Seeking a Leader for 2016 Casteen Diversity Award

Among the University of Virginia Office for Diversity and Equity’s many efforts to cultivate and promote diversity on Grounds is administering the annual John T. Casteen III Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award. The honor recognizes a student, faculty or staff member who has demonstrated a deep commitment to diversity in the UVA community.

Nominations are due Feb. 19 by 5 p.m. A luncheon to honor the recipient will be held March 18 in Alumni Hall’s Jefferson Room.

Specific criteria for the award include playing a leadership role in increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at UVA and making a sustainable and quantifiable impact in these areas. The award was established in honor of the accomplishments of Casteen, the former UVA president who was the award’s inaugural recipient in 2010.

The second award went to Angela Davis, special assistant to the vice president and chief student affairs officer and former director of residence life for 30 years. Curry School of Education Professor Bob Covert received it in 2012. For more than 20 years, Covert, now retired, taught what became his signature class, “Multicultural Education.” In 2013, Kim Forde-Mazrui, William S. Potter Professor of Law and founding director of U.Va.’s Center for the Study of Race and Law, received the award, followed by Hajar Ahmed and Martin Davidson in 2014. Ahmed was an active fourth-year student in politics, and Davidson, professor of leadership and organizational behavior, is on the Darden School of Business faculty.

In 2015, fourth-year Ashley Blackwell, an urban and environmental planning student in the School of Architecture who founded the group United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity, and Joel Hockensmith, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics who started the Summer Research Internship Program to attract under-represented students to scientific research, shared the award.

An award selection committee, chaired by Dr. Marcus L. Martin, vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, will review the nominations and select the recipient.

Nominators should complete and submit the nomination form available online; submit a letter describing how the nominee has exemplified the award’s criteria; and coordinate the submission of three additional letters of support, one of which must be from outside the nominee’s department or school.

Nominations can be submitted via e-mail, with supporting materials attached, to gip8w@virginia.edu, or mailed to the attention of Gail Prince-Davis, Office for Diversity and Equity, P.O. Box 400881, Charlottesville VA 22904-4881. For information, call 434-243-4311.