Speakers

Sharon L. Gaber, Ph.D., is the fifth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Known as North Carolina’s urban research university, it leverages its location in the state’s largest city to offer internationally competitive programs of research and creative activity, exemplary undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, and a focused set of community engagement initiatives. UNC Charlotte maintains a particular commitment to addressing the cultural, economic, educational, environmental, health, and social needs of the greater Charlotte region.

With a student population soon to exceed 30,000 (due to a 33% increase in enrollment since 2009), it is the fastest-growing — and third-largest — institution in the 17-member University of North Carolina System. Its diverse student body, 37% of whom are first-generation college students, comes from 47 states and 105 countries.

An academic with a background in city and regional planning, Gaber was named by Education Dive one of five higher education leaders to watch in 2018 and beyond. She is recognized nationally for her efforts as president of the University of Toledo to increase enrollment, improve graduation and retention rates, keep education affordable, increase research funding, improve connection to the surrounding metro region and make the campus environment diverse and inclusive. Prior to her five years in Toledo, Gaber served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas. She has also been an interim provost at Auburn University and a faculty member and administrator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Gaber earned an A.B. in Economics and Urban Studies at Occidental College. She received an M.P.L. in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in City & Regional Planning.

Gaber is the author of articles on regional and urban planning, public policy and the social dynamics that affect community decision-making. She also is co-author of a book on planning research methods. Deeply engaged in community and regional activities, she has served as the Mid-American Conference representative on the Division 1 NCAA President’s Forum and as a member of the NCAA Strategic Plan Committee. She was named a YWCA Northwest Ohio Milestone award recipient for women’s leadership in 2020.

Officially the first woman to serve as chancellor of UNC Charlotte, Gaber follows the trail blazed by founding educator Bonnie Cone, who led the institution from 1946-1966 through several stages of growth.

We are delighted that Nikki Giovanni will deliver the keynote presentation. Nikki is one of this country’s most widely read poets and one of America’s most renowned poets world-wide. Her poem, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” is arguably the single literary work most often associated with that city.

Nikki Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1943, but her parents moved to the all-black Cincinnati suburb of Lincoln Heights when she was an infant. She and her sisters spent the summers with their grandparents in Knoxville, and she returned there for her high school years. She enrolled as an early entrant at Fisk University, where her grandfather had graduated, but was “released” in February in 1961, because her attitudes were deemed inappropriate for a “Fisk woman.” She then returned home and took classes at the University of Cincinnati until she returned to Fisk in 1964. At Fisk, she reinstituted the school’s chapter of SNCC, edited the literary magazine, and graduated magna cum laude in history in 1967. Returning to Cincinnati, she directed the city’s first Black Arts Festival before enrolling briefly in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work. Recognizing that she was not meant to be a social worker, she entered Columbia University’s MFA program. In 1968 she self-published her first poetry book, a nineteen-page staple-bound volume entitled, Black Feeling Black Talk, which sold some 2,000 copies in its first few months, which allowed Giovanni to self-publish her second book of poetry, Black Judgement. William Morrow & Company approached her about publishing her first two volumes together in one book, and Black Feeling Black Talk/Black Judgement was published in 1970.

During the late 60s and early 70s, Giovanni lived in New York and, after giving birth to her only child, Thomas, began earning an income through her lectures and poetry readings. Her frequent appearances on the Black entertainment show SOUL!!, along with her extensive lecture tours, made her one of the most popular and recognizable poets of the Black Arts Movement. In 1971, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet was a finalist for the National Book Award. In that same year she published her first children’s book, Spin a Soft Black Song, and released the album Truth Is On Its Way Is On Its Way, on which she read her poetry with and in juxtaposition to the New York Community Choir; although she made no money from it, Truth was an enormous success, selling some 100,000 copies in the first six months of its release.

In 1978, Giovanni’s father suffered a stroke, and she and her son returned to Cincinnati to take care of her parents, and she did brief teaching stints at The Ohio State University and the College of Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio. In 1987 Nikki Giovanni began teaching at Virginia Tech, where she was named, in 1999, a University Distinguished Professor. Since she has been at Virginia Tech, she has published two collections of essays, several illustrated children’s books (including the award-winning Rosa), and ten volumes of poetry for adults. In 2005, both her mother and her sister died of lung cancer, for which Giovanni herself had undergone successful surgery some ten years earlier. The loss of her mother was as profound a blow as she had ever experienced.

Giovanni has received numerous awards in the course of her career, including seven Image Awards from the N.A.A.C.P., more than two-dozen honorary degrees, the first Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, the Langston Hughes Medal for Poetry, and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award; additionally, Oprah Winfrey recognized her in 2005 as one of twenty-five “Living Legends.” She continues to teach, write, and publish books, the most recent of which is A Good Cry. Her newest collection, Make Me Rain, was released in October of 2020.

Nicole Peterson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UNC Charlotte and has examined Charlotte area food systems, how people adapt to changing climates and agricultural systems, and community-oriented sustainability efforts. Nicole is currently leading the 2020 State of the Plate assessment of the Charlotte-area food system, which examines the needs and assets of the local food system before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, and has been studying college student food insecurity since 2015 in collaboration with the campus food pantry, students, and other researchers. Nicole has policy experience as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow and as a board member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Food Policy Council, in addition to other non-profit and community-oriented projects. In the past, Nicole led the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability, a diverse and open community focused on the value of understanding social aspects of sustainability for planning and practice. Website: clas-pages.uncc.edu/nicole-peterson.