Carter-Larke Black History and Education Lecture

2024 Event

Excellence as the Standard: Resilience and Courage During these Times

Keynote Speaker

Rich Milner, Ph.D.

Vanderbilt University
Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education Professor of Education (with tenure)
Department of Teaching and Learning

Joseph A. Johnson, Jr. Distinguished Leadership Professor (2022-2023)

Founding Director, Initiative for Race Research and Justice

Professor of Education Policy Studies (Secondary) Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations

Professor of Sociology (Secondary), Department of Sociology

Editor-in-Chief, Urban Education

Founding Book Series Editor, Race and Education, Harvard Education Press

H. Richard Milner IV is Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. He has secondary appointments in Peabody’s Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations and the Department of Sociology in Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science. Milner is President of the American Educational Research Association, the largest research organization in the world. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Education.

Milner is a researcher, scholar and leader of urban education and teacher education. Centering on equity and diversity, he has spent hundreds of hours observing teachers’ practices and interviewing educators and students in urban schools about micro-level policies that shape students’ opportunities to learn. He examines the social context of classrooms and schools and looks at ways in which teachers talk (particularly about race) influences student learning, identity and development.

His research in urban schools and his book, “’These Kids are out of Control:’ Why We Must Reimagine Classroom Management,” (Corwin Press, 2018) has influenced designs and practices of teacher education courses and programs. To improve relational, curricular, assessment and instructional practices, school districts across the United States and beyond draw on his recommendations to support students of color, those who live below the poverty line, and those whose first language is not English.

Milner began his career at Vanderbilt where in 2008, he became the first Black faculty member at Peabody College to earn promotion and tenure from assistant to associate professor. He also was appointed Lois Autrey Betts Assistant (later Associate) Professor of Education.

In addition to his service in the Department of Teaching and Learning, where he founded the graduate program in learning, diversity and urban studies, he held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations.

Milner left Vanderbilt to spend five years at University of Pittsburgh as Helen Faison Endowed Professor of Urban Education, professor of education, and by courtesy, professor of sociology, professor of social work, and professor of Africana studies. While there, he directed the university’s Center for Urban Education.

He rejoined Vanderbilt faculty in 2018.

2023 Speakers

Ayana Allen-Handy, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Urban Education
Department of Policy, Organization, and Leadership, Drexel University

Ayana Allen-Handy, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Policy, Organization, and Leadership at Drexel University. She is also the Founder/Director of the Justice-Oriented Youth Education Lab (The JOY Lab). Her work is dedicated to justice-oriented urban education and is built upon debunking and (re)framing pejorative narratives of urban students, schools, and communities.

Chance Lewis, Ph.D.

Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education
Former Provost Faculty Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion and Access, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Dr. Chance W. Lewis is the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education and former Provost Faculty Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion and Access at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Additionally, Dr. Lewis is the Executive Director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Urban Education Collaborative which is publishing a new generation of research on improving urban schools.

Dr. Patricia Larke

Retired since 2017, Dr. Norvella Carter and Dr. Patricia Larke legacy continues through the college’s Carter and Larke Lecture Series held yearly during Black History Month. A fundraising campaign is underway to raise a minimum of $100,000 to permanently endow the event. Such an endowment could enable a yearlong lecture series, allowing prolonged conversation about issues of equity education.

Past Speakers

• Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson (2022)
• Dr. Chance Lewis (2021)
• Victor Goode, Esq. (2020)
• Dr. Keffrelyn D. Brown (2019)
• Dr. Fred Bonner II (2018)
• Dr. Valerie Hill-Jackson (2017)