The 2009 Leaders in Diversity honorees work in the areas of immigration in New Jersey, English as a second language, sensitivity to gay rights, researching Abbott schools that work, and much more.

Karen R. Stubaus, associate vice president for academic affairs and director, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, said the awards recognize faculty who advance Rutgers’ objectives of fostering diversity in teaching, research and service, not only to serve Rutgers students, but also to serve the needs of the state of New Jersey.

“What we are trying to do with these awards is recognize diversity work at the grassroots level,” said Stubaus. “These are the people who go the extra mile, often outside their regular full-time jobs, to work with diverse students or study diversity issues in their own research. It can be lonely work, and these awards are a big boost to the spirit of faculty members who promote the cause of diversity both within and outside the university.”

Each year the Office of Faculty Diversity Initiatives invites deans to nominate faculty members for the awards. The previous year’s Leaders in Diversity award winners review the nomination materials and select the new awardees.

The fourth annual Leaders in Diversity awards ceremony will take place at Winants Hall on the afternoon of May 15, as the university celebrates and honors faculty members who have demonstrated leadership in promoting diversity at Rutgers, either through their own research and teaching or in service to the community.

This year’s winners are:

Sherri-Ann Butterfield
Associate Professor
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Newark Campus
Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Butterfield’s research is focused on West Indian immigrants to the United States. Since 2003 she has published (or has forthcoming) six articles and has completed a book manuscript. In 2006-2007, she was a visiting scholar at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and conducted research comparing the role of identity and perceptions of group boundaries in the development of educational aspirations of Caribbean youth versus educational achievements of immigrant youth who reside in the U.S. and Britain. Along with several other members of the faculty, Butterfield has also prepared a report about well-performing Abbott school districts called, “Pockets of Excellence.” The research, funded by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., aims to take the lessons learned from these successful schools in low-income areas and replicate the measures in other schools that are considered underperforming by the State of New Jersey. Butterfield has already been honored with the Olga Jimenez de Wagenheim Educator of the Year Award by Latinos United Networking America and a Bildner Diversity Fellowship from the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, Rutgers–Newark.

Mary Curran
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education, New Brunswick Campus
Department of Learning and Teaching

Curran’s expertise is language education – preparing teachers of world languages, and teachers who work with English-as-a-second-language students. She believes it is impossible to address cultural diversity without considering language and how it shapes who we are and how we approach the world. Curran has created and written about a number of pedagogies to help students understand what it is like to enter another culture and not be able to speak the native language. To make these pedagogical experiences as relevant as possible, she extends the work of the university to New Brunswick and beyond by partnering with migrant community centers and with school districts to give future teachers firsthand experience in living and working where English is not one’s first language. Curran has also received more than $600,000 in federal grants to help foster proficiency in “critical need” languages. She used the funding to create an alternate route program for Chinese language teachers, provided summer practicum settings for professional development, and collaborated with other units on campus to improve the preparation of Chinese teachers.

Robyn Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
School of Arts and Sciences, New Brunswick Campus
Department of Sociology

Rodriguez’s current work evolves from her interests in immigration rights and focuses on immigrant populations in New Jersey. Her forthcoming book, Brokering Bodies: The Phillipine State and the Globalization of Migrant Labor, examines that nation’s policy of soliciting, preparing, and sending its citizens around the world to work in other countries. Another book, Lady Liberty’s Shadow : Immigration, Rights and Belonging After 9/11, will explore how the events of September 11, 2001, affected immigrant communities in New Jersey. Rodriguez has mentored minority students in Rutgers’ Aresty Undergraduate Research Program, in independent studies courses, and as part of the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program as well as the Sociology Honors Program. In connecting scholarship with teaching and service, Rodriguez has twice taught “Immigration in New Jersey” for the Byrne Family First-Year Seminar Program and has also introduced a new undergraduate course on immigration into the sociology curriculum. Rodriguez is also active as a faculty adviser for various student groups, including the Asian American Leadership Cabinet and the staff of the Asian American newspaper, Native Tongue.

Beryl Satter
Associate Professor
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Newark Campus
Federated Department of History

Satter is known both for her scholarship on diversity and for her work on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community on the Newark Campus. In the mid-1990s, when most LGBT faculty, staff, and students were still closeted, Satter arranged informal meetings of gay and lesbian faculty and staff. By 1998, the meetings led to the establishment of the RU-Out Alliance with membership extended to students. Today the Newark Campus has a vibrant LGBT community, and Satter’s early work is considered instrumental in bringing about the change. Satter has also done important work in race. Her recently published book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, describes how hardworking black migrants to Chicago were systematically deprived of their modest savings by a set of interlocking forces: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry, the federal policies that created the country’s shameful "dual housing market," the economic anxieties that fueled white violence, and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city’s most vulnerable population.