ywells@suffolk.edu

My interest in Diversity is long-standing at Suffolk University. I have served for numerous years as a faculty advisor to the Black Student Union and frequently collaborate with my graduate students and the Office of Diversity Services to facilitate graduate level research with students from Diverse backgrounds. I have two ongoing projects with graduate students involving community research in the Boston Public Schools. One project with a graduate student will look at “Predictors of Success in African American Public School Students”. We will combine our research with outreach to a Boston Public School around self esteem. My connections through volunteer work in the Boston Public Schools has also developed into another project with a graduate student, in which “Public School Students Perceptions of Their Role in Society as Males and Females” will be examined with methods that can also be extended into tutorial work to prepare students for taking “high-stakes exams”. I have worked on projects with several students on different cultural views of mental illness, each of which have been presented at psychological conferences. Graduate students in the clinical psychology program will no doubt take one of my courses, “The Racial and Ethnic Bases of Behavior” or “The Social Bases of Behavior” or they may serve as teaching assistants in my course “Socio-cultural Perspectives”. In my role as an advisor to graduate and undergraduate students alike, I seek to keep students and faculty aware that uniqueness and diversity in social grouping as well as in personal style may be a useful “scaffold” as students develop mainstream skills and abilities to serve them in the Western, free-market world. I never forget the realities of my place in society as a woman of color and I never neglect to shape and construct the meaning of that reality such that I contribute fully to society. As an undergraduate and a graduate educator, I strive to support a powerful construction of self and identity in all my students. Please take special note of one area I would like to extend with undergraduate and graduate students interested in research. For my theoretical work on what I call “Relevance Education”, I have begun a collection of teaching methods used by teachers who try to bring realistic experiences of students from their daily lives into classroom teaching. Rather than viewing the classroom as a no-tolerance zone, where violence and conflict that are real in the day to day lives of students is ignored and censored, some teachers allow writings and exercises to directly address and resolve conflicts that are very real to them. I would like to do more collection of data in the form of coursework that allows students to present real experiences, including artistic and cultural expressions and real-life drama in the context of their learning environments. Please do not hesitate to e-mail me with any mentoring, advising and research issues around all areas of Diversity.