Professor Sandy Grande named director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity

Sandy Grande, associate professor of education, will serve as the next director of Connecticut College's Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Sandy Grande, associate professor of education, will serve as the next director of Connecticut College's Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.

, associate professor of education, will serve as the next director of Connecticut College's Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), beginning July 1, 2015. Grande succeeds Leo Garofalo, associate professor of history, who has lead the CCSRE for the last three years.

A member of the Connecticut College faculty since 2000, Grande’s scholarship focuses on Native American/ Indigenous education and theory. A 10th anniversary edition of her first book, “Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought,” will be published this year. She is currently working on a new book, “Pedagogy of the Dispossessed,” which examines the historical continuities between present-day forms of state violence economic insecurity and disparity and the practices of transatlantic slavery, empire and coloniality.

Among many honors and awards, Grande was named a "founding scholar" to The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy at McGill University.

Constructing teaching as the link between public education and the imperatives of democracy, Grande is committed to producing critical educators who understand that teaching is a political act. Her course offerings include "Foundations of Education," "Methods of Teaching" and "Public Policy and Social Ethics." 

Grande has long been associated with the CCSRE, having chaired the committee that developed the idea for the center in 2004 and having served on the center’s steering committee since 2012. Her other service to the College is wide ranging, including long service as department chair; on the Wabash National Study summer working group; as a Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy faculty fellow; as an Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship advisor; and this year as chair of the Inclusive Excellence working group and as one of the College’s interim Deans of Equity and Inclusion.

“Professor Grande impressed the selection committee with her ideas for supporting the on-going work of implementing our revised curriculum and with her suggestions for marking the history of diversity initiatives and activism at Connecticut College — both hallmarks of our institutional identity,” wrote Dean of the Faculty Abigail A. Van Slyck in an announcement to the campus community. “I look forward to seeing the center thrive under her leadership.”



May 13, 2015