Dear Faculty and Staff,

In collaboration with the Umoja Center, the Department of Child Development & Family Relationships, Human Resources, and Enrollment Management & Student Success, and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) is excited to host Dr. Deborah Johnson as the third of three distinguished speakers in the Black Excellence Speaker Series. Each speaker will present a keynote address and lead a professional development workshop.

Dr. Johnson will deliver her keynote address  “Watching and Listening to Mama: Maternal Messages to College Women of Color at the Intersection of Race and Gender” on Thursday, November 14, 2024, from 9:00 a.m. --10:20 a.m. in Great Hall. The Policy and Advocacy class of Child Development, taught by Professor Jennifer Mager, is hosting the keynote. All students, faculty, staff, and community members are welcome.  

In addition, Dr. Johnson will lead a professional development workshop titled "Can We Talk?” Developing a Racial Literacy Practice for Health and Wellbeing on Thursday, November 14, 2024, from 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. in NHE 106. This professional development workshop will focus on enhancing faculty and staff's ability to recognize, address, and resolve racially stressful encounters, using frameworks from Dr. Howard C. Stevenson's work on racial literacy and racial stress reduction. 

Staff and faculty who attend will earn CSU Learn credit. Register here!

Dr. Johnson's research explores racially and culturally related development, parental racial socialization and coping, cultural adjustment from early childhood through emerging adulthood, in both domestic and international children and youth. Current work focuses on the influence of early bias preparation and coping at the intersection of gender and race among African American and Latina College women, and the impact on their well-being and school performance. Additionally, she studies cultural adjustment and identity development among unaccompanied Sudanese refugee minors and majors, and in international settings with Indigenous Australian youth and core collaboration on Roma youth in Europe. She is also Director of the Diversity Research Network, a faculty serving entity under the auspices of MSU’s Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Thank you, 

Fernando Paz 

Campus and Community Development Coordinator 

Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) 

Siemens Hall 215A 

(707) 826-4504