2009 National Association for Cultural Diversity Honors J.Q. Adams, Co-Director, IACD
On Saturday, October 31, Dr. J. Q. Adams, Professor of educational psychology in the Department of Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies, will receive the 2009 G. Pritchy Smith Multicultural Educator Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). The award will be presented to Dr. Adams at the Awards Banquet that concludes NAME’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado.
This prestigious award is given each year to an educator who has demonstrated a “long term, scholarly commitment to teaching from a multicultural perspective;” teaches the many facets of diversity, including race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and exceptionality; models multicultural ideals in his life and work; and blends theory and practice effectively. Previous award winners include Dr. Carl A. Grant, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. Geneva Gay, University of Washington, Seattle, Dr. Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the National Women's History Project, Santa Rosa, California.
Multicultural education has been a focal point of Dr. Adams' entire academic career. Before his tenure at Western Illinois University, he served as the Director of Minority and Intercultural Affairs at Joliet Junior College in Illinois. Earlier, at Illinois State University, he served first as the College of Education's Director of Urban Education Program and then as Community Coordinator and Team Leader for its Teacher Corps Project, two programs that focused on improving urban teacher education preparation and effectiveness.
At Western, Dr. Adams regularly teaches Multicultural and Social Foundations of Education, a required course for education majors. Among the graduate courses he teaches are Implications of Diversity for Educational Leaders and Social Change and the Multicultural Aspects of School. He is in very large part responsible for the creation and implementation of these courses, courses that help prepare students to fulfill their roles as educators in the 21st century, whether they are already teachers and administrators or aspiring teachers and administrators.
Shortly after being appointed a faculty associate in WIU's Office of Faculty Development, (now the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Research), Dr. Adams led a small group of faculty in the development and approval of a course in cultural diversity (Group Diversity, CAS 210) and a multicultural requirement in WIU’s general education curriculum. His leadership, experience, and expertise were absolutely critical in creating the general education requirement and in establishing Group Diversity, in teaching it, and then in working with other faculty to teach it. Students who have taken the course have repeatedly testified not only to the challenges the course presents as they explore issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, but also to its value for them in a world of increasing diversity.
In the 1990s Professor Adams developed and taught Dealing with Diversity, a 24-hour teleclass produced at Governors State University (GSU) and distributed through the PBS Adult Learning Service. The PBS Adult Learning Service also distributes the completely revised 2001 version of the course. Because of the success of the first two versions, a third has recently been produced and is currently being offered online through GSU. Each is accompanied by a study guide Professor Adams wrote and the two later versions by an anthology, Dealing with Diversity, he co-edited.
Dr. Adams co-authored the grant, “Expanding Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum and in the Classroom,” the Illinois Board of Higher Education awarded WIU annually for over ten years before adding the $50,000 to WIU’s annual fiscal budget. Projects sponsored through the grant have included eight anthologies that Dr. Adams co-edited, over 15 annual conferences he co-directed, and several video and DVD initiatives for which he served as researcher and on-screen instructor or interviewer. Perhaps the most ambitious of the film projects is Effective Strategies for Learning and Teaching about Diversity in the U.S.A., a five-DVD, ten-hour course through which he offers an in-depth exploration and evaluation of the structure of society as it impacts schooling in the U.S.A. Other film projects include interviews with social critic Dr. Henry Giroux, historian Dr. Ronald Takaki, and scholar and activist Dr. Maulana Karenga.
Among the conferences Professor Adams has co-directed are the Dealing with Difference Institutes WIU hosts annually. Since 1994, these have featured such well known scholars as Beverly Daniel Tatum, Derald Wing Sue, Peggy McIntosh, Bill Ayers, Johnnella Butler, Sut Jhally, Christine Sleeter, Michael Omi, Paula Rothenberg, Jack Shaheen, Nancy "Rusty" Barcelo, Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Allan Johnson, Donaldo Macedo, Jackson Katz, Maurice Ashley, and Maulana Karenga. The institutes have also featured educators, scholars and activists who, though perhaps less well known, have effectively shared valuable insights and practices through interactive presentations and workshops. Evaluations of the institutes have been consistently and overwhelmingly positive and suggest that participants are not only deepening and widening their knowledge and understanding of diverse cultures, but are also discovering useful instructional practices that they can bring into their classrooms or offices. Dr. Adams has participated on panels, conducted workshops, made presentations, and led discussions during the institutes, in addition to helping define the themes and identify presenters.
Professor Adams has led numerous workshops revolving around cultural diversity issues for faculty, students, student services personnel, and civil service employees at WIU. Off campus his workshop participants have included P-12 or college and university employees, but at times they have been postal workers, human rights commissioners, railroad employees, law enforcement officers, and mental health professionals. With extended contracts as a consultant to various school districts in Illinois and Iowa, he has worked with administrators, teachers, and students to increase their multicultural awareness, competence, and cooperation in their schools and to improve the academic achievement of all students.
Dr. Adam’s commitment to multiculturalism encompasses a willingness and an ability to review regularly new scholarship and research related to cultural diversity and education, to weigh its value in furthering an understanding and appreciation of diversity, and to re-examine and revise his own thinking and approaches accordingly. Over three decades of work in multicultural education, he has paid close attention to the overarching trajectories of cultural diversity as they have evolved nationally and globally and has been able to remain, in the words of Paulo Freire, "unfinished"--a student as well as a teacher. On another level, when facilitating a workshop or making a presentation, he has been able to stay attuned to his audiences and has been able to introduce information and insights via strategies they are likely to comprehend and absorb. He continues to learn from other scholars and colleagues as well as from his audiences in an effort to further the goal of multicultural education, a viable, thriving multicultural society where mutual respect and understanding underlie relationships.
Professor Adams, after completing a BPh in social studies and psychology in 1975 from Grand Valley State College, went on to earn an MA in alternative education and psychology from Indiana University and a PhD from the University of Illinois, Champaign, in educational psychology. He recently received the WIU Provost's 2009 Excellence in Multicultural Teaching Award. In 2008 the College of Education at Grand Valley State College recognized his accomplishments through its Distinguished Alumni Leadership In Education Award and in 2004 the WIU College of Education and Human Services named him Outstanding Teacher of the Year. Two years earlier he had been honored by the University of Illinois College of Education with a Distinguished Alumni Award, and in 2000 WIU presented him with the Faculty Excellence in Multicultural Programming Award.
