 All right. Well, let's get started. I'd like to welcome everyone to the panel that follows the great lecture by President Crumpton Young. What I'd like to do here is to introduce our moderator for the panel, Professor Donna Riley, who is the Kamiar Hagigi Head of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue, the first best and largest school of engineering education in the nation. She's known for her work in challenging traditional notions on engineering education and has worked to really incorporate a science technology studies framework to understand how engineering affects society in a sociological way. Over to you, Donna. Thanks so much, Arvin. So I wanted to save as much time as possible for our panelists to talk. And I think that they will be giving some introductions about themselves a little bit as they describe some examples of change in higher ed. So let me just kind of briefly introduce each person. So first, you have already met both President Crumpton Young and Attorney Glenn Austin, Jr. And I'd like to introduce Dr. Ivory Tolson, who is Director of Education, Innovation and Research at the NAACP. He has played many roles. He's formerly Professor at Howard, or maybe still sorry, Professor at Howard University, still Professor at Howard. And has been CEO of the QEM Network as well as the Coordinator of the HBCU Initiative at the White House during the Obama years. So, and I'll let him tell you more about himself. And then we have Dr. Tahira Reed-Smith, who is Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. And in particular, I've asked her to talk a little bit about work she's been involved in with the blackenedengineering.org group that launched in 2020 and has had a lot of impact on higher ed conversations around racial justice and higher ed. And last but not least, Professor Dulcy Abraham, who is in Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management here at Purdue and has, I think, about three decades of experience doing change on campus around gender and racial ethnic justice. So that's my brief intro for everybody. And with that, I'm just gonna jump right in and say, this talk was super inspiring thanks to both President Crumpton Young and Attorney Austin for that. And what I think we really wanna talk about today and here is, what are some of the practical considerations around how do we do this work together? How do we operationalize a vision both for change on campus and change in the greater society with higher ed, driving that change. So each panelist has a different slice of really being part of operationalizing these kinds of visions and putting them into action in different settings. So I'm gonna ask each panelist in turn to describe just one example from their experience in which the higher ed community has served effectively as the catalyst for social change or social justice and to talk a little bit about who the players were, what the impact was, and what it was that made the contribution from higher ed so effective. And so while I did not tell the panelists who I was gonna call on first, I might start with Dr. Tolson if I may. Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks for calling on me first. That's a pretty tall weather. So what comes to mind when I think of higher education leaders that has taken the charge, I think about the HBCU community and we see with the leadership of Dr. Crumpton Young what she's not only done, is doing at Texas Southern in the short period of time that she's been there, but across different institutions like Morgan State and Tennessee State. But when we think about what is going to be necessary for the United States to continue to be a viable nation, that innovates, that has industries that thrive, where we have technological advances that takes us through the 21st century. We need institutions like HBCUs that get the kind of recognition that they deserve. President Crumpton Young talked a lot about data informed decision making. And one of the things that I've seen and she also talked about proliferation of bad information. I wrote a book called No BS, BS is for bad stats. So I understand how a lot of times these bad stats will get out there. And there has been a lot of BS or bad stats that's come out about HBCUs. And for HBCUs to get the kind of attention that they're getting now, positive attention, they had to really be strategic and intentional, just like President Crumpton Young said, about changing that narrative. Now, with that being said, there's still a whole lot more that needs to be done. I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of presidents and vice presidents at predominantly white institutions. And I remember talking to a council of deans at a major flagship institution. And they were talking about how difficult it was to hire black balcony members. And I asked the nature of those difficulties. And they said, you have to understand, we're competing against the Berkleys and the Harvards. And yeah, so I call them out these institutions. And so I said, so if you're looking for engineering professors, do you know in Morgan State, graduates more engineers in many PhD, in many different disciplines of engineering than any other university, black engineers. So would you hire a professor from Morgan State? They got their degree from Morgan State. And there were silence. But yet they have students that are complaining about the racial diversity on their campus, but they froze at hiring a black engineer from an institution whose very foundation is to support those types of students. So we have a long way to go where that's concerned. And I'll stop it there. Thank you. Maybe if folks wanna volunteer, jump right in or I will start calling on folks. Okay, it looks like Dulce has her hand up, please go right ahead. Thanks, Donna. So I'm gonna talk, I mean, give examples of two groups that grew out of higher education. And I want to bring up both Nesb, as well as the Women in Engineering programs in Society of Women Engineers, particularly because Purdue has been at the forefront of those. And the impetus for that came because people who were concerned saw the lack thereof of having the diversity and inclusion and belonging, particularly in engineering, right? And that's the field that I'm familiar with. And I think it was grassroots. And I really liked what both President Crumpton Young as well as Attorney Austin said that each of us can do something and we have a voice and we can be authentic, use our voices in an authentic manner. And I believe that when these organizations emerged, I mean, at Purdue, they came because those authentic voices refuse to be quiet and they wanted to promote, start those changes that now have an impact, sometimes not as recognized as we would like them to be. So those are kind of correlated examples that I see from higher education, which started to have an impact and continues to have an impact. Fantastic. All right, thank you. And... So I'm next. Hi. So with black and engineering, it happened with all black faculty. So it was something that came, it happened because black faculty got together and recognized that there were some issues. There was a lot going on in 2020. There was the black and the ivory hashtag where black faculty and sort of the humanities were voicing their issues and concerns on social media. And in like manner, we recognized that, well, this is true in engineering as well. So there were several events happening in 2020. And then once George Floyd happened and everyone was alarmed and it just sort of stirred something up because we recognize the injustice. Maybe it's not exactly like that, but similar figurative knees on the neck that black faculty and maybe others experienced. But we got together to be intentional. And I think I heard that discussed earlier with Dr. Crumpton Young. I felt like I think I heard about intentionality. And about 70 faculty across the nation got together on a Zoom call to just talk through what are the issues and just begin to organize. And to date, what we've done is create a space for black faculty to voice their concerns, to have community, because many are just maybe one or two on their campus or one or two in their department. They don't have, there's not a critical mass on individual campuses to allow for a stronger sort of stronger action to be taken. And we've created space for voices to be heard, for issues to be addressed. We've had audiences with deans, department heads, we've been able to share a call to action document that was drafted. It was framed by two faculty, one at MIT, one at Vanderbilt, Cullen Bowie and Audrey Bowden crafted it and several faculty added to it. And so we have this document, actually I could put it on in the chat, the website. We have a website. I mean, we really just got organized and really just continuing to do that work right now. One of the biggest conversations we've been having is talking about funding and black scientists. There's a paper that came out in Cell written by biomedical engineering faculty that talked about how the NIH, they just identify some of these discriminatory practices that have been happening through the NIH and the lack of funding that's been granted to black scientists. And so there's been conversations around that. How can we think in non-traditional ways? How can we identify other sources of funding that could support the research of black engineers and scientists? So we're just anything, all things, to promote the success, the well-being of black faculty is what black in engineering is about. So I'll stop there. Thanks. And how are things at TSU? I heard you were having some technical difficulties. Are you all able to? We are here with you. And I tell you, I was so inspired by all of the comments. I just wanna share my reaction to the comments. I love when, and of course, Dr. Reed Smith knows, I know her well, but, and so I literally just, you know, smiled and said, oh my gosh, she has just flourished and to the person that I just am, I've always loved her. But to hear her say that we just came together with a conversation around something that mattered, and now we just have organized. And then to hear her say that we're now starting to have those conversations that are data-inspired to show those disparities and to show those inequities, I think is truly an example of a catalyst for societal change. So I'm so happy. And I didn't even know you had formed the group. I am black in engineering. So I told Edie Yawson, I didn't even know she'd done it. So I'm so, so proud to see that. And then as Dr. Tolson mentioned, I think it's so important here on our campus, we're talking about innovation, transformation and disruption. And what Dr. Tolson pointed out is a prime example of what we should disrupt in higher age. And that is the belief that outstanding faculty members cannot originate in HBCUs, or that outstanding engineers can't originate in HBCUs. And I remember when Dr. Tolson was doing this research that really started to show these differences or these perceptions and the inequities that are a result of these perceptions. And so I do think it's important for us to continue to do that work, the no BS, the no bad stats, I think it's so important for us to continue to do that. And then also the work to discover the good stats because we need to discover those stats that are important to encourage societal change. So my reaction was just to the comments that were made and the comment that was made by Dr. Abram about how we do need to think about what effort, the efforts that we start on our campuses, we need to understand how they have the national implications and look for ways to start those efforts and give life to the conversations that need to be had on national stage. And if I may just follow up there. Yeah, it's true that what happens on university campuses does reverberate the rest of society. And it's important for us to know what our power is and what our influence can be. And to kind of give an example of that, I wanna talk about University of Alabama. They have, there's an organization at the University of Alabama called The Machine. Some of you may have heard of it, but The Machine is a very old organization started in 1888. And what it is, it's a, I don't wanna say secret, but I'll say less public organization. And it's one that has so much power and influence that they would always select the student government association president. They would always select the homecoming queen. And eventually the lessons that they learned on campus with how they wielded their power bled into city elections. Then you're affecting the state legislature. Some of the Congress people we have now from Alabama are products of The Machine. And the keys to their success was just organization. It was planning. It was, and it was sticking firm to the rules that they set for themselves to ensure their continued success. And again, this organization started in 1888. They were not defeated until 2015. 2015 is the first time that The Machine candidate did not win student government association president. So again, what you do at universities is an incubator for organization that reverberates in society. And very important for us to keep that in top of mind. Thank you. All right, so my next question for the panel is really about the obstacles and overcoming those as well as how we can skill up to meet the obstacles and challenges that are before us. And I think, you know, one thing that's on my mind, particularly following Dr. Tolson's comments about HBCUs is thinking about ways that PWIs can skill up in partnerships with HBCUs. Cause I think a lot of PWIs go in with a misconception about what that partnership is going to be like and how that's supposed to go. And I'm wondering about ways to kind of, to help PWIs do better with that, things PWIs can learn and maybe examples of good partnerships that PWIs could learn from, but also more generally just looking at any challenge, any obstacle and how higher ed can sort of overcome those obstacles and anybody can jump in. I think none of you are shy, so I know you can jump in. I know Dr. Tolson would like to answer that first and then we'll add. Well, I'll say that, you know, my entire career has been at HBCUs starting at Southern University and going through to Howard University and having relationships with some predominantly wide institutions has been instrumental to my success early in my career, working with University of Georgia. There was someone who got a center there that took an interest in me and he flew me to UGA, had me sit down with his statisticians all day, I had my own data and that was the first time I had a statistician I was just dedicated to helping with my own data. Also worked at Emory University as an assistant professor at Howard University. I worked there for a summer and I got a lot of training from the University of Michigan. So these partnerships are important and they work. They work best when the predominantly wide institutions understand the value of HBCUs, understand how they can help and also understand how HBCUs can help them. There are things that HBCUs have to offer predominantly wide institutions. And a lot of times when, like if there was a situation where someone from an HBCU was interviewing for a chief diversity officer position at a predominantly wide institution, a large predominantly wide institution and someone asked that candidate, do you think you could work at a university like this because you've never worked at a university like this? Now, if somebody was coming from a large research institution and was going for a position as chief research officer at an HBCU, no one would ask that question. They would just assume that the HBCUs would be lucky to have someone. But we're talking about diversity position. So this is an institution that was founded on the principles of diversity. So HBCUs are similar institutions, systematic serving institutions, tribal colleges. That actually should be the first place you look for this particular position. So those are types of things that need to change. A lot of times the resource inequity is the largest thing. And so if you're trying to help HBCUs, the best thing to do is to share resources. And that's what the predominantly wide institutions did for me when I was coming up, they shared their resources. They didn't make any assumptions about any training that I didn't have or any knowledge that I didn't have. It was about sharing resources because they believed in my work and they thought that I would be a better contributor to my institution if I could augment the resources that I didn't have. So those are some of the things that we should keep in mind. And I will add to those. When I, to Dr. Tolson's point, when I inherited, when I went to the National Science Foundation, at that time I'd never attended an HBCU and I'd never talked at an HBCU. I spent most of my career in large, predominantly white institutions. And when I inherited my portfolio, someone told me I should look at the diversity of my portfolio. So I said, okay, let me look at the diversity of my portfolio. I realized at that time I had no HBCUs in my portfolio and I was responsible at that time for well over $130 million. Now this was in 2006, 2007. So to Dr. Tolson's point, I then learned the difference was about opportunities and about access. So I think that one of the things we can certainly do is make sure that there are opportunities. I had a computer science student that said just the other day at Texas Southern that he's doing so well at NASA, but the difference was because he had an opportunity. It wasn't that he wasn't capable. And people just assumed, well, he's capable, let's give him an opportunity. So I think it's important to advocate for opportunities. I think it's important to share resources, but I don't wanna underscore, it is so critical. And I know it was a political phrase used, but I believe it stronger together. Teamwork makes the dream work. I believe both of those I've read the book, heard the phrase. We're now starting to have some conversations about AAU institutions partnering with HBCUs as it relates to research and innovation. And then naturally that will spur other partnerships in the academic space. I think a big catalyst for change will be for some of the large, really well-known AAU institutions to say, we wanna do it, we're ready to do it. We see it as a win-win and not approach it from some type of deficit model, but or savior's here to help those poor people. It really needs to be from a lens of equity and parity and authenticity. Can you think about the long-standing, decades-long partnership between Brown and Tougaloo, for example, if it was not a mutually beneficial partnership, then I'm sure would not have been in existence for this long. So it can be done in their models for it. Excellent, thank you. And Purdue is a member of the AAU for folks who don't know. So he's wondering. So how about Dr. Abraham, do you want to jump in on this since we sort of, I just sort of pinpointed Purdue here as a potential partner. When you think about obstacles, haven't worked at Purdue on these kinds of change issues for so long, what are your observations about challenges and overcoming them? So it's quite interesting. I think all the speakers so far talked about, PWI is not going to minority-serving institutions and saying, hey, I'm going to be the savior, right? I mean, because sometimes there is that mentality. I'm going to come and rescue you. That's not the point because I think we should be equal partners with the institutions that we are working with. And often it's anyone who's in an institution, they may not be able to show, demonstrate, excellence in a specific area because they have not had the opportunity or the access to those resources. I haven't worked very closely with HBCUs, but I have worked closely with HSIs. And very often what we find is that many of the students don't have access to the computing resources or the library resources that we have at PWI, such as Purdue. And when students come to visit us, they often say, wow, I didn't realize that students at Purdue have access to all these libraries and all these labs, right? So how do we provide, how do we make it more of an equal playing field for students and faculty and others stakeholders in higher education? Now, Donna, I know that the focus was initially on relationships between PWIs and HBCUs, but you also asked the question about some of the biggest obstacles. And what I see as obstacles at an institution such as Purdue, which is a pretty large institution, is sometimes a lack of accountability and also the lack of transparency. So where have we made changes and what impact have these changes had on the lives of those whom it was supposed to impact, right? And we don't typically have that data that is readily available or, and again, I think many of us on this call are engineers and we like to have our decisions be informed by data and we do not have access to that data, right? Also, we are, I take my role as an educator to be a change agent by also initiating changes in the lives of future decision makers and leaders who are my students. And in order for us to have enlightened decision makers, I think we should also model the behavior of transparency and accountability for our actions. So I think those are two obstacles or those are two areas where I see that higher education has not lived up to its expectation and to its mission. All right. Oh, go ahead. No, please, please. Oh, I was just gonna say speaking of obstacles. So one of the things that with the Black and Engineering Group, the call to action and trying to help cultivate an anti-racist university, one of the largest obstacles that before we even get into recommendations, the first page is sort of like, you need to acknowledge that the history of this, of universities are racist. And some people, it's hard to swallow some of the things that are required. You know, when I look at all, some of the issues with the challenges like racial tension and all of that, it just seems if people understood regular relationships, like how do you resolve if you're in a, you know, sister-sister conflict or like a romantic relationship, there is just some fundamentals that if you understood how to do that in your person-to-person, then can you imagine if it could propagate to systems and people groups that could recognize you have, before you can apologize, you have to acknowledge that you did something wrong. You have to acknowledge. And I think one of the biggest obstacles is that people, it's hard and people get nervous about affiliating themselves with racism or it's, and then there's some of this guilt and all of this other stuff that happens and prevents change from happening. It's a really, one of the other things is you can't keep delegating diversity initiatives to people. Like to do diversity work, you yourself as presidents, deans, department chair, it can't be this committee. It's an individual work. You yourself have to do this and that's hard. That is hard for people to embrace. And so just the call-to-action document, you read it and you'll just, you will have a visceral response and recognize, oh yeah, this is gonna be hard. Especially whatever institution that you're at, but it's necessary, it's necessary to do hard things to see change. And I think that's an excellent point because if these things, I used to tell my students when we're working on complex engineering problems, like if these were easy, the solutions would already be there. So I think this is an, I had, I learned this from Edie Austin. I think it's so critical that we just embrace the grind. We have to embrace the grind. We have to say as institutions, right up front, this is not going to be easy. This message is not going to be received well, but it's not meant personally. It's not, we're not starting the conversation to assign blame. I think a lot of those things have to be said up front. And then we acknowledge that it just won't be easy. I will, I'll never forget, of course with all the country, we were all engaged in many ways in the presidential election of 2008, I think. And I was at the University of Central Florida and with my students, we were doing all these wonderful things because, and I will tell you that Central Florida turned Florida blue that year. I just want you all to know, started where we were, but we were really working as an institution. And we would listen to the interviews that at that time, President Obama, of course he was the presidential candidate, that he would give. And I just love, I say this all the time in terms of transparency and understanding challenges, embracing the ground, they were talking to him and they were discussing all of the challenges, all of the obstacles, everything that he was going to confront. And I mean, they were the interviewer was just rattling off as they say in Texas, rattling off those questions. And it was amazing how literally under fire, he just sat back and he said, well, now you all didn't think this was going to be easy. And so I have used that with my students, with my leadership teams, when I'm in these international global forums about change, we have to actually acknowledge that maybe we did think was going to be easy, but that it's not going to be easy. And I think if we all acknowledge that, embrace the grind, then we're ready for the challenges. Now, one of the other things I say on this campus with my team is that we need unprecedented success at an accelerated pace. You see his head, or I was going at an accelerated pace, that means we're gonna do it, you know. But sometimes what we have to understand is for the more complex challenges, such as these, there has to be time for reflection, has to be time for conversation, reflection. It really is a step, sometimes it's a stepwise approach until you can have that experiential impact, right? So I think it's important, the exponential impact is so important that we know that as well. Excellent, thanks. I'm gonna jump in and thank Dr. Reed Smith, who has to go teach, unfortunately. So she was just able to join us for the first portion of this panel. So life goes on in universities, so she's gonna go on and continue to do transformative work with students. So please join me in thanking her as she has to jump off, but we'll continue talking here. Yep. I'm so excited to see you in the first five minutes of your lecture, talking about them becoming catalysts for societal change. I will do, thanks for having me, take care. Thank you. All right, so Attorney Austin, did you have any thoughts on this round? Should we go on? Yep. Sure, I think I try to look at things from a high-level overarching umbrella perspective. And one thing that just excites me is the fact that at universities, we have this opportunity to just entrench these conversations in an academic way. And just the fact that we study these concepts, the fact that we have departments, the fact that we have diversity chairs, the fact that we have that, it's institutionalizing these conversations, it's making them scholarly, and it's putting them in a format to where they must live on. We're creating good data, we're not creating bad data, we're creating good data. And we can use that to really drive change. You can say, look at this, look at this. And in my role in government relations, one thing that one of my first internship, I was working with a senator, and he taught us that if you have an idea for a bill and you're not sure that that bill is going to pass the first time around, then have them commission a study on that bill. So, and what that does is, it still gives you a win, you still pass the bill, they feel better because they didn't pass the bill, they didn't wanna pass, they just passed a study. But with that study, it's gonna create data. And then you come back in the next legislative session and say, look, we did the study, here are the results, now let's really pass this bill. So it's, I love the fact that we have this opportunity to really institutionalize and formalize these type of conversations. Excellent, and I would add critical race theory, right, is an excellent example of not just data, but also theories developed out of experience that are really powerful. And it explains these legislative sessions that are now creating little microcosms of critical race theory to then go and study. Those bills would be super interesting. Just a thought. So moving on. We also add to the data conversation. So there's three essential things that we need for a good decision-making, this strategic decision-making. One is good data, which we'll talk about, but good data isn't enough. You also have that thoughtful analysis because you have good data, but if you don't analyze it appropriately, achievement gap data, that's a thoughtless analysis. It's the idea that you take one group of kids, you compare them to another group of kids, you look at the gap in between, but the within group analysis, looking at high achieving black students versus middle and low achieving black students, that's more thoughtful analysis. The last thing is a compassion and understanding. If you have biases, if you have preconceived biases about a certain group, you can have all the data that you want. You're gonna make that data say what you believe. So you really have to check yourself and to get in the types of conversations with people that allow you to have that compassion. And so your understanding and interpretation of the data will be based on this compassion and understanding. Kind of with your own children. When you get a lot of data about your children, even if it's bad data, you love them enough to contextualize it appropriately to bring in some qualitative sources to complement it and to come to a conclusion about it that will help you to bring about a solution to the problem. Excellent, yeah, thank you. Okay, so I've got another hopeful round of questions here. We got about seven minutes before we have to go to Q&A. So I'm gonna try to do two quick rounds if I can. We'll see if we can do that. What can one person do? So if there's a student on this call, a faculty member on this call, staff member on this call who is just thinking about, how can I get more involved? How can I get involved a little bit? How do I dip my toe in here? What are some ways I can connect and start to get involved? How can I contribute? What would you say? Well, I would quickly say if there's an organization out there that's working on that, the first thing you can do is join them. If there isn't an organization out there that's working on the issue, begin to leave the change that you'd like to see. Perfect example is Dr. Smith who decided to form a new organization through starting conversations. Yeah, connected to that, I would say, there's a concept called daily humanism, humanize the data. And one of the things that I promote in my book is that you use people to understand data, not data to understand people. So the first thing is to have the conversations. Whatever you're trying to diversify, whatever you're trying to solve, have conversations with the ones who are affected. If you're trying to stop underrepresented students from dropping out of STEM majors, find some who dropped out of STEM majors and have a good conversation with them. Talk about the weed out courses that they might have taken or the 10 credits that they had to take that was in addition to what somebody else had to take that came in with all these AP credits. And the scholarship that they lost, not because they couldn't do the work, but because they got a C in this weed out course that dropped in below the 3.0 they need to maintain the scholarship. And so when you have those types of conversations, you have real solutions embedded in it, not just the superficial ones that we arrive at when we look at them from a distance. So I consider myself to be a person of privilege. I mean, I teach at a great university, I have wonderful students access to so many resources. And sometimes I think I don't pay attention. So something which I have to remind myself often, probably every day and also remind those around me is that I will have eyes to see and ears to hear and the heart and will to act because very often I'm very comfortable and I don't do things that I can do. So as a person who has privilege, what am I doing? And it can be speaking, having that difficult conversation or the difficult dialogue about an issue that is just in front of me, it may be very comfortable for me not to pay any attention to it, but how do I do that? And earlier today I was in class and our session for the Graduate Seminar for the new students was about diversity and inclusion. And this was one of the topics that we talked about. How can you be, I mean, I'm a new student on campus, how can I get involved? And having the eyes to see that and putting your foot forward because you can make a difference. Right. And we've got three minutes. So I'm gonna jump in and give us one more quick lightning round. How do you not be discouraged in the work? What do you do to not get discouraged? I always tell someone, I tell my team do the math because what you'll find is there are usually more small victories than you're counting. And sometimes you look at that large disappointment and you think the three small victories and the one large disappointment, you think you had a bad day. So I always tell my team to do the math and therefore you really have, you are making progress, you have had a good day. And I'd like to just kind of go along the same lines. Another one of my favorite books is by a gentleman named David Goggins. You guys might know who he is. Former Navy SEAL and he was an ultra runner and he was talking about when he was doing this 100 mile race and he was getting to like mile 50, mile 60, it was getting tough for him. And the way he describes it is he would go reach in his cookie jar. And that cookie jar is all the accomplishments that you've made throughout your life. And you can say, you know what? I did this, you know what? I did that. And it's all these accomplishments that you've made that were, you didn't think you could do it at the time. And then you think about your present situation and you're like, you know what? I can do, I can finish this race. This is gonna be another one of my cookie jar. And it's just thinking back to all the victories and had all the hard things that you've gone through what got you to this point. You can do it again. You can do it again. I think for me it's my students or I should say my former students and the notes I get from them while they are still at Purdue and when they have graduated. And I thought I would just read a card that I received from one of our female engineering students who graduated a few years ago. And this was right after, you know, Purdue was in the news for quite some time for many reasons. And, you know, she wrote a card and she said, I'm very thankful for you and for the so many other CE professors for challenging me to be the competent, confident engineer that I am today. Right? And then she talks about, you know, what she sees in the university and so on and so forth. And she concludes by saying, I'm hopeful that the culture will continue to evolve for the better. I'm proud to be part of the culture shift with you. And that was, you know, when things get rough and I think all of you mentioned that work in this domain is hard and it's sometimes disappointing. But when you get a note such as that, you know that at least the next generation or few in the next generation are also going to be change agents. Yeah, there's a common theme, you know, study success and, you know, talk to the students, talk to the ones that are getting the right. All right, so we are moving into Q and A. So we've got 15 minutes and President Crumpton Young has a hard stop at 250. So we're gonna do Q and A. So please, you can jump in, you can unmute, you can type a question in the chat if you're shy, but don't be shy. Jump on in the Q and A. And one thing I'll also say while people are formulating thoughts is save the chat because chat has a bunch of pretty awesome resources. And if you're interested in anything we talked about, there's a lot of folks have been and thanks to the folks that have been posting as people have talked about different books and resources, a bunch of folks that have been posting links and things. So nice community taking care of each other here, which is great. So questions, thoughts, what do you do to make change? You know, there's an interesting, I will tell you, I just saw something in the chat. I asked our team to open up the chat. I was going to answer your former question and then there's a great one in there. I think one of the things we also, when you said the last question was what can we do as a student, as a faculty, as an individual? And we gave a number of answers. I just want to also say one of the easier things to do is to use our voice when we're in meetings, when we're in class, when we're in organizations, when we, and use that voice to be the voice of change or act. You know, one of the things that we know when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, especially on campuses, let's just say we're Purdue, the students that are there from diverse backgrounds, sometimes just saying welcome, you want to come and work in my group or welcome, you want to sit down next to me or it's not, you know, this is a very interesting day. Just finding a connection and creating a relationship goes along as well. So I just want to encourage everyone that, you know, being a catalyst for change means sometimes just using your voice and doing those things that help to build a relationship and help others feel more comfortable. And I also think just honestly this event here is kind of a microcosm for how I think it can work. Like a couple of times a title of book might escape us, it ends up in the chat. You know, we're talking about different organizations, we have blacks in engineering, so help people. You know, we're all in positions where we can do good things. I also like to call it leaving the ladder down when you get to the top. You know, we're in these positions of power, we're in these positions of influence. People want to get to where we are and it's not going to do us any good to hold on to this, you know, with a death clutch. You know, eventually we're going to have to let this go. So help people get to where you are. You know, the more the merrier, there's space for everybody. All right, excellent. Sorry, I couldn't unmute there for a second. So someone's got to jump in here. We're going to wait you out. Someone ask a question or tell a story. This is Shana again. So speaking of like one of your questions earlier was how can we build bridges and build up relationships between PWIs and HBCUs? So I'm a graduate of HBCS North Carolina A&T and I worked in the industry for 10 years before coming back to school. And one of the things that I learned in conversations with our dean of engineering when it came to building bridges and partnerships with universities in the industry was when it came to HBCUs and I like how they brought up that, you know not the savior complex, but one of the things that was brought up was how can we have the relationship where the example, one of the examples we used is if you're going to look for students and you want to start like a summer program and you say, oh, well, we're going to go to the HBCU and allow HBCU students to come to our university and do research over the summer. Where, I mean, that sounds like it's a great opportunity but what it sounds like and responsibly the other side maybe there is something that we have at our university which resources is important but it's something that you can get better at our university that you may not have at your university as far as why we may, you know why you may want to come here for graduate school or different things like that whereas when having conversations with the dean one of the things that she brought up was, okay so it's great that we're having a conversation where we may meet some of our students maybe coming to the university but where are some ways that we can build those relationships where we may have some of our students come to our university and work with some of our researchers and our professors so that it's not only building an awareness where you may be building a pipeline of students to come to both universities mutually but you're also building collaborations where the students at the universities understand and engage with leadership at HBCUs understand the research that is being conducted there and when bridges are being built students come back to their home universities at PWIs and actually say, I've engaged with students at universities at HBCUs I engaged with professors at HBCUs and you see more commonality in the access and the resources in a thought pattern that HBCUs are contributing as well because I think sometimes if you get to a large university the thought pattern is that what we're doing can only be done here whereas once that opportunity is brought in it can open up the language and the thoughts of the students attending PWIs and so that can also start change because then in future conversations when they go out and have their professorships or research opportunities they have built bridges with these different universities and schools and I identify them as a resource not because oh we wanna help an HBCU but more because I've done and I've collaborated with these professors and researchers before and I know the knowledge that they have and we wanna build that bridge mutually so I think that's also important to have conversations whereas not that we're doing a service to the students by allowing them to come to our university but how can we send students to their universities as well and engage on their campuses with their leadership, with their professors and with their researchers as well. I mean I think that's an excellent point Shauna because I will tell you I never had an HBCU experience and so here I was in DC looking at my portfolio and the best thing that ever happened to me was for someone to say don't sit here and think you understand go and visit the different HBCUs and actually that's how I ended up with becoming vice president for research at Tennessee State University and now that I have both perspectives I always have this conversation that says we don't always have to have programs where we send our faculty from HBCUs to the large predominantly white institutions. What the real richness of learning and for me was when I went to and immersed myself into the HBCUs. So I agree with you wholeheartedly that there's a lot to be learned there and we should have those partnership perspectives where we're introducing our students, faculty, staff and administrators to both environments so that we can learn from that and I think it helps to dispel a number of myths if you will but it also helps to fill in what I call the missing blanks in the question because if you don't have that if you've never had the experience you don't have any idea which questions you need to ask. Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's very much that needs to be said that hasn't already been said but the partnership aspect is very important. If PWI is allowing or creating an opportunity for students to come to their campus it really should be done in coordination with an HBCU and there should be some thought as to what is the most important thing from the HBCUs perspective and the students perspective and it should create pipeline type of opportunities. So all of those are very important and you already mentioned that that it should be a two-way street not just HBCUs wanna PWI but PWI students also wanna to HBCUs. And that can also be brought into other minority serving institutions as well as other structuring university structures as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking it has a lot to do with engagement as well that land grant institutions when we approach engagement and I think even this whole conversation we're having of higher ed as a catalyst for change it's that, what's the nature of that partnership? Where does the expertise lie? Yes, we have data we can bring but the lived experience of communities is also of that value and those lived experiences matter too. So as we go into communities with engagement work I think universities would do well to think about those as partnerships and really see ourselves as learning from communities as much as they might be benefiting from our data, right? And we also have to be prepared to work against the system because the system works for larger so-called prestigious well-endowed institutions. They get the highest rankings on the US News and World reports. They get more big donations. They have higher tuition, they're more selective. So all of these things work in their favor and in order for them to create systemic change they kind of have to give up some notions that they're very proud of, they're proud of these rankings and they look at people who are ranked similarly to them as their peer institutions. And so if you, how do you go to an HBCU if you don't think of that institution as a peer institution? You know, if you're bought into this notion. And so there's a lot of self-talk and a lot of reflection I think needs to happen before you engage in these relationships. All right, questions. Someone out there has a question that they're too shy to ask, two minutes. And I will say as we're waiting for them to find their courage, like the lion and the whiz, I wanna add to the point that Dr. Tulsa just mentioned. Successful partnerships only occur when both sides come to the table with mutual respect and with that commitment to make it work. So if you want to start such a partnership and you don't, you do think they're less or you start with that, you know, axiology that Dr. Tulsa described, I wanna encourage you to transform your thinking first because you do more damage when you try to start a partnership and you don't have that perspective of mutual respect. And the commitment to see it through. And I'll give you some examples. I mean, when I was at my first HBCU, I was appalled by some of the comments that faculty members would make or even administrators would make when they would come to us to say they want to do a joint research project together. Those comments did more harm than good. So it's so important that we be transformed in our own minds before we begin to initiate those kind of initiatives. Absolutely. All right, so lightning round. There's a question about three things you've done that have made you successful. So this is the role model question for our panelists here. Or maybe one thing since we have very little time, but one to three things. One, I always work for institutions, not people. I can have someone that is my boss and I've always respected my boss. But I work under my own understanding of the mission of the institution that I'm working for. Two, I always think of myself as an investment that whatever institution who hired me made and I think of what my product as their return on their investment. So they don't owe me anything. I owe them something by working there. And three has to do with those products. I always try to think of something tangible that I could point to wherever I'm working. But I can say that I created and something that's connected to that mission. But I always think of what's that thing that I wanna do and are those things that I wanna do? So I think those have served me well, those three. Fantastic. Anyone else wanna answer that for wrap up or? Yeah, I'll go next. Three things for me, number one is mentorship. Always seek out good positive mentorship. People that can explain to you how to get to where you wanna go. The next one is controlling my internal narrative. I'm a big believer in the power of a subconscious. So I always try to filter what media I take in, what stimuli I take in. I want all that to be positive. I don't want anything negative to come in. And then the last thing is keeping in mind that education is a noble cause. And I'm so happy to work in the space of higher education because every day I go to work, I know I'm putting my energy into something that's gonna be for the greater good. So I always try to keep that at top of mind when times get tough and I think it's helped. I can go next. So I believe that I'm in education because it's my calling. I mean, it's definitely a good job, but for me it's my calling and my vocation. So I think three things that have helped me are I expect differences in those around me and I respect them. Number two, I can always learn something new from someone around me every day. And number three, I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me and it's important that I provide that shoulder for somebody else to stand on. And last but, oh, sorry, you have one more, sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, those are all fantastic. I think I would add to that, always work on being my very best self. And so that means you have to be prepared. We always remind each other here that you don't have to get ready if you stay ready. So always being prepared, recognizing that you're knowledgeable, recognizing that you have a value, you have valuable knowledge that will benefit others and then most importantly, proceeding boldly and courageously. Don't be deterred by the naysayers or by the fact that things have never been done. All right, with that, if folks can turn on their cameras and we can appreciate our entire panel, we can, you know, do the, you can make noise, you can unmute and make noise and say thank you, thank you for all of your insight. This was fantastic. And we'd really appreciate your time with us today. And onward, looking forward to continuing to do the work.