IRT Newsletter: December 2017

A Phillips Academy Outreach Program

NEWS

Institute for Recruitment of Teachers

DECEMBER 2017

FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Phillips Academy’s Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) empowers talented underserved and underrepresented future educators to teach and serve as leaders in American education because diversity is essential to excellence.

New Initiatives, Continued Commitment They say change is good, but it is certainly with mixed emotions that we bid farewell to IRT Executive Director Dr. Asabe Poloma, who recently accepted a new position at Brown University (see inside for details). We will miss Asabe’s leadership, enthusiasm, and drive, but are confident that a national search will yield an equally visionary successor.

Meanwhile, the IRT’s dedicated staff hasn’t missed a beat. This fall, we recruited and trained 10 mid-career IRT alumni to provide guidance in the graduate school application process as part of our inaugural IRT Alumni Mentors Program. We also supported 110 IRT fellows in applying to more than 1,000 graduate programs at our consortium schools across the country, a crucial next step in their preparation for careers in education.

Our recruitment team also hosted four webinars and 10 campus recruitment workshops and presented at five national conferences hosted by affiliate partners. Our presentations focused on diverse issues in race in education, developing scholars, and promising strategies in teacher diversity recruitment.

Stay Connected with the IRT! Announce good news. Share memories.

Post opportunities. Please join these official IRT alumni social media groups.

Twitter: @IRTAndover LinkedIn: IRT Andover Facebook: IRT Andover Photos by Gil Talbot

Finally, our Alumni Recruiters Program, now in its third year, has more than 50 volunteers who are hosting IRT information sessions on their respective campuses. It is a testament to the IRT’s legacy that we continue to have such committed and dynamic alumni who assist the IRT in a variety of capacities!

As we look ahead to 2018, we ask for your support as we to continue to elevate the enduring mission of the IRT. Best wishes for a happy new year!

Kate Slater IRT Associate Director and Manager of Programs

FALL ADVISING

It Takes a Village The IRT’s staff and alumni mentors invest countless hours each fall in advising, mentoring, and supporting their cohort as they apply to graduate schools. Based on a rigorous high-touch, high-impact virtual advising model, each IRT fellow is assigned two advisors—a statement of purpose advisor and a school list advisor—who provide weekly critical, constructive, and conceptual feedback on every piece of the student’s application, including the statement of purpose, writing sample, resume, fellowship applications, and supplemental essays.

Thank You, Asabe Poloma!

Dr. Asabe Poloma’s visionary work at the IRT has left an indelible mark on this program. She held leadership roles within the IRT for more than nine years, becoming executive director when program founder Kelly Wise retired in 2014.

Asabe went on to lead the IRT to achieve significant milestones, including the development of the program’s first comprehensive strategic plan, a marked increase in the number of annual applications, the creation of an alumni mentorship program, and expansion of the consortium of colleges and universities committed to enrolling IRT students.

We are deeply grateful to Asabe for her service and the incredible impact she has had on the IRT. We wish her the best of luck in her new position at Brown University, where she is now assistant dean for international students and associate director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program.

As you may have heard from Phillips Academy Head of School John Palfrey and IRT Advisory Board Chair Julia Johannsen, PA ’96, a national search to fill this position is under way. We look forward to identifying a robust pool of candidates and selecting a finalist who will continue this program’s great forward momentum and who is deeply committed to addressing the critical need for increased diversity in our nation’s classrooms and academic leadership.

Should you have any questions about this leadership transition or the search process, I encourage you to email me at bfriedman@andover.edu.

—Beth Friedman Director, Outreach and Summer Session

This year, the IRT launched the Alumni Mentors Program to recruit mid-career IRT alumni to help provide statement of purpose and career development mentoring to current fellows. We heard from more than 70 alumni who were eager to mentor aspiring educators. The 10 inaugural IRT alumni mentors included professors, department chairs, and school leaders, each of whom was assigned five IRT fellows based on similar career and/or research interests.

For many fellows, this level of intensive and intentional academic advising and professional coaching was a first in their educational experience.

In addition, the school list advisor supports students in clarifying their academic and professional goals to help determine program matches among the IRT’s consortium of 39 colleges and universities. Often, prospective applicants grapple with which graduate programs they should apply to. In some cases, students are challenged because their work seems well suited to multiple disciplines; in other cases, students’ work may be best suited to a field they have yet to discover. After several intensive months of writing, research, and advising, it is gratifying to see that students have completed compelling applications and created a list of competitive graduate school programs they are excited to pursue.

ALUMNA HIGHLIGHT An assistant professor of women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, Aria S. Halliday, PhD, IRT ’11, was an enthusiastic member of the 2017 Summer Intern Workshop faculty. Having attended the program herself just six years ago, Dr. Halliday knows exactly what the new interns are feeling.

Aspire My ode to IRT You came with fear, confusion, and motivation You came with bags and boxes and suitcases to get you through You left your boos and baes, mommies and babies to make room for the you you are becoming To make space for the genius to grow, the inner passion to blossom large and high You came alone But you will not leave that way You will have a cohort, a mentor, a network, a family if you want it

Aria S. Halliday, PhD, IRT ’11

You will have homies like Derrida, Yosso, Baudrillard, and Sandoval to take with you and hold you down for years to come You will have you, a New you, one you cannot imagine but should be excited to meet A you that sees the potential of learning, the justice in education, the life in reading, writing, and teaching A you that will be ready to embark upon the journey you so desperately desire A you that will be exactly the me you see standing here today

Halliday specializes in the study of cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material, visual, and digital culture in the late 20th and 21st centuries. She engages broad interdisciplinary interests in sexuality, feminism, and radicalism in black popular culture in the United States and the Caribbean. The founder of Ruthless—a blog on black women, feminism, and Christianity—and the Digital Black Girls project, she is also a regular contributor to The Ebony Tower, a blog dedicated to black graduate students. Halliday was raised in Durham, N.C., and is a proud alumna of Davidson College.

2

ACCOLADES & MILESTONES Reum to Lead IRT Recruitment Team

Omar Galárraga PhD, IRT ’98, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure in the School of Public Health at Brown University.

Misa Dayson, IRT ’08, successfully defended her dissertation, “Seeing and Disrupting: Anti-Blackness, Public Culture, and the Place of Berlin,” this past June.

Dayson earned a PhD degree in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently a screenwriter’s assistant with Pandemonium, Inc. Daniel Peña, IRT ’01, is a Pushcart Prize– winning writer and assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston-Downtown.

His novel, BANG, is published by Arte Publico Press.

Brandi Hughes, IRT ’00, won the 2017 Individual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education from the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in recognition of exceptional dedication to the educational experiences of undergraduate students. Hughes is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the American Culture Department.

Sofia Ortiz, IRT ’10, earned a PhD degree in philosophy from MIT. She accepted a tenure-track position at Vassar College this fall.

Í

Interns and faculty from the 2017 IRT Summer Workshop Intern Program prepare the Smith Center for the annual Recruiters’ Fair, which draws more than 60 IRT consortium graduate school deans and admissions officers to Phillips Academy’s campus.

Í

Leislie Godo-Solo, IRT ’91, recently conducted an informational IRT panel at the Annika UNCF Mellon Conference in Atlanta. Godo-Solo is shown here with colleague Dr. Karima Jeffrey, an associate professor at Hampton University.

Aaron Benavidez, IRT ’11, earned a Harvard University Certificate of Distinction that is given by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning to honor outstanding teachers. Benavidez is a doctoral candidate and an Inequality and Social Policy Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

Monica Reum was appointed the IRT’s new recruitment and admission programs specialist this past July. She has served underrepresented students in a variety of professional roles, including those of outreach and advising.

“I am thrilled to be able to combine my expertise and passion into one role,” says Reum. “I have been so impressed with the drive and preparedness of current IRT students and know they will be strong graduate school candidates, ultimately joining our alumni of dedicated educators.”

Meeting “future change agents” from across the country is a particularly exciting aspect of her job, says Reum—and a growing network of IRT alumni recruiters is helping to make that happen. “Because of their own positive experiences in the program, our alumni recruiters have been very willing to give back.

We are so grateful for the amazing ways they are helping expand our outreach.”

A native of Lowell, Mass., Reum earned an MEd degree from Merrimack College in 2016.

Online Applications Now Available If you or someone you know would like to receive guidance and support during the graduate school application process, please apply to the IRT. Applicants must meet the following criteria: • Be undergraduate juniors or seniors or graduates of an accredited college or university • Major in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, or education

Í

Deans and admissions directors from Recruiters’ Weekend, July 2017. Seated (from left): Dr. Isabel Geathers, IRT ’05, formerly at Columbia University; Dr. Sheri Notaro, Washington University, St. Louis; Dr. Jeffrey Franke, University of Maryland, College Park; and Dr. Sandra Crespo, Michigan State University.

Standing (from left): Dr. Paula Groves Price, IRT ’95, Washington State University; Dr. Henry Meares, University of Michigan; Dr. Christopher Perez, University of Maryland, College Park; Dr. Anna De Cheke Qualls, University of Maryland, College Park; and Dr. Alberto Ledesma, University of California, Berkeley.

• Have an undergraduate GPA of 3.0 or of 3.5 if currently or previously enrolled in a master’s program

Í

IRT Arts and Sciences Specialist Brittany Zorn, IRT ’13, visited a number of schools this fall during her recruitment travels. While visiting Scripps College, Zorn (right) met up with Chloe Martinez, IRT ’00.

Please email news items and photos to jbonasera@andover.edu.

• Be seriously considering a teaching, counseling, or administrative career at the K–12 or university level Completed applications are due March 1 (note new deadline). A Skype interview is required.

For additional information and requirements, please visit irt.andover.edu or contact IRT Recruitment and Admission Programs Specialist Monica Reum at 978‑749-4115 or mreum@andover.edu.

CAMPUS VISITS & WEBINARS Please Support This Extraordinary Program Your generosity will help increase the diversity of teachers, school counselors and administrators, and professors—all vital role models— to better reflect the diversity of today’s students.

Make your gift today at irt.andover.edu/donate.

For further information, contact Beth Parsons at 978-749-4523 or bparsons@andover.edu.

IRT staff members will be traveling across the country during the next few months to host information sessions and meet with prospective applicants. Please contact us for confirmed dates and details.

Visits are planned to the following schools:

Atlanta Clark Atlanta Emory University Morehouse College Spelman College California (Bay Area) Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of California, Davis University of California, Santa Cruz California (Los Angeles) Pomona College University of California, Los Angeles Scripps College University of Southern California Ohio Oberlin College Central State University Kenyon College

New England (Mass., Maine, N.H., R.I.) Bowdoin College Brown University Dartmouth College Hampshire College Smith College University of Massachusetts, Boston University of Massachusetts, Amherst University of New Hampshire New York Brooklyn College City College Hunter College Queens College Pennsylvania Bryn Mawr College Haverford College Swarthmore College

Upcoming Webinars Excellence in teaching starts here.

Excellence in teaching startsof here.

Institute for Recruitment Teachers

Phillips Academy 180 Main Street Andover, Mass. 01810-4161 978-749-4116 irt@andover.edu irt.andover.edu

Our one-hour online information sessions will provide prospective IRT applicants with further details about our consortium, application process, graduate school timeline, and more.

The webinars also include an interactive Q&A session in which students will have a chance to ask questions of IRT Recruitment and Admission Programs Specialist Monica Reum.

RSVP to mreum@andover.edu.

Monday, January 29 —Noon and 8 p.m. EST Tuesday, January 30—Noon and 8 p.m. EST