The is a part of the Flood Center鈥檚 Equity Incubator Program to address recruitment and retention efforts in North Carolina. This Educator Summer Collaborative supports educators in the pedagogical struggles of teaching and engaging race in the classroom and to build educators capacity to make sound and culturally relevant instructional decisions.

Cherrel Miller Dyce, associate professor of education and executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education, Ms. Marlene Harrison-Reid, a teacher with Guilford County Schools, and Deanna Townsend-Smith, senior director at the Dudley Flood Center, facilitated this summer experience for participating teachers.

Participants in Educator Summer Collaborative engaged in reading and discussing the text during the summer which concluded with a day-long learning experience hosted at the . Dudley Flood delivered an inspirational message to the teachers detailing their responsibilities to nurture the individual 鈥渂rilliance and potential鈥� of every child.

“The Educator Summer Collaborative created a dynamic engaged learning opportunity for our K-12 educators to explore how to integrate the writings and teachings of James Baldwin, a prolific scholar that centers the Black American experiences throughout his work. The summer collaborative provided an additional pathway to foster connections between our K-12 educators and 黑料不打烊, while concurrently contributing to our ongoing efforts that support inclusive pedagogical design,” stated Buffie Longmire-Avital, director of the Black Lumen Project.

The Summer Collaborative will continue in 2024 based on the success and responses from our pilot cohort. Among the feedback from participants:

鈥淚 loved having a space for conversation and dialogue to pick out important parts from the book. Every activity was modeled well鈥�

鈥淚’d love to do another of the studies with the books and then pull together to create a session for Color of Learning based on our work and time together. Paying it forward, sort of.鈥�

鈥淚 would absolutely LOVE to continue my work with this summer collaborative and anything the Flood Center would have me help with.鈥�

鈥淭he collaborative has so much potential and has such a big impact, bringing different educators together鈥�

(Flood Center) serves as a hub to identify and connect organizations, networks, and leaders to address issues of equity, access, and opportunity in education across North Carolina.

Buffie Longmire-Avital, professor of psychology, director of the Black Lumen Project and Faculty Administrative Fellow, was one of 11 scholars selected for an National Endowment of the Humanities fellowship through the Center of Jewish Ethics (CJE) at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2022.

Longmire-Avital鈥檚 research examined the Jewish racial and ethnic socialization parents engage in with their children. Specifically, she explored how Jewish parents discuss race, racism and racial microaggressions within Jewish spaces (e.g., synagogues, community centers, day schools). Her findings were transformed into curriculum for both adults and children. Longmire-Avital鈥檚 work, which includes three brief presentations can be viewed along with the other projects on CJE鈥檚 newly launched website:

Longmire-Avital has quickly become a leading national expert on mitigating racial microaggressions in Jewish spaces and communities. In addition to her work being recognized for this highly selective fellowship, she is a recurring featured panelist on the MLK Day Morning Fuel & Call to Service: Exploring the Intersection of Black & Jewish Identity in America annual conversation on race, social justice, and Judaism, which began as an event for the official 2021 Biden-Harris Inauguration Week. She has worked as a DEI consultant and delivered multiple talks for Jewish organizations across the country. In April Longmire-Avital will be one of 18 leaders participating in a Leadership Mission to Israel where they will work with Israeli and American leaders on creating greater understanding and inclusion efforts around race.

Little presented her Lumen Prize research with a poster titled, 鈥淪trong, Black, and Selfish: Reframing the Strong Black Woman Persona to Include Self-Care Through a Tele-Health Intervention.鈥� Little discussed her Lumen Scholar research, which was an eight-week virtual intervention that was developed using preliminary data collected in fall of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and return for many to hybrid learning.

The Lumen and Odyssey Scholar aimed to increase mindfulness and self-contemplative behaviors, such as meditation and journaling, to cope with general stress, race-related stress and gendered-discrimination experienced by Black American collegiate women. Participants were asked to view videos featuring Black American women scholars in conversation with Little, complete weekly reflective prompts and activities designed to increase awareness of self-care and the unpacking of the Strong Black Woman Persona.

Over 20 women have completed the intervention. The women reported a clear and concise plan for integrating self-care and self-contemplative behaviors into their daily or weekly habits at the end of the intervention.

Jenna Dahl ’21 collaborated with Longmire-Avital and community partner, SEEDS of Healing, to assess and document the medicine adherence behaviors of Black American women living with a diagnosis of HIV in the deep south during the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020.

Findings from the mixed-data study were presented in a poster titled, 鈥淐OVID-19 Factors of Medicine Adherence in Black Women Living with HIV.鈥� Their findings revealed that the initial onset and stay-at-home orders did not alter adherence behavior. However, women openly discussed that their motivation to remain adherent was largely driven by a fear of contracting COVID-19 and access to medication.

Finally, there was a strong correlation between self-reported fatigue and loneliness. Findings from this study were used in a successful 2020 grant application to the Southern AIDS Coalition to secure funding to develop a social networking site for Black women living with a diagnosis of HIV, called . The first manuscript from this data is in the final stages of development.

Longmire-Avital and Honors Fellow Jennifer Finkelstein 鈥�19 published their second paper exploring maternal socialization around coping with discrimination and eating behaviors for Black American collegiate women. The article, 鈥�,鈥� was recently published in the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy.

They found a strong predictive relationship between adoption of the Strong Black Woman Persona and emotional eating. Further, the young women who participated recalled receiving messages from their mothers to be strong. The article considers the maternal relationship as a critical context for understanding potential eating pathology behaviors for Black women. It also calls on university counseling centers to consider how racial discrimination and trauma may also contribute to maladaptive eating habits for Black women.

The DSN now has over 1,000 members from more than 200 institutions across the world. The application process includes a review of the potential member鈥檚 scholarship and service in pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The DSN is an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional community of scholars committed to advancing understandings of historical and contemporary social issues related to identity, difference, culture, representation, power, oppression and inequality – as they occur and affect individuals, groups, communities and institutions.

The evening public talk titled, 鈥淗istorically Underrepresented or Historically Excluded: Equitable Re-centering in the Pursuit of Sustainable Inclusive Action,鈥� was sponsored and organized by the College of Arts and Sciences. Longmire-Avital then offered a professional development workshop on critical mentoring in High Impact Practices the following day for faculty and staff. A write-up of her talk and workshop can be found .

Last year, the program began as one of the official Biden-Harris Presidential Inauguration Week events. Longmire-Avital once again joined fellow presenters, Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein and Nate Looney in a discussion of MLK and the Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement.

Dr. Longmire-Avital also presented her work on critical mentoring and the model she developed at the Association of American Colleges and Universities annual meeting. Longmire-Avital and colleagues gave a joint talk titled, 鈥淓quity by Design: Overhauling Undergraduate Research Programs and Practices to Center Racial Equity.鈥� The presentation highlighted barriers and best practices to creating sustainable equity in undergraduate research.

The session was part of the Becoming Community Certificate series at the College of Saint Benedict – Saint John’s University.

Longmire-Avital is a national expert on racial equity in high-impact practices and created a sustainable critical mentorship model for working with students from historically excluded minority groups through her work as a Center for Engaged Learning Scholar. This is the first of several keynote addressing she will be giving throughout 2022.

is one of a two papers from Finkelstein鈥檚 Honors research that explores how maternal modeling and socialization of eating behaviors amplifies and/or discourages the development of eating pathology for young adult Black American women.

As stated in the abstract: This qualitative study aimed to investigate and capture the recalled maternal communication around eating and body image for Black American collegiate emerging adult women. A sample of 143 women was recruited via online social platforms. Findings from framework analysis highlighted that maternal communication around body image, size, and eating disorders was often in reaction to the daughters鈥� direct or indirect experiences with eating disorder symptomatology. The communication was problem focused, with an aim to address symptoms. The communication also centered on body evaluation and comparison responses, which often emphasized negative sentiments regarding both the mother and the daughter鈥檚 body image. Understanding the dynamic exchange of socialization for body image and eating disorder symptomatology is critical when creating culturally tailored, client-centered, and sustainable treatment plans.

As stated on the journal’s website, “Women & Therapy is the only professional journal that focuses entirely on the complex interrelationship between women and the therapeutic experience. Devoted to theoretical, clinical, intersectional, qualitative and quantitative analyses of issues concerning women and therapy, the journal is intended for feminist practitioners, as well as for individuals interested in the practice of feminist therapy.鈥�

Finkelstein is currently working on her master’s of research in developmental neuroscience and psychopathology at the joint University College London and Yale University program.

Longmire-Avital presented a portion of the research she conducted with Honors student, Jennifer Finkelstein 鈥�19. Their mixed data study argued that when researchers and practitioners adopt a broader view of eating pathology, one that includes disorganized eating, which is linked with emotional eating, binge eating, bulimia, and obesity, it counters the perception that Black women are immune to the development of eating pathology.

Further, as an agent of socialization around eating and race, Longmire-Avital and Finkelstein propose that mothers may not only impact the way their daughters think about their own and other鈥檚 weight but contribute to the disorganized eating behaviors of their daughters.

The study aims and presentation reflected on the possibility that for Black collegiate women motives for engaging in emotional eating may stem from a maladaptive coping response to race-related stress and trauma, versus solely managing body image. Collectively the mixed-data findings from this study emphasize the importance of understanding and acknowledging the role of chronic racism and discrimination on the development of eating pathology for collegiate Black women. Specifically, the iatrogenic effects of encouraging superwoman or magical black girl responses to the onslaught of chronic injustice. Longmire-Avital contextualized these findings within a discussion on the need for a critical race theory frame for understanding racial health disparities.

In addition to receiving funding through the Honors program, Jennifer participated in SURE and was named a Provost Scholar. Jennifer is currently in a joint master鈥檚 program at University College London/Yale University for her MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology.

The grant will support the work of a proposed collaborative community-based research intervention between Longmire-Avital, SEEDS of Healing, Inc. (SOH) Executive Director, LeShonda Wallace, and North Carolina Central University Assistant Professor of Information Sciences Siobhan Day Grady. The team was awarded a $20,000 SPARK! Grant through a joint funding program with Gilead鈥檚 Compass Initiative and the Southern AIDS Coalition.

The grant will support the launch of “SOH Time: Virtual Support for Black Women Living Positively”, a web-based space for Black, African American women living with HIV. This custom-designed and culturally tailored website will offer a series of topic-specific support groups, opportunities to engage with experts on HIV and the health of Black, African-American women, while providing tangible tools to aid adherence to HIV medication and other health behaviors while social distancing.

黑料不打烊 psychology major Jenna Dahl 鈥�21 will be working with Longmire-Avital on this community-based research intervention.