Page 8 - RVO Senior Expo August 2017

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 2017 SENIOR EXPO • RIVER VALLEY & OZARK EDITION OF THE ARKANSAS DEMOCRATGAZETTE
LEARNER, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7VV
for teaching and learning that went both ways, so I wasn’t doing all the teaching. They were teaching me, and they weren’t doing all the learning; I was learning as well,” she said. “I just had to approach it differently, but I had to find my way to that in order to be successful.”
As an associate professor of leadership studies, she designed a course called Leadership for Social Justice, which she teaches every summer. She modified other courses she teaches to ensure that diversity is a part of each one.
“I integrate it into every one because I think, especially with our future generations of school leaders, if they can learn how to be inclusive leaders, they’re going to be marketable anywhere,” she said. “If you can learn how to serve all those different groups well, you can be amazing anywhere because no matter what anybody thinks, all those different groups are in every school, no matter how visible they are.”
This year, Webster will work to become even more successful in education through a one-year fellowship with the American Council on Education Fellows Program. According to the ACE website, the program helps leaders in higher education develop through mentorship, events and immersing themselves in leadership processes at another institution.
Webster has already completed several assignments for the fellowship, such as contacting institutions where she might like to learn.
“You had to talk about why you wanted to be at that
MATT JOHNSON/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Webster said she hopes to bring the information that she learns during her fellowship back to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where she serves as associate vice president for institutional diversity and associate professor of leadership studies.
university, which was directly related to what you wanted to accomplish from the ACE Fellows Program,” she said. “Of course, because I’m a diversity officer, I want to learn more about universities that have a critical mass of minority students.”
She added that the University of Memphis will host her during the spring semester.
“The beautiful part of that is that it’s my alma mater, but secondly, the lady who shepherded my dissertation 15 years ago, Dr. Karen Weddle-West, is now the provost and chief diversity officer, so I’ll basically be studying at her feet again,” Webster said. “It’s just going to be like heaven for me to really learn under her auspices again.”
In addition to learning about how the university is recruiting, retaining and graduating minority students, as well as recruiting and advancing a diverse faculty that provides students with multicultural perspectives on all kinds of ideas, she said she hopes to learn about executive decision making, working with various university stakeholders and responding to crises, especially those related to cultural mismatches.
“Everybody says this is going to be a revolutionary learning year for me, which is why I was so excited to be a part of it because if nothing else, I am a learner,” she said. “The beautiful part of this for me is I’ll be able to bring all those gems of wisdom back to UCA, and regardless of the ZIP code that I receive the wisdom from, I can apply them and tweak them for 72035.”
She added that she feels best when she is learning and that a thirst for knowledge is inherent to her personality. Last year, she listened to 98 audiobooks, on top of reading academic books and newsletters from professional organizations, as well as watching informative YouTube channels.
“Learning is lifelong,” she said. “It’s never too late to continue to pursue whatever you think your life’s purpose is and whatever you think your life’s work is. It’s never too late.”