Featured Speakers
Helen S. Astin, a psychologist, is Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Senior Scholar of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. She served as the Associate Provost of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA from 1983 to 1987.
Her research and current writings focus on leadership and on spirituality in higher education.
Dr. Astin has been a trustee of Mt. St. Mary’s College since 1985, and served as a trustee of Hampshire College from 1972 to 1979. She has served on the Board of Governors of the Center for Creative Leadership, and on the Board of the National Council for Research on Women. In the American Psychological Association, Dr. Astin has served on the Boards of Policy and Planning and Education and Training and has been president of the Division of the Psychology of Women. She has also served as chair of the board of the American Association for Higher Education.
Helen Astin has been honored with the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Research and Literature of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Research Award of Division J of the American Education Research Association, and recently received the Howard Bowen Distinguished Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
She has published numerous articles and eleven books, including Women of Influence, Women of Vision: A Cross-Generational Study of Leaders and Social Change (1991) and The Woman Doctorate in America (1969).
To learn further about Dr. Astin's research in the area of spirituality please go to: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/spirituality.html
In their combined conference presentation, Astin and Lindholm will share highlights of findings from the Spirituality in Higher Education project at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)-UCLA. They will present longitudinal findings based on data collected from a sample of about 15,000 students in 2004—as they were to begin their freshman year—and again in 2007 at the end of their junior year in college. Special attention will be paid to findings about students’ development of civic values within a global context. They will also present findings from a national sample of faculty about their civic advocacy and practice and how such values and behavior affect students’ spiritual development.
Jennifer Lindholm PhD is Associate Director of the Office of Undergraduate Education and Research in the College of Letters and Science of UCLA. Formerly, she served as Visiting Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and as Associate Director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). While at HERI, she also directed the Institute's Triennial National Faculty Survey.
In addition to her work on the spiritual development of undergraduate students, Dr. Lindholm's research focuses primarily on the structural and cultural dimensions of academic work; the career development, work experiences, and professional behavior of college and university faculty; and issues related to institutional change within colleges and universities.
To learn more about Dr. Lindholm's research in the area of spirituality please review the following links:
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/spirituality.html
http://www.spirituality.ucla.edu/about/index.html
In their combined conference presentation, Astin and Lindholm will share highlights of findings from the Spirituality in Higher Education project at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)-UCLA. They will present longitudinal findings based on data collected from a sample of about 15,000 students in 2004—as they were to begin their freshman year—and again in 2007 at the end of their junior year in college. Special attention will be paid to findings about students’ development of civic values within a global context. They will also present findings from a national sample of faculty about their civic advocacy and practice and how such values and behavior affect students’ spiritual development.
Neal Keny-Guyer is a social entrepreneur committed to creating a better and more just world. A native of Tennessee, Keny-Guyer holds a B.A. in Public Policy and Religion from Duke University, an M.A. in Public and Private Management from Yale University, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Portland State University, Oregon.
Keny-Guyer joined Mercy Corps in 1994 as Chief Executive Officer. Under his aegis, Mercy Corps has emerged as a leading international relief and development organization with ongoing operations in nearly 40 countries, a staff of more than 3,400, and an annual operating budget of $229 million.
Keny-Guyer has forged new directions at Mercy Corps, most notably implementing global mergers and strategic alliances; placing human rights and civil society at the forefront of Mercy Corps’ humanitarian mission; and building an organizational reputation for ground-breaking, original programming.
Keny-Guyer began his career with Communities In Schools in 1976 working with at-risk youth in the inner cities of Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia. He moved to Thailand in 1980 to focus on Cambodia’s refugees and war victims for CARE/UNICEF. In 1982, he began his tenure with Save the Children.
As Save the Children’s Director of Middle East, North Africa and Europe, Keny-Guyer managed a $44 million budget and supervised 900 staff in 10 countries. He designed and implemented high-impact relief and development programs in some of the most war-torn and politically sensitive regions on earth—including Lebanon, West Bank/Gaza, and Sudan.
In 1990, Keny-Guyer undertook his toughest assignment—as a stay-at-home dad for his first child—while launching strategic planning and organizational development consulting to businesses, foundations, and nonprofit agencies.
He serves on the boards of numerous organizations, including Imagine Nations, InterAction, Yale School of Management Board of Advisors, and Nike Foundation Advisory Group. When not traveling the globe, Keny-Guyer tries his best to keep up with his wife, Alissa, and their three children—Evan, Jordan, and Maraya.
Institutions of higher education in the United States, and particularly in the Pacific Northwest, can play a key role in helping Mercy Corps tackle these problems. In his conference keynote address, Neal Keny-Guyer will challenge them to do so. Higher education should support and enable a lifelong continuum of learning and action on global issues. It should train and empower the social entrepreneurs whose innovative thinking is shaking up international development. Finally, higher education faculty and students should reach out to younger generations of middle and high school students to encourage their early engagement in world affairs.
Mercy Corps works in more than 35 countries around the world helping people to triumph over extreme poverty, oppression and devastating disasters. One of the greatest challenges the developing world faces is a ballooning population of young people who lack skills, opportunities and hope. Many of these young people never get to experience the enrichment and sense of achievement that comes with higher education.
Raj Jayadev is the coordinator and founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community organizing and multi-media youth organization based in San Jose, California. De-Bug produces a bi-lingual magazine, a weekly radio show, and a weekly television show to provide a platform for the South Bay’s least heard voices—low-wage workers, the unemployed, the formerly incarcerated, and immigrants. De-Bug also initiates campaigns around police accountability, and immigrant and labor rights. De-Bug also conducts media and organizing workshops in high schools and youth centers, and has launched a youth media project in Fresno.
Jayadev was selected as a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow, and was named one of the “30 under 30” who are shaping the future of activism in 2004. His organizing work was profiled in the Public Broadcasting System-aired documentary “Secrets of Silicon Valley.” Jayadev also writes political commentaries for New America Media, a national ethnic news wire, and for the Silicon Valley Metro. He has been a National Public Radio commentator, and his editorial writings have been published in dailies across the country.
Empowerment Community Through Organizing: How Service Work Transforms Us All
In his conference presentation, Raj Jayadev will share experiences of community building through organizing work on the assembly lines of Silicon Valley, and how that grew into an organization composed of and led by the regions least-heard voices—the homeless, the incarcerated, undocumented immigrants, and youth. Jayadev talks about the stories of transformation he has witnessed as communities support individuals who are trying to make changes in their lives. He will share his perspectives on the larger contexts that create both opportunity and obstacles for service work, new models, and why community participation is so urgently needed at this current state of American history.
Dilafruz Williams
Dilafruz Williams is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, in the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Dilafruz’s scholarship and area of interest have long been community and environmental engagement, democracy, and civic education. Besides higher education, she has taught biology and mathematics in grades 6–12.
Recipient of the prestigious Ehrlich Award for Faculty Service-Learning, Dilafruz has authored several articles and chapters dealing with service-learning, civic engagement, environmental education, and holistic education. She has also co-edited a book entitled Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment (SUNY Press). She is a graduate of Harvard, Syracuse, and Bombay universities.
Dilafruz finds much pleasure in gardening, traveling, relishing nature, poetry, and being politically active in the community. She was elected to the Portland School Board in 2003 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2007. She co-founded the Environmental Middle School—now called Sunnyside Environmental School—in the Portland Public School District. She also serves on local, regional, and national advisory boards and provides leadership in a number of professional organizations.