ADVANCE Annual Distinguished Lecture

UMass ADVANCE established an annual distinguished lecture beginning in 2019 as part of our NSF ADVANCE-Institutional Transformation grant.  

ADVANCE Distinguished Lecturers are invited to give a talk of their choosing that centers institutional transformation and faculty equity with an intersectional lens.

This year's lecture will be delivered by Danielle R. Holley, President of Mount Holyoke College on March 27, 2024 in the Amherst Room, 10th floor of the Campus Center. Learn More.


Past Lectures

In 2019 Dr. Gilda Barabino (chemical engineer and member of the National Academy of Engineering) spoke from her personal experience about “A Counternarrative from a Woman of Color in STEM.” 

In 2020 the ADVANCE distinguished lecture was postponed due to the Pandemic.

In 2021 Dr. Shirley Malcom, life scientist and national science policy leader spoke about work based on her leadership role directing the SEA Change initiative at American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her talk, “Science in the Time of COVID and America’s Reckoning with Race” was delivered on zoom. 

In 2022 Dr. Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) and co-founder of Black in AI spoke on, "The Hierarchy of Knowledge in Machine Learning and Its Consequences." 

In 2023 Dr. Enobong (Anna) Branch, senior vice president for equity at Rutgers University spoke on, "Working in Black and White in the Knowledge Economy."

Watch Video Recordings of Our Annual Lectures