Dr Chaunda L Scott, an associate professor of organizational leadership, and diversity education specialist from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan USA, recently received a prestigious Fubright Specialist grant from the United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to provide diversity education workshops and seminars for Fundani’s academic staff development unit at CPUT.
The goal of the Fulbright Specialist Program is to award grants to qualified U.S. faculty and professionals, in select disciplines for the purpose of promoting linkages between U.S. scholars and professionals and their counterparts at host institutions overseas in select disciplines, to engage in short-term collaborative two-to six-week projects at eligible institutions in over 140 countries worldwide.
Below is what she has to say about her experience.
The Fulbright Specialist Program afforded me a wonderful opportunity to utilize my diversity education expertise by presenting several academic staff development diversity education workshops and seminars to academic staff professionals who were seeking to advance their diversity education knowledge and skills in the areas of teaching and research.
I was also provided the opportunity to design a five phase diversity education academic staff development research project which I will be leading over the next several years.
Diversity education plays a critical role in the South African higher education system today in preparing academic staff professionals to better connect with and educate a growing multicultural and multilingual student population to thrive as leaders of tomorrow in our diverse world and who are able to critically analyze societal issues, contest violence and unjust acts in a professional way, and develop innovative, peace-centered approaches for building and sustaining flourishing diverse and inclusive communities.
I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to work with the Fundani Centre’s Academic Staff Development Unit at CPUT.
The Fundani Centre’s forward-looking focus on diversity education for academic staff professionals is very much in line with my diversity education agenda.
I have also received enthusiastic responses regarding the diversity education workshops and seminars I presented at CPUT from all academic staff units I worked with along with several requests for more diversity education colloquiums from academic staff professionals.
In closing, the Fundani Centre’s academic staff development unit at CPUT is a leading academic staff development unit in South Africa and I look forward to working on academic staff development diversity education projects with them presently and in the future.
