Diversity in Action Committee

Diversity in Action Committee

Diversity in Action Committee

Diversity in Action (DIA) is a dynamic, action-oriented committee focused on social justice and equity within Rowan University's College of Education and larger community. DIA collectively represents faculty from departments across the College of Education and draws on years of experience and commitment to social justice work. Faculty participants are engaged in work that ranges from supporting racial justice efforts to supporting bi/multilingual students to forging allyship with LGBTQ+ populations to addressing issues of affordability, such as textbook costs and food insecurity. 

The DIA committee, led by Co-Chairs Susan Browne and Kate Seltzer holds monthly college-wide events called Coffee, Critical Conversations, and Community (C^4). Faculty have facilitated conversations on topics such as immigration, wellness, language policies, inclusion, and antiracist pedagogies. In addition to these C^4 events, the DIA committee has created resources for the College of Education that enable faculty and staff to enact justice-oriented values in their teaching.

To contact the DIA committee, email Co-Chairs Susan Browne (brownes@rowan.edu) and Kate Seltzer (seltzerk@rowan.edu).

Diversity in Action Committee Announcements

Building the World to Come: Reclaiming the Purpose of Teacher Education with Dr. Nicole Mirra

Workshop, Q&A, Book Signing
Wednesday, May 1, 10-12pm
James Hall Atrium, 2nd Floor
Rowan University

Rather than preparing educators to survive in the world as it is, what would it look like to support them to build the world that could be with students and communities? In this talk, I propose that we must deconstruct traditional norms and practices of K-12 and teacher education and imagine alternate models of teaching, learning, researching, loving, and dreaming in order to construct equitable democratic futures. This talk will offer a framework and strategies that invite collective imagining about the ethics, commitments, and practices that can guide our field forward with urgency and empathy.

nicole mirraNicole Mirra is an Associate Professor of Urban Teacher Education in the Department of Learning & Teaching at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. Her research utilizes participatory design methods in classroom, community, and digital spaces to collaboratively create civic learning environments with youth and educators that disrupt discourses and structures of racial injustice and creatively compose liberatory social futures. She previously taught secondary literacy and debate in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California. Her books include Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement (Teachers College Press, 2018), Doing Youth Participatory Action Research: Transforming Inquiry with Researchers, Educators, and Students (Routledge, 2015), and Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Norton, 2023). Her work appears in peer-reviewed journals including American Educational Research Journal, Harvard Educational Review, Review of Research in Education, Journal of Teacher Education, and more.

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The DIA Committee posing with their award.

The DIA Committee was honored with the 2023 Excellence in Diversity for Scholarship Award!