Staff Highlights

At a workshop organized by Rutgers University graduate students hosted at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, APLU’s Shalin Jyotishi spoke on a panel addressing the role of boundary organizations, associations, and professional societies for fostering public and policy engagement. He focused on the importance of engaging with local communities and leveraging economic and community engagement officers as resources for outreach. 

Bernard Mair, APLU’s Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer, was a plenary speaker and panelist at the Reinvention Collaborative’s Lamborn-Hughes Institute, where he spoke on developing student-centered research universities.

Wendy Fink, Director of Food, Agriculture, & Natural Resources, was honored with the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture’s E.B. Knight Journal Award for a journal article she co-authored on employability skills in agriculture.

Eugene Anderson, Vice President of APLU’s Office of Access and Success, is presenting on his research examining diversity in engineering education at the National Science Foundation on June 20.

Sheila Martin, APLU’s Vice President of Economic Development and Community Engagement, spoke on the role of universities in workforce development at the National Governors Association’s Good Jobs for All Americans Summit. She also authored a white paper on how higher education is responding to 21^st Century Workforce Needs that was shared at the conference in Whitefish, Montana on May 22.

Tag Demment, APLU’s Vice President for International Programs, was given Texas Tech’s 2019 Global Citizen Award for his extraordinary commitment to internationalization in higher education. He also served as the award ceremony’s keynote speaker. In his remarks, he highlighted the challenge of inequality, in the U.S. and globally, as a source of great instability — emphasizing that U.S. public universities, with proper attention to global challenges in education and research, can be one of great engines to achieve greater equality.

Julia Michaels, Deputy Director of APLU's Center for Public University Transformation, was a panelist at two sessions at the Higher Learning Commission’s annual conference on April 8, alongside four institutions from the Big 10, Urban, and Metropolitan clusters of the association's Powered by Publics initiative. The panels showcased each university’s student success work and how peer collaboration through Powered by Publics is helping them accelerate change on campus.

As part of a week-long high-level delegation organized by the Finnish Embassy, the panel featured Ms. Anita Lehikoinen, Finland’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Dr. Heikki Mannila, President of the Academy of Finland, and Mr. Tobin Smith, Vice President for Policy, Association of American Universities. The panel focused on how best to maximize the impact of universities on the economy and society through innovation and talent development. 

APLU’s Sarah Rovito spoke on a panel on Why & How Universities Should Take on Moonshots at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas. Rovito joined colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin Bridging Barriers, UCLA Grand Challenges, and Schmidt Futures to share how university-led Grand Challenge, or “moonshot” initiatives, are capable of solving societal problems and conveying the value of research to the public. An audio recording of the panel is available here.