IA Leading and Learning Initiative (LLI)

The IA Leading and Learning Initiative (LLI) is a three year action research and field building project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The main research aim is to better understand and to provide dynamic actionable tools to shift institutional culture in higher education to more fully support public and activist scholarship in the arts, design, and humanities. The question of ‘culture shift’ involves understanding the institutional norms and behaviors that marginalize public and activist scholarship and the key strategies that have been used to better support this important work. This initiative ultimately aims to radically redefine how we understand where and by whom knowledge is produced; and provide a grounded view and practical tools to advocate for institutional change.

Read the research reports:

• “Critical Intersections: Public Scholars Creating Culture, Catalyzing Change” by Erica Kohl-Arenas, Kal Alston, and Christina Preston.

• “Navigating the Joys and Challenges of Public Scholarship in Graduate School: An Imagining America Research Report,” by UC Davis graduate scholars Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana and Alana Haynes Stein.

Principal Investigators / Imagining America

• Erica Kohl-Arenas, Faculty Director, Imagining America, Associate Professor, American Studies, UC Davis
• Kal Alston, IA National Advisory Board Chair, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Education, Syracuse University
• Christina Preston, Research Associate, Imagining America, UC Davis

University of California, Davis

• Ralph Hexter, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, University of California, Davis
• Michael Rios, Vice Provost of Public Scholarship, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design, University of California, Davis
• Julie Sze, Professor, American Studies, and Founding Director of the Environmental Justice Project of the John Muir Institute for the Environment, UC Davis

National Leaders

• Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, Rutgers University, Newark
• Mari Castañeda, Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion, Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Joy Connolly, President, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
• Maryrose Flannigan, Executive Director, Association for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru)
• Tessa Hicks Peterson, Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement, Pitzer College
• Stephen Kidd, Executive Director, National Humanities Alliance
• Paula Krebs, Executive Director, The Modern Language Association of America (MLA)
• Christopher Long, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University
• Earl Lewis, Director and Professor, Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan
• Teresa Mangum, Director of the Oberman Center for Advanced Studies and Professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, University of Iowa
• Katherine McComas, Vice Provost for Engagement and Land Grant Affairs, Cornell University
• Caryn McTighe-Musil, Office of the President, American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)
• Brian Murphy, Senior Fellow, Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action, Former President, De Anza College,
• KerryAnn O’Meara, Professor of Higher Education and Director of the ADVANCE Program, University of Maryland
• Leigh Patel, Associate Dean of Equity and Justice, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh
• john a. powell, Director, Hass Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion, University of California, Berkeley
• Verdis Robinson, Kettering Foundation Associate
• Stephanie Rowe, Executive Director, National Council on Public History (NCPH)
• George Sanchez, Director of the Center for Democracy and Diversity and Professor of American Studies, University of Southern California
• Stephen Tepper, Herberger Institute for Design and Arts, Dean and Professor, Arizona State University
• David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI) and Professor of Comparative Literature, Anthropology, Criminology and Law, University of California, Irvine
• Rowena Tomaneng, President, San Jose City College
• Angel Ysaguirre, Director, Court Theater, University of Chicago

Davis Humanities Institute Mellon Public Scholars

• Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, Ph.D. Candidate Spanish, UC Davis
• Alana Haynes Stein, Ph.D. Student Sociology, UC Davis

IA PAGE Research Fellows

• Romo, Page Co-Director, Ph.D. Student in Cultural Foundations of Education, Syracuse University
• Gale Greenlee, Page Co-Director, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Click here to read the Year One Report

June 6th, 2020 LLI Organizing Institute, graphically facilitated by RogueMark Studios. Participants sharing the ‘weather inside’ and culture change superpowers.