Two from UD attend HERS summer institute

7:51 a.m., Sept. 18, 2012--Two women from the University of Delaware graduated this summer from the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Bryn Mawr Summer Institute, an educational nonprofit that provides leadership and management development for women in higher education administration.

P. Gabrielle Foreman, Ned B. Allen Professor of English and professor of Black American Studies, and Heather Kelly, director of institutional research, attended the 2012 program, held June 17 to July 1 at Bryn Mawr (Pa.) College.

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Since 1978, the HERS Institute for Women in Higher Education has annually offered women faculty and administrators the opportunity to participate in an intensive program that prepares them to be leaders in higher education.

The 67 participants selected for this year’s institute represented 63 institutions across the U.S. Responding to the current environment for higher education globally, this year's institute focused on “Women Leaders: Facing the Challenges as We Re-Invent Higher Education.” 

Topics studied included “Understanding the Environment for Higher Education,” “Planning and Leading Change in the Academy,” “Managing and Investing Strategic Resources,” “Engaging Individual and Institutional Diversity” and “Mapping Your Leadership Development.”

Foreman joined the UD faculty in 2010 after almost two decades as a professor at Occidental College, a leading liberal arts institution in Los Angeles. She is the author of Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century as well as scores of articles and book chapters that are considered central reading in her fields.

For her collaborative research on Harriet Wilson, author of Our Nig, she was lauded for picking up on “one of the coldest trails in 19th century African American studies.” Research featured in The Boston Globe established that Wilson, once a poorly treated indentured servant, lived to become a well-known antebellum hair care entrepreneur 50 years before the advent of Madame C.J. Walker, the first black woman millionaire. 

Foreman is a former Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellow who has been active in community engagement and advocacy efforts with underrepresented youth, midcareer and senior scholars and nonprofit organizations. 

She was nominated to participate in HERS by the College of Arts and Sciences.

Kelly has been at the University since 1998, serving as director of the Office of Institutional Research since 2009. She is the lead author on a book chapter on faculty workload in The Handbook of Institutional Research released last month.

Kelly serves as an Evaluation Team member for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, is a member of the Association for Institutional Research Board of Directors and is the past president of the North East Association for Institutional Research.

She was nominated to participate in HERS by the Office of the Provost.

For more information about HERS, visit the website.

Photo by Tracy E. Ore