The Crisis of Race in Higher Education

William F. Tate IV holds the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He serves as the Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education. Tate has a particular interest in STEM attainment. Ongoing research projects include understanding the distal and social factors that predict STEM doctoral degree attainment broadly defined to include highly quantitative social sciences disciplines. His co-edited book titled, Beyond Stock Stories and Folktales: African Americans' Paths to STEM Fields captures the direction of this research program. Also, his research has focused on the development of epidemiological and geospatial models to explain the social determinants of education, health, and developmental outcomes. His book project titled, Research on Schools, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility reflects his interest in the geography of opportunity in metropolitan America. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education. Nancy Staudt is a nationally renowned scholar in tax, tax policy, and empirical legal studies. Staudt has served as an advisory panelist and/or board member to organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Association of American Law Schools' Tax Section, and the Law and Society Association. Before assuming her deanship, Staudt served as vice dean for faculty and academic affairs at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and as the inaugural holder of the Edward G. Lewis Chair in Law and Public Policy; she was the Class of 1940 Research Professor of Law at Northwestern University and a Professor of law at Washington University from 2000 to 2006. Staudt has held visiting professorships at Vanderbilt University, Boston University, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, and she has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Prior to her academic appointments, Staudt was a tax associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. She clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, and she provided free legal services to both battered women and organizations seeking tax-exempt status from the federal government. Ashley Macrander, Ph.D., is the Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis, where she advances professional and leadership development opportunities for the university's graduate and professional students. Her broad research interests include the study of access and identity development among students of color and low socioeconomic status students in predominantly White higher education environments both domestically and internationally. Aligned with this research agenda, Ashley has taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing, studied at the University of Helsinki, and published work on the social determinants of access to higher education in South Africa. Her most recent research examines the political economy of international student mobility and the intersections of race, diversity, and international student status in U.S. higher education.

The compendium of writings in this edited volume sheds light on the event "Race & Ethnicity: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue" at Washington University in St. Louis and the work current students, faculty, and staff are doing to improve inclusivity on campus and in St. Louis.