Emmitt R. Jolly Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Biology,
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health and Disease

"The Biochemistry of Life: A Model of Diversity"

 

Dr. Emmitt Jolly has been involved in issues concerning minorities and education since he was in high school, where he began giving motivational speeches and talks to junior high students in poor and at risk schools. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow and a UNCF/Merck Dissertation Fellow at UCSF and finished his Ph.D in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology studying gene expression and transcriptional regulation during meiosis.

 

Jolly was founder and president of the Student Literature Redistribution Project, an organization focused of donating scientific journals to schools and universities in need. He served as president of the Black Student Health Alliance for two years and oversaw numerous health related and community related projects including Health Education Day in which students from local high schools were brought to campus to learn health careers in medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy and medical/ basic research. His numerous endeavors led to him being honored with the USCF Chancellors Dr. Martin Luther King Award in 1999. Emmitt Jolly is committed to increasing diversity in science and science related areas.

 

 

Mae Jemison, MD

First African American Woman in Space;
Founder and President of Two Medical Technology Companies

"Science and Technology Advances and Innovation through Diversity: People, Perspective and Purpose"

 

Mae Jemison received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell University in 1981. Dr. Jemison has practiced medicine as a volunteer in a Cambodian refugee camp and as a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa. She was working as a general practitioner in Los Angeles, California when NASA selected her and 14 others for astronaut training. Dr. Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist with NASA in 1988. In September of 1992, as a mission specialist aboard the Shuttle Endeavour, Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to enter space.

In 1993, Dr. Jemison resigned from NASA and founded the Jemison Group, Inc. Among her current projects are several that focus on improving healthcare in Africa and advancing technology in developing countries.

 

 

Joy R. Bostic, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies.

"Justice-Making and the Beloved Community:
The Power of Diversity in University Circle"

 

Dr. Bostic graduated with a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York in 2006. In New York City, she also taught courses in theology and religion at Fordham University at Lincoln Center. In addition, she coordinated the Barnard Columbia Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center and served as the Executive Director of the African American Task Force on Violence Against Women, a community-based organization in Central Harlem.

 

At Case Western Reserve, Dr. Bostic's teaching focuses on such areas as African American religion and culture, religion and healing, and issues in social justice and urban religion. Her scholarship includes essays, edited works and contributed chapters on mysticism, contemporary religious thought and practice, and womanist/feminist perspectives in religion. She is currently working on a book about mysticism, activism and nineteenth century African American women.

 

Joy R. Bostic received her B.A. from Indiana University in 1987 and a Juris Doctor and Master of Arts in Public Policy and Management from The Ohio State University in 1990. In 1993, she earned a Master of Divinity from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois and was ordained a Progressive Baptist minister. While attending Garrett, she also served as a Research Assistant with the Religion in Urban America Project (an ethnographic study funded by the Lilly Endowment) housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

LUKE VISCONTI

"Innovation and Diversity: What Does Success Look Like?"

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Luke Visconti is the Chief Executive Officer of DiversityInc Media LLC. He directs all editorial and business operations of the publication, as well as events and the consulting practice.

 

Mr. Visconti developed and directs the methodology for The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity®, now in its 12th year. He also established the benchmarking consulting practice that is the core of DiversityInc's business. His column, "Ask the White Guy," is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. He is a frequent senior-level lecturer on the business benefits of diversity to corporations, business groups and nonprofit organizations.

 

Mr. Visconti founded DiversityInc in 1998. He founded the DiversityInc Foundation in 2006 and has endowed scholarships at Bennett College for Women, New Jersey City University (HSI) and the Education Opportunity Funds at both Camden and Newark campuses at Rutgers University. He donates all of his speaking fees and distributed more than $500,000 from the DiversityInc Foundation and been responsible for raising over $2 million for the Rutgers Future Scholars program.

 

Prior to entering the publishing industry, he was on active duty as a naval aviator and commissioned officer with the U.S. Navy from 1982 to 1990, and in the reserves until 1992.

 

 

RAYMOND KU, JD

"Hate, Affinity and Merit: Why Diversity Matters"

 

Raymond Ku is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, co-director of the Center for Law, Technology and the Arts, and co-director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Office. Prof. Ku clerked for the Hon. Timothy K. Lewis, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then practiced constitutional, intellectual property and antitrust law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, and First Amendment/media and intellectual property law with Levine Pierson Sullivan & Koch, LLP, both in Washington, D.C. He has taught at Cornell, Seton Hall University, Thomas Jefferson, and St. Thomas University law schools. An internationally recognized and prolific scholar, his articles appear in the law reviews and journals of Berkeley, Chicago, Fordham, Georgetown, Minnesota, Stanford, Tulane, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin, among others. He is the lead author of the first Cyberlaw casebook.

 

 

SANA LOUE, PhD

"Bread for the Body, Bread for the Mind: The Need for Active Culture"

Dr. Loue is professor and Director in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Director of the Center for Minority Public Health of the School of Medicine. Her primary research focus is on HIV risk and prevention and family violence in marginalized communities, such as non-English speakers, immigrants, sexual and ethnic/racial minorities, and persons with severe mental illness. Other research interests include forensic epidemiology, severe mental illness, and ethical issues in the conduct of research with vulnerable persons. She has authored over 70 peer-reviewed articles and 58 book chapters, and has authored and/or edited 27 books. Dr. Loue is also ordained as an interfaith minister.

 

 

LASHANDA T. KORLEY, Ph.D.

"Promoting Diversity in Academia: The Importance of Mentoring"

Dr. Korley is the Nord Distinguished Assistant Professor, Macromolecular Science and Engineering. She the Prinicipal Investigator ofthe Korley Research Group. The focus is the development of mechanically-enhanced, multifunctional polymeric materials for a myriad of applications, including energy and sustainability, biomedical engineering, protective fabrics, and structural materials. They seek to understand the influence of domain architecture, self-assembly, and structural interplay on material behavior.

 

Dr. Korley was awarded a five-year, $490,000 NSF CAREER Award from DMR for her proposal entitled, CAREER: Hierarchical Polymeric Hybrids – Lessons from Nature in Mechanical Behavior. January 2010.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, Ph.D.

"The Economic Case for Diversity"

Dr. Malveaux was the 15th president of Bennett College. She is an African-American economist, author, liberal social and political commentator, and businesswoman.

 

As a writer and syndicated columnist, her work has appeared regularly in USA Today, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ms. magazine, Essence magazine, and The Progressive. Her weekly columns appear in numerous newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte Observer, the New Orleans Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Sun Reporter.

 

Described by Dr. Cornel West as "the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country", Malveaux contributes to the public dialogue on issues such as race, culture, gender, and their economic impacts. In 1990, Malveaux, long with 15 other African American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.

 

In February 2012, Malveaux announced that she would be stepping down from this position in May 2012, saying in a statement that "while I remain committed to [historically black colleges and universities] and the compelling cause of access in higher education, I will actualize that commitment, now, in other arenas. I will miss Bennett College and will remain one of its most passionate advocates."

 

 

CHARLES J. OGLETREE JR., J.D.

"Why Diversity Matters in the Obama Era"

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Charles Ogletree is the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Justice Institute. In addition, Professor Ogletree serves Harvard Law School as the Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice as well as Director of the Trial Advocacy Workshop and Saturday School Program. Professor Ogletree is a prominent legal theorist who has made an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law.

 

Professor Ogletree has examined these issues not only in the classroom, on the Internet and in the pages of prestigious law journals, but also in the everyday world of the public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums where these issues can be dramatically revealed. Armed with an arsenal of facts, Charles Ogletree presents and discusses the challenges that face our justice system and its attempt to deliver equal treatment to all our citizens. He furthers dialogue by insisting that the justice system protect rights guaranteed to those citizens by law. He is the author of The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class, and Crime in America.

 

 

SUE HINZE, Ph.D.

"The Power of Diversity or the Diversity of Power? Reflections on Difference, Power and Privilege"

 

Sue Hinze, PhD is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at CWRU. Dr. Hinze's interests lie rimarily in medical sociology, social inequality and the emerging work/family or work/ life nexus. Most of her research has been on physicians. As a "doctor-watcher," she has used quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine medical culture. She has studied and written about gender differences in medical specialty choice, links between family life and the career paths and patterns of physicians, sexual harassment in medical training, and how women and men "do gender" and family in medical marriages. At the heart of her work is a focus on how individual choices can only be understood within the context of gendered social structural arrangements.