 We have one of our grantees here today, Dr. Anthony Mora, who's an associate professor in the College of Literature Arts and Sciences and Interim Program Director for Latino Studies and American Culture and History. His research interests focus on the historical construction of race, gender, and sexuality. And he has led out the University of New Mexico Spellman College and Morehouse College pipeline initiative that they have for about six or seven years or so at this point. And he'll chat a little bit further as we go on. So we would like to welcome Dr. Mora here. Quick round of applause. Thank you for joining us here today. And thank you for your willingness to kind of share your experiences as it relates to engagement with minority serving institutions towards creating pathways opportunities for those students and our students as well. So thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So with that, I'll start with the first question as I always do. I'll talk a little bit about the nature of your relationship with the University of New Mexico Spellman and Morehouse and, you know, the types of activities you all are engaging in. So yeah, so as you mentioned, we started our program which is with the College of LSA, the humanities division in particular, and New Mexico University of New Mexico Morehouse College and Spellman College in 2015. So as the program has developed, we've slowly added different components to it and those fall underserved two big categories. So one of course is focused on student opportunities. Things like bringing students to the Ann Arbor campus for preview weekends in which they see what Ann Arbor is like. They also find out some tips about how to put together a graduate application. They meet with faculty in humanities units that relate to their own interests. We also partner with the measures program, which is a summer opportunity program through the Rackham Graduate School which is open nationwide, but there are designated slots available for students from New Mexico Morehouse or Spellman. We also have this past year and we'll talk more about the challenges of COVID I know run some webinars as well for students and so there's sort of the student facing side, and then there's the faculty facing side so I think we believe and we've learned that a lot of these projects depend on mutual trust and mutual respect and knowing each other as scholars. So there's different ways in which we try to facilitate that. So one is the we sponsor faculty to travel either between Abakirke and Ann Arbor or Ann Arbor in Albuquerque or Atlanta and Ann Arbor or vice versa. So for research, we have opportunities for faculty who have the sabbatical at their home institution to spend some of that time at Michigan and to take advantage of the library and provide office space. They're here for the semester we've also provided a research workshop for them. We've involved them in sort of questions of policy and questions of developing the program what types of things would be helpful for them. So, again, we try to build those relationships in a way that is equitable. And the draws on each of these sites have different strengths that draws on the strengths. Thank you. And then so there's one thing that I want to follow up because you kind of mentioned the both the student and faculty aspect and the activities that are associated with it. And I think there's something that is interesting in the way that you have thought about this over time and ensuring that this is not one directional so everything is in centered or geared towards getting students to Michigan but also how can we get Michigan students into University of New Mexico or create opportunities at Spelman and Morehouse can you talk a little bit about that and then how that fits into the activities as well. So that's absolutely right. We sense New Mexico has its own PhD programs, we want to make sure that it's understood that there's an opportunity when faculty visit Ann Arbor to be able to promote their programs and to engage with students here that might be interested. And we see all sorts of really great reasons why a student who's attended Michigan would really benefit from spending time in New Mexico, going through a PhD program or even a master's program in New Mexico. Students in Spelman don't have graduate programs in the humanities so that's not part of their program, but nonetheless we have been trying to think through ways in which we can get our students here but undergraduate and graduate engaged with students on those campuses and vice versa. And one of the ways we've done that in the short term is through the previous weekends of having students of course involved with that and you teach with students there, but we're still thinking over what some other options might be. Thank you for sharing I think that's a point worth noting right again as you know I think the work that we've done out of Rackham has been informed like folks such as yourself and you know others across Memphis and again, being intentional about having these mutually beneficial relationships to ensure that we're not just again focus on that exchange of student like how do we get that student from, from their home institution to Michigan but also thinking about what, what ways can Michigan stand to, you know, benefit from engaging deeper with the partner institution as well so thank you for that. Yeah, with that what like what are your from your perspective like what are your individual motivations for pursuing such a relationship and then, you know, the second part of that you know what are the motivations of like the department or you know humanities programs as a whole. Well, I mean I think for my individual motivations, they're, they're personal so I'm a mixed heritage Mexican American guy, which there are not very many Mexican American faculty members at Michigan or even nationwide. So I think that there's a real, or I feel a real obligation to try to make opportunities to increase the diversity, not just for Latinx people but for all people of color at Michigan and academia overall so that's that's one of my certainly strong for this particular project it also helped that I am an alumnus of the University of Mexico so I grew up in New Mexico undergrad degree was from New Mexico so I also have a very special relationship with that university and it is also one of the ways in which it made it easier to build contacts and start this program. And similarly, I have two faculty partners are we tapia is in women and gender studies. And she grew up in Africa key or more or less the same time I did. And then my other faculty partner is Jason young who's in history, and as an alumnus of Morehouse College which really gave us the opportunity to build those relationships and so we all share that sort of personal commitment and outlook. In terms of USA humanities. There's a real deficit in our programs, because of a lack of diversity. And one of the things that I observed is that many, many of those programs are admitting students of color. But often those students of color did not choose Michigan. And I think that the reasons for that are multiple but one of them is that we haven't done the work to build those relationships so we haven't done the work to build relationships with their faculty advisors at their home institutions. Who can say oh, you know, we know the people at Michigan they're really great you should go and study with them, and we haven't built the relationships with the students so Michigan is just an abstracted concepts. And it becomes very different if you visit here and see what the resources are and you meet faculty so this type of program really addresses, I think those fundamental problems. I think that that's a great point. Many different ways so one question that I that I often get is like well where do I start, except I want to establish a relationship like this, where do I start right and I think you highlight that well you start where it makes the most sense right where where are the existing connections. Where do I have some sort of control that I can leverage towards, you know, meeting my own individual, you know, goal of expanding access for students like me or students like yourself right. So I mean I think that's the one thing and answers that question where do I start you start with the connections already are as I think about this one, when my oldest daughter sales girl scout cookies and it's like, we start with grandparents first right they go they go by the most cookies right and they're with the easy sell that it. Exactly right and so again I think that that applies to these relationships as well right because it's already some sort of level of existing connections some sort of capital that exists and leveraging that some sort of trust that are already in this right and you can leverage that into, you know, essentially what you, you've seen here. And then I think the other part of that, particularly from like the perspective of, of like a department unit school or college, however, you know, folks may look at the value and establishing a relationship early on and doing it at a you know systems level as opposed to again focusing on the exchange of the student like how can we strengthen a relationships with our colleagues, make ourselves more familiar with the students over time, have multiple touch points. So that way, when students are admitted into the program there's been enough connections to where it's like oh I don't feel I feel comfortable coming to Michigan. And in some cases, the, you know, faculty at the MSI institution like I feel comfortable sending my students there right. So I think those are two incredibly incredible points there. So you kind of mentioned like this, this idea of like access right access and opportunity, like the diversify and academia through these three sorts of initiatives right. So what would be the ultimate goal or benefits of a relationship like this, not just for Michigan, not just for MSI but like at large like the society at large. And I think that initiatives like this, and not just ours. I mean, but the multiple ones that are happening across Michigan and the multiple ones that are happening nationally have the potential to be transformative of higher ed. And that's a transformation that desperately needs to happen. The reality is most institutions like Michigan don't reflect the larger population of the United States. Most of the faculty don't have all of the experiences and cultural knowledge to be meaningfully engaged with huge sections of the nation. And that has to change. I mean, it's just the reality of where the US is. And the, you know, one way that can happen is by providing an environment in which students from multiple backgrounds will be able to thrive and change higher ed. And it's not just about sort of letting a few people in and allowing the status quo to maintain itself, but rather, you know, really thinking about a pretty, you know, significant shift in higher ed itself works. And who's, who's making decisions who's contributing so these types of programs give me a lot of optimism for that. Same here, which is probably why while we engage in this work right because it's not necessarily an easy thing like progress is perhaps not as fast as we would like, like to see right. But there is this, at least as a, you know, for me personally I don't want to project like this is like this belief deep down that there is. We have the capacity for change right and it's a matter like how do we continue to push on and with that capacity actually implement the change we would like to see right. As you mentioned these these sorts of initiatives are critical towards that. We've talked we talked a little bit in the past and I guess in line with that right. We talked a bit about the past around like success, and, you know, this type of work successes is long term. So what are you seeing in terms of like promising what are some promising things that are coming from these relationships and the associated initiatives and activities. Well, I mean I think that there's I mean there's different ways of course to think about success. The most obvious metric would be students who actually joined PhD programs. Again for us it's always been about both at Michigan but even broadly. Ideally we would like them at Michigan but you know there may be other reasons why they would choose a different institution. In this case we've had success in terms of both increasing the number of applications from our partner institutions and also really amazing students who joined us various humanities departments and programs so history, American literature, women and gender studies, English. So, all of those things are really great. But it is slow and the numbers are not. We're not thinking about dozens and dozens right because there aren't dozens and dozens of admissions slots every year. So, you know, some of it is about that that sort of. Patience or long term, sort of goal in mind. So I think those are definitely very positive. I think that the other thing that I see is really positive is that when we started our program. Really, there wasn't a lot of conversation about partnerships with MSIs. And if there was, it was really, there was no central sort of place for it so I've personally been really happy to learn about what one, I've been really happy that Edmund has joined racket as a sort of central nexus that can sort of coordinate and connect people that has been really great. I'm just learning about the efforts that are happening in the other schools and colleges on campus that are really building up things and so that also really gives me a lot of options, but it's not just, you know, I'll say humanities that's doing it or Taubman that's doing it that there's actually a sort of bigger movement that is sort of across Michigan that I think is really exciting. So, so. Yeah. I think I owe you a payment for those kind of words. I don't know if you've been more paypal what would get to you. But I do agree. I, you know, those architects of this, this role I think there's, you know, part of it is to a great deal of appreciation is oh it's doing to, you know, and thinking about like well how do we again centralize the work to whatever extent that we can to better align our practices our efforts right and I guess in short not reinvent the wheel. And I mean I think that is is important right. But again, also the other aspect of the promising part again the long term, the long term impacts is what we just, we just won't, we just won't see it because I think that several things have to happen. Like one is like a mindset shift in the way we think about applicants and graduate education right. What is a successful and it's not just for him manages broadly speaking what is a potentially successful applicant look like from any institution. And how do we think about the processes that are associated with admissions or even recruitment and emissions and those types of things right. And again looking at the smaller pieces of engaging through throughout right so if we can see success in that we're getting the faculty or our collaborated that other institutions to respond to our emails on like. In the short term I mean that may not seem like much but in a short time that's a lot. Can we host a meeting can we hold some sort of collaborative workshop or talk co teacher class or you know the activities those are all successes so. Unfortunately, I've been able to witness some of some of what you all have been able to achieve in this. I think it's I think it's good. As much as the promising practices are promising outcomes are helpful also think that. Examining the challenges are also critical in helping to advance the work moving forward. So what types of challenges have you all run into both generally speaking but also Kobe related, and then how I have you all collectively work together to like both address and overcome those challenges. Well, the challenges are many, and you've already sort of flag some of them so. One, one challenges humorous that we have at Michigan and I would say I haven't I had it. Also when I started this program that you know well we're Michigan were great of course everybody would want to come here. And that's not really taking into account all the sort of questions that people might have about what type of environment Michigan might be for them. Right, that we sort of take for granted a lot of things and a lot of what we take for granted is that we're really intellectually rigorous and amazing. And that is true, but that is not the only experience that a student will have. And being attentive to that I think is really important so that you know that's one challenge of thinking holistically about students and what their experiences are here. Another challenge is about how admissions is done. So in humanities, it's a department by department process which makes good sense. There's so many different competing elements that go into the admissions process and any individual department. That's an initiative like this can just be sort of lost in the ground right because say in one of my departments which is history, there's trying to balance sort of. You know we want to make sure we have people who are doing, you know, very distant history and people are doing present history want to make sure that we're representing the world right we want to make sure that we have a balance of kind of gender study I mean so there's so many different factors that go into trying to put together a cohort of students that sometimes, you know, staking out a claim for the importance of prioritizing students from MSIs is really hard to do. And I do think that the only way that will ever really be solved is that there's dedicated funding for MSI students like the arm of fellowships. I mean that's really the main way that departments would see this would make this a priority. But you know I think there's also more. There are other narratives that I think we have to be really attentive to so I think that broadly. There is sometimes the defaults which I think is very unconscious it's not even delicious but it's very, very problematic that if you say you were leading a diversity initiative that people assume that it's remedial that somehow this is you giving people, you know, some sort of extra chance and that's really not happening that these are really some incredibly talented students that are going to be super competitive when they apply to graduate school. And if we don't do this work they're going to choose other places. It's Michigan that is in the remedial state actually Michigan that needs some intervention and changing to actually achieve the goals that I think we all want which is to have, you know, the diverse and engaged graduate student body. Those are sort of big challenges. COVID challenges are probably more what you might expect which is it's very hard to maintain relationships when all you have is zoom, right. It's, it's not the same as being able to interact personally or fly out to various places. Plus everybody was exhausted and tired and didn't want to do other zoom things so you know that's been really difficult. Just to think about how to keep the momentum of. Yeah. There's a lot, a lot there. Yes, cove it has like introducing a new level of fatigue that I don't know that anybody was was ready for us speaking with marine before they started, you know, just trying to get folks to like part participate in the series like well I need to people because I need people to speak to, but people are also incredibly busy with just their roles in general and then you throw cove it on top of that and there's a little bit of hesitance of my into to reach out. I think there's some, some larger things, particularly around the, this idea of like the remediation or like deficit framing of these relationships or, you know, Michigan is in this benevolent benevolent role and that, you know, we engage with the minority of an institution, whichever institution type it may be that they are the ones that are to benefit from this, just because, you know, we're engaging. As you point out, we've had this discussion several times, I tend to take an institutional responsibility role. If you want to engage with anybody you have to first kind of take an introspective look and say hey, what am I bringing to this, like, how am I approaching this and through what liens. And then how can I shift that in a way to where I use the language of being culturally and intellectually responsive right so one being under aware of an understanding of the, the culture of the institution right because the reality is that, at least from my perspective is that not all Hispanic serving institutions are the same, not all HBCUs are the same so you can't approach them all in the, in the same way so understanding institutional culture which I engage with, as you point out, the ability to travel to and from institution helps in creating this larger context of understanding around how the students experience education at the University of Mexico, how they experience education at Spelman and Morehouse right and then this idea of being intellectually responsive right and understanding that Spelman and particularly with Spelman and Morehouse where a teaching load may look vastly different than the teaching load at Spelman. I mean that's from the University of Michigan even University of Mexico right and the implication on that for many other things right. And so, how do we approach them in a way that says that you are my colleague and not that I'm me engaging with you is going to make you any better right. I think those are two, you know, salient salient points there for sure. What a question around, you know, takeaways right so for someone who is looking to engage with an MSI towards, you know, creating opportunities access and opportunities for students or just thinking about collaboration across institutions. Based upon your experiences, like, what are some things that they should be thinking about that they should be considering that they should be planning for, who should they be bringing to the table, so on and so forth. Well, I think starting small is the way to go. So, again, I think, as I said, I have a lot of you were so launched like all the humanities, which was really ambitious. And he's not quite being that grandiose when you go off. And, you know, we've said it before but I just think it's worth repeating that start with the people you already know. So, you know, I mean it doesn't necessarily you have to have been an alumni of an MSI but you probably have met faculty at conferences or you've developed professional relationships with faculty at various MSIs and reach out to them and just say, you know, you're really interested in this you're really committed to thinking about how to create opportunities for them for their students and ask, you know, start as a conversation what would be useful to them what could they imagine that the Michigan can do that they would be interested in. That would be one thing I would say, well, I guess those are two things. Yeah, that would probably be the best advice I could give. Very good. The starting small is, is key, you don't have to solve all the world's problems at one time you can start in your own neighborhood right at scale as you as you grow, I think that's incredibly helpful. Yeah, so those are all the questions that that I have for you. So one I would like to just take a moment to pause and give you a quick hand clap for your time, energy and effort. As you know I always appreciate our conversations. Yeah, always incredibly informative. I tend to appreciate the way that you frame the particular responses. They're always the responses that you didn't know you need but you needed them anyway. So thank you for that. We do have a couple questions here in the chat one in particular around. What are the implications for increasing access to graduate students or having a more diverse graduate student body what are the implications for that of that on having a more diverse faculty, and are any of the activities that you all are engaging in working towards achieving a more diverse faculty. Great questions and I actually see two ways that these types of programs can impact the diversity of faculty so one is a more, you know, more immediate one that might come to mind which is for humanities training PhD students. Most of them are going to want to become tenure track faculty, not all of them. I mean, some of them might pursue different types of careers but but usually the defaults is for humanities students if they want to pursue a PhD they're imagining already a career and higher at so having more minority students means hopefully having been more minority faculty. So that's a direct way but there's actually another way that I think that we don't think about as often is that having a diverse grad student body can be a powerful recruiting tool for Michigan to bring faculty of color to Michigan. So if you have, you know, a search or even a target of opportunity higher where you're trying to bring a faculty member here, whose research is focused on you are in communities and or identifies as you are in. They're going to notice what the sort of composition of the grad program is when they're visiting and it will be likely important to them to see a diverse grad student body so you know that's a more hidden way or, you know, a diverse measurable way but I think those are things that are really important as well so. Thank you for that. Oh and I forgot to answer so what are we doing to work towards yeah. So, you know we've. We keep thinking about the students once they're here so you know they of course have all the opportunities that other students have the Rackham initiatives and department initiatives. And we've tried to do various things to build a sense of community among the students from Morehouse Belmont in New Mexico. We've done it at different times about, but we haven't yet implemented the maybe professional activity, you know, like, you know, how do you put together a CV, or how do you, you know, next stages of their careers but we haven't really gone to that stage yet. So, but that would be one way I would imagine, or we have actually imagines, maybe doing things around those, those, those lines. Thank you for that. Do you have any, any other questions for answering the question around the. I tend to the question around like the faculty pieces how I tend to try to think about the work broadly speaking in that. So, an MSI will have their, their take on it as they, as you know expressed by them in terms of what it is they seek to gain from this sort of relationship, much like Michigan. And then I try to encourage folks to think about this in a more global way. Like, what is the larger impact that we're hoping to have, and then how can our own respective goals, individual goals and then our shared understanding of what those goals are achieve this larger thing like diversify and the professoria, particularly in spaces. I think we tend to focus to help in some, in some ways because then we tend to focus on our own individual, mostly speaking from the perspective of Michigan when we're only focused on how do we get. In some cases, you mentioned earlier about like the increase in applicant pool for some, like, that's enough if we just increase the number of applicants in a pool, then, then that's enough. Again, thinking about it and it's more, you know, aside from this, you know, increasing our applicants are increasing the number that are actually, that actually matriculate but thinking about, what is the larger goal here and then how can we take this collective impact approach towards achieving it so I'll open it up a little bit longer for another question or two if we have any. If we have any concluding thoughts for us here today. Just more praise for you. Yeah, I'll take the praise I don't know. I'll take it but no, I think you all are doing really good, really good work. I've stated that over the years and whether you are engaged or MSI collaborators I think is on critic communication is many ways like a part of it and being responsive to feedback I've seen that you have done that. Again from outside looking at you've done a really good job of being responsive to the feedback. And even when it's great, if it's great feedback, and even when it's not the feedback that you hope to hear right, but again, being responsive and working towards that shared understanding is critical to to this work so thank you for your efforts and pushing pushing this work forward. Thank you again for your, your time, energy and effort on on today and sharing your thoughts with myself and others. And hopefully, those who are looking to establish these types of relationships are already have relationships and play place. I have some, you know, are able to take something and implemented as they move forward so thank you. And we will see you again we'll be in touch. Well, thank you so much and thanks for everybody who's attending and watching. Until next time everybody take care.