September 1, 2022 — BU Diversity & Inclusion (BU D&I) is proud to announce the seventeen Learn More Grants recipients for the 2022-23 academic year. First launched in fall 2021, the three Learn More Grants support ongoing learning, capacity building, and community-building. All three grants offer a total of $30,000 in dispersible funds for BU students, faculty, and staff centered around the signature Learn More Series program. In the 2022-23 academic year, the Learn More Series annual theme will be exploring LGBTQIA+ identities and experiences.

Meet the seventeen Learn More Grants recipients for the 2022-23 academic year, which includes faculty, staff, and students from a diverse array of fields of study, practices, interest areas, and identities. Click here to read more about all of the grants offered by BU D&I

Fall 2022 Learn More Programming Grant Recipients

Maria Erb, Director of the Newbury Center

Ty Furman, Managing Director of the BU Arts Initiative

The Newbury Center and BU Arts Initiative will bring heather lou (she/her/hers), the Director of Training from Voices for Racial Justice located in Minneapolis, Minnesota to speak at a campus and community public event sharing her own story as a queer womxn of color, a former first-gen graduate student, and an activist who utilizes the arts as a means for social change.

 

Seth Forbes, MBA and MS student in Digital Technology, Questrom School of Business

Mae Petti, Violence Prevention Program Manager, BU Student Health Services

Kris Berg, BA student in Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences

Boston University’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center (SARP), the student organization Together Estranged (TE), and Boston University’s Queer Activist Collective are collaborating to create a support group for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC BU students experiencing estrangement from their families, a common experience for queer people.

 

Elizabeth Jenkins, Education and Access Services Management Librarian, Alumni Medical Library

The Alumni Medical Library is excited to welcome Kalani Adolpho and Stephen Krueger, co-editors for the forthcoming book “Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries,” to facilitate a workshop on trans and gender-diverse inclusion for library workers, especially at Boston University.

 

Rodrigo Mendoza Lee, Assistant Director of the Student Activities Office

Through performance, Rodrigo plans to spotlight and spark conversation about the unique experiences that non-white LGBTQIA+ individuals go through in Boston, and the opportunities (or lack thereof) they get to tell their stories through their art.

 

Eric Schmidt, Assistant Director of the BU African Studies Center, College of Arts & Sciences

The African Studies Center will host a Zoom panel featuring activists and scholars involved in activism around LGBTQIA+ communities and rights advocacy across the African continent and diaspora. The program will include panelists who can speak to and represent a diversity of national contexts and dimensions of identity and experience.

 

About the Learn More Programming Grant

The Learn More Programming Grant provides up to $3,000 to students, staff, and faculty to host programs and events that dive deeper into the Learn More Series annual topic and educate BU community members about the history and lived experiences of underrepresented groups in our increasingly heterogeneous population of students, staff, and faculty. Read about the Learn More Programming Grant.


Learn More Research Grant Recipients

André de Quadros, Professor of Music Education, College of Fine Arts

Another Possible World Over the Rainbow: Cultivating Queer Futures with LGBTQ+ Migrants through Empowering Song

Using the Empowering Song approach, Professor de Quadros will leverage the impacts of group singing, collective songwriting, and storytelling for collective healing at Jardín de las Mariposas, a Tijuana-based refugee shelter that houses trans* refugees from around the world.

 

Anthony M. Petro, Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Provoking Religion: The Queer Arts of David Wojnarowicz and Marlon Riggs

This interdisciplinary study combines extensive archival research with visual studies, religious studies, and LGBTQ studies to tell a story about the politics of sex, art, and religion in the U.S. since the 1970s. This research examines how the work of feminist and queer artists—including Judy Chicago, David Wojnarowicz, Renee Cox, Marlon Riggs, Ray Navarro, and others—have employed religious iconography and ritual in their practice.

 

Carl G. Streed Jr, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine Research

Wellness, Burnout, and Resilience among LGBTQIA+ Physicians

This research will utilize Healthcare Professional Well-Being Academic Consortium (PWAC) data to characterize LGBTQIA+ physicians and categorize the unique rewards, stressors, and challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ physicians, investigate how these challenges relate to sexual orientation and gender identity specifically, and identify factors predictive of resiliency in this population. 

 

About the Learn More Research Grant

The Learn More Research Grants provide three BU faculty members per year with up to $5,000 each to support their high-impact research on social issues related to the annual Learn More Series theme. Through these grants, BU D&I supports the critical work of scholars dedicated to contributing to a more just society through their research. Read about the Learn More Research Grant


Learn More Together Grant Recipients

Maria Bobroff, Lecturer in French, College of Arts & Sciences

The French language assigns masculine or feminine gender to all nouns, as well as to the articles, adjectives, and participles that modify them. Though these markers have little to do with the social construct of gender, their omnipresence imposes a binary experience on French speakers. What is more, there are currently no universally accepted means to avoid a masculine-feminine binary when referring to individual persons in French. There are, however, movements afoot in francophone regions of the world to address this linguistic quandary. A recent collection of essays, “Devenir non-binaire en français contemporain” (ed. Mackenzie and Swamy, 2022), addresses these trends. This Learn More Together Community uses this collection of essays as a starting point to develop a series of best practices for using non-binary language in the French classroom. 

 

Emily Chastain, PhD student in History and Hermeneutics, School of Theology

This Learn More Together Community provides doctoral students in the School of Theology with insights for fostering their own equitable classrooms. The summer learning community lasts ten weeks while participants reflect on their own social identities and those of their students and how significantly those identities impact a student’s classroom experience. Additionally, the community will explore various pedagogical methods and strategies, as well as course design, to support healthy and inclusive engagement and belonging.

 

Jennifer Phillips, Lecturer in the Department of Occupational Therapy Online Program, Sargent College

Nancy Doyle, Lecturer in the Department of Occupational Therapy Online Program, Sargent College

Karen Jacobs, Program Director of the Post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral Online Program, Sargent College

Faculty in the BU Post-professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral Online Program (pp-OTD) are located globally and across the United States. To better serve and inform students in the program, this Learn More Together Community will bring a guest speaker to campus to speak to anti-trans discrimination and challenges in the occupational health and medical fields. Ultimately, this learning community will help to guide faculty in educating students so that they may advocate for more inclusive experiences for the clients and caregivers that they work with.

 

Shannon Ma, Graduate student in Sargent College

This Learn More Together Community will continue the “Discoursing Disability” book club, which launched in 2021 thanks to BU D&I’s Learn More Together grant. This year, the book club will read Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s book, “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice,” and Mark Gevisser’s “Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers.” By focusing on the intersections of disability and LGBTQIA+ experiences, the “Discoursing Disability” book club will advance the knowledge and understanding of this year’s Learn More Series theme by reading, learning from, and discussing the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people in the selected readings, and reflection among members of the book club.

 

About the Learn More Together Grant

True learning is not in the mere consumption of knowledge but in the digestion of it through discussion and application. Learn More Together Grants encourage BU students, staff and faculty to create Learn More Together Communities (LMTCs), which will foster stronger relationships between staff, faculty, and students and build capacity for skills and action around the annual Learn More Series topic. Read more about the Learn More Together Grants