John Slaughter, Adrianna Kezar honored at Academic Honors Convocation

Pullias Center faculty member John Slaughter and Pullias Center co-director Adrianna Kezar were among the USC professors honored April 9 at USC’s 38th annual Academic Honors Convocation.

Slaughter received the University Medallion, awarded to those who have made major contributions to the university. background. He has had remarkably distinguished career, which began as an electrical engineer and includes leading two universities and heading the National Science Foundation as its first African American director, among many other accomplishments. Slaughter joined the USC Rossier School of Education in January 2010 as Professor of Education, with a joint appointment at the Viterbi School of Engineering.

His education research has been in the areas of higher education leadership, diversity and inclusion in higher education, underrepresented minorities in STEM, and access and affordability. In his position at Rossier and Viterbi, Slaughter looks at the intersection between engineering and education, with a focus on what has become his lifelong quest of increasing minority participation in the science and engineering fields.

Kezar was awarded the 2019 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for her book, How Colleges Change: Understanding, Learning, and Enacting Change (Routledge, 2018). Her work calls into question the rules and practices that educational institutions consistently use to address their changing environment and to meet the needs of their many constituents. The book provides practical applications that can lead to successful change processes.

A professor of higher education and national expert on change, governance and leadership in higher education, Kezar directs the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success at the Pullias Center, and is an international expert on the changing faculty. She also regularly consults for campuses and national organizations related to her work on non-tenure track faculty, STEM reform, change, collaboration, leadership development and change.

“Her work personifies the motto of the P-K-P honor society, ‘Let the love of learning rule humanity,'” said Michàlle Mor Barak, Dean’s Professor and the president of the USC Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.  “Chosen from among a large number of submissions, her work was deemed particularly meritorious by the selection committee.”

Top photo: John Slaughter (right) receives the University Medallion from USC interim president Wanda Austin at USC’s 38th Annual Academic Honors Convocation on April 9, 2019 (Photo: Steve Cohn)