Plenary Speakers
“For the Sake of All: Improving Health and Well-being in St. Louis Post-Ferguson” (June 14 at 2pm)
Dr. Jason Purnell
“Facilitating Integration through Collaboration and Unity in St. Louis” (June 15 at 9:30am)
Dr. F. Javier Orozco
Karlos Ramirez
Jaime Torres
Eileen Wolfington
“Strategies and Collaborations for Latino Empowerment: The Role of Community Colleges” (June 15 at 2:15pm)
Dr. Karen Hunter Anderson
Dr. Anthony Cruz
“Explorando Juntos: Exploring the Organic Intellectualism of Immigrant Students and Communities” (June 16 at 9am)
Dr. Mariana Pacheco
Dr. Jason PurnellAssistant Professor
George Warren Brown School of Social Work
Washington University in St. Louis
“For the Sake of All” Project Leader
Plenary presentation:
“For the Sake of All: Improving Health and Well-being in St. Louis Post-Ferguson”
Jason Purnell is an assistant professor in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He is trained in both applied psychology and public health. Dr. Purnell leads the For the Sake of All project, a multidisciplinary civic education and mobilization initiative highlighting the regional significance of disparities in health and life outcomes for African Americans in St.Louis, MO. The project and a report by the same name released in May 2014 have been a critical resource in the wake of the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in the suburban St.
Louis city of Ferguson in August of that year. Purnell and his team and partners have been instrumental in convening cross-sector stakeholders for strategic response to disparities in health, education, and economic status.
Dr. Purnell’s research focuses on health equity and the social determinants of health, with a special emphasis on the social, cultural, and economic factors that influence health behaviors and health outcomes. He is also interested in how communities can be mobilized to respond to health inequity.
Plenary presentation:
“Facilitating Integration through Collaboration and Unity in St. Louis”
President and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro St. Louis
Lt. Col (Ret) Jaime Torres
Chairman of the Board of Directors, The Hispanic Leaders Group of Greater St. Louis
ERIBEC & Associates
Eileen Wolfington
Professional Latino Action Network (PLAN)
Coordinator of Health & Wellness Program, Kingdom House
“Strategies and Collaborations for Latino Empowerment: The Role of Community Colleges”
Executive Director of the Illinois Community College Board
Dr. Anthony Cruz
Mariana Pacheco, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, ESL/Bilingual Certification Program
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
UW-Madison
Plenary presentation:
“Explorando Juntos: Exploring the Organic Intellectualism of Immigrant Students and Communities”
Dr. Mariana Pacheco’s research focuses on how emergent bi(multi)lingual students use their language and literacy abilities across contexts in and out of school. She examines the ways in which different contexts provide bi(multi)lingual and English Learner students meaningful opportunities to use their full cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resources. She is currently developing a project to collaborate and support bilingual teachers interested in ways to leverage students’ resources in the classroom, particularly the translanguaging practices that could enhance learning opportunities for bi(multi)lingual students. In more current work, she explores the extent to which language ideologies affect the privileging of English in bilingual classrooms and how this could limit learning opportunities and create harmful schooling contexts for non-dominant bilingual students in particular.
Learn more about the conference Education track on page 7 of the Call for Presentations.