to communities through online exhibits and collaborations in the arts. The weeklong series of events is sponsored by the departments of African American Studies, History and Theatre, the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the N. W. Harris Lecture Fund and the Office of the Provost.
Office of the Provost website redesign
After many months of research and preparation in partnership with the Office of Global Marketing and Communications, the Office of the Provost launched a redesigned website in late February that provides a fresher and more dynamic reflection of the work we all do. The site now includes an events calendar, news and announcements, more prominent space for our DEI initiatives on the homepage and much more. The website will continue to be updated over the coming months to reflect the work of Office of the Provost’s units. Feedback is welcome by emailing officeoftheprovost@northwestern.edu.
In case you missed it
|
|
Learn more about the Office of the Provost |
