September 18, 2017
Ursuline College has named Lisa R. Brown, Ph.D., its second Faculty Diversity Fellow, a position supported by a grant from the KeyBank Foundation.
Brown recently earned her doctorate in Adult Education, Learning, and Organization Development at the University of Georgia.
“I look forward to continuing to learn the culture of academia while I write, teach and do research,” she said. Brown is teaching a writing-intensive course in the core curriculum and will present a campus colloquium based on her Spiral Dynamic Theory research on the integration of civic engagement learning into a college core curriculum.
Ursuline President Sister Christine De Vinne, OSU, Ph.D., said that in seeking support from the KeyBank Foundation, the college was maintaining its commitment to increasing the number of faculty members from under-represented groups; enhancing the climate of diversity on campus; providing additional role models for students, particularly students of color; and providing two successive post-doctoral fellows with valuable college faculty experience. Brown overlaps with Ursuline’s first faculty Diversity Fellow, Kristie Williams, Ph.D.
“At Ursuline College, we are committed to increasing the diversity of our faculty and we are very grateful that KeyBank Foundation embraced this goal and provided the funding that allowed us to bring Dr. Brown on board as a faculty member in this distinguished role,” Sister De Vinne said.
“It is a pleasure to welcome Dr. Brown to our faculty. She brings new ideas and energy and an impressive background in scholarship, teaching and administration.”
The foundation’s grant funds Brown for two semesters.
In announcing the grant earlier this year, Margot Copeland, chair & CEO of the KeyBank Foundation, said, “The KeyBank Foundation aims to transform lives through our philanthropic investments. We are very pleased to support this Ursuline College initiative, which will augment the College’s efforts to improve diversity. Students will benefit from access to the KeyBank Diversity Fellows, and the fellows, in turn, will gain valuable faculty experience, professional development and mentoring.”
An Akron native, Brown earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at University of Akron. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biology, with a minor in chemistry and specialization in microbiology, and a master of public administration (MPA) degree, with a specialization in program evaluation. Among her administrative roles in higher education, she served as coordinator of minority admissions and retention programs at Miami University of Ohio, and director of intercultural relations at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.
Brown returned to academic research and graduate study in 2010, entering a doctoral program at the University of Georgia. Her research focused on civic engagement as she compared private-for-profit universities with traditional public universities in Chile. While conducting her dissertation research abroad, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Universidad Católica del Maule.
“I was particularly interested in how civically engaged the adult post-graduate students were in these environments,” she said. “In short, I found more higher-order thinking but less civic engagement at the private-for-profit institutions than at the traditional public universities.” Her thesis is posted here.
Brown looks forward to her semesters at Ursuline. “Liberal arts education has always had this attention to social consciousness and global awareness, so I was very excited about my selection and what I felt I could offer the Ursuline College community,” she said.
