The HEART Podcast team reflects on an episode from our archives originally aired on March 24, 2021 called: Preparing Educational Professionals through Antiracist Teaching. Our faculty guests, Dr. Grace Player, Dr. Bridget Turner Kelly, and Dr. Michael Funk, share how knowledge is constructed and consumed in ways that center the lived experiences of students. This approach to teaching and learning can liberate both faculty and students from limiting paradigms. We also hear about creative ways that faculty cultivate collective learning experiences in order for students to thrive.  ..read more

For this episode, the HEART Podcast team reflects on an episode from our archives originally aired on June 4, 2021 called: Community Engagement & Anti-Racist Teaching. Our faculty guests, Dr. Danielle Filipiak and Dr. Johnny Ramirez, share the ways that they engage communities outside of the academy and empower youth to be agents of their learning and development. We also hear student perspectives from Marissa Martinez Suarez and Briana Aguilar, who discuss the ways that culturally relevant courses and campus activism have deepened their learning and led them to personal transformation. Th ..read more

Nadiyah Humber, Associate Professor at UConn School of Law, Dr. Preston Green, Professor of Educational Leadership and Law at UConn, and Dr. Leslie Williams, lecturer of Higher & Postsecondary Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, provide the context for understanding how Affirmative Action fits into a larger history of educational inequality for minoritized students. Our guests discuss how, given our current legal and political climate, there are action steps that higher education institutions can take to remove barriers that disproportionately impact racially minoritized st ..read more

Dr. Laura Bunyan, Associate Professor of Residence at UConn and Gracie Guzman, Success Program Manager for Higher Edge, explore the topic of economic challenges that students may experience while in college. They discuss how educators can rethink classroom practices in order to support students who experience food insecurity, work full-time, and take care of their families. The conversation in this episode challenges us to rethink assumptions about financial and life circumstances that hinder students from showing up as their best selves. Instead, we must ask ourselves, “What are the condition ..read more

Dr. Jeffrey Hines, Chief Diversity Officer at UConn Health and Dr. Tia Brown McNair, Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) draw on key ideas from the TRHT framework to shed light on how racial equity work is not solely the responsibility of a few, but rather, the responsibility of all community members. We discuss racial disparities in health and education,  as major public health concerns that ..read more

Dr. Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, University Campus Director of UConn-Hartford and Dr. Joshua Abreu, Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence at Albertus Magnus College, share how they have witnessed and been part of social justice-guided transformational practices, given that it is a central pillar of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework being advanced by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. We discuss ways in which institutional transformation can take place to better support students, fac ..read more

Michael Vidal, Interim Director of PRLACC & Director of Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at the University of Connecticut, Sharon Stroye, Director of Public Engagement in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University–Newark, and Dr. Apryl Alexander, Metrolina Distinguished Scholar in Health and Public Policy at UNC Charlotte, share insights about racial healing practices, given that it is a central pillar of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework being advanced by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Ke ..read more

Dr. Saran Stewart, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs & Director of Global Education at the University of Connecticut and Dr. Chayla Haynes, Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration at Texas A&M University, provide their approach to and practices related to counternarratives as part of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework that the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Kellogg Foundation are advancing. We collectively speak about how we can change the racial narrative on college campuses by ..read more

Dr. Frank Tuitt, Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer, and Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Connecticut and Dr. Lynn Pasquerella, President of the American Association of Colleges & Universities, provide their vision and intentionality surrounding the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) approach that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has been leading for over half a decade. Together, we explore the foundations of this initiative, the vision for implementing this framework at UConn, and the potential impact it can have for antiracist teaching ..read more

Professor Martine Granby, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Connecticut and Manuel Gutierrez, a PREP Navigator with Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix, Arizona, share how they bring intentional strategies in their work to help capture the needs of historically marginalized populations in order to bring about substantive change. Based on their professional, academic, and personal experiences, our guests touch on elements of storytelling, representation, and how historical inequities show up in their daily work. Join us to hear more about how we, as a soci ..read more