{"id":11845,"date":"2025-05-29T21:32:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T21:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/?p=11845"},"modified":"2025-05-29T21:32:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T21:32:54","slug":"memorial-lecture-lifts-up-the-legacy-of-jennifer-diaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/2025\/05\/29\/memorial-lecture-lifts-up-the-legacy-of-jennifer-diaz\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Lecture Lifts Up the Legacy of Jennifer Diaz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2025\/05\/Lecture_28-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11846 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2025\/05\/Lecture_28-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings wears a blue and pink dress and white necklace as she delivers a lecture in the chapel.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2025\/05\/Lecture_28-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2025\/05\/Lecture_28-1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Augsburg\u2019s annual campus professional development conference, Days in May, typically attracts strong participation from faculty and staff. But the crowd that filled Hoversten Chapel on May 15 was larger than usual. Faculty, staff, alumni, family, and students packed the house to celebrate and remember the legacy of Associate Professor of Education Jennifer Diaz, who passed away in 2024.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Sponsored by the Education Department, the Office of the President, and the Office of Faculty Development, the keynote speaker for the Professor Jennifer Diaz Memorial Lecture was Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita and former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison. Ladson-Billings is an influential scholar of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory in education, a former president of the American Educational Research Association, and the author of critically acclaimed books, including \u201cThe Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children\u201d and \u201cCrossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Diaz studied with Ladson-Billings during graduate school at UW\u2013Madison. After completing her Ph.D., Diaz joined Augsburg in 2015, where her scholarly work focused on interrupting \u201cdeficit narratives\u201d in mathematics education. \u201cMath was her vehicle, but not her purpose,\u201d said Ladson-Billings, reflecting on Diaz\u2019s work to identify and challenge inequitable systems through attention to context, cultures, and teacher effectiveness. \u201cJennie Diaz believed in her students.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Diaz shared her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/ccv\/2023\/11\/28\/give-your-gifts-freely-by-dr-jennifer-diaz-education\/\"><span class=\"s2\">personal vocation story<\/span><\/a> in her own words in November 2023 as part of the \u201cUncovering Vocation\u201d series at Augsburg. She spoke about being encouraged by a former teacher to give her gifts freely to the world, expecting nothing in return.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cIn any conversation with Jennie, you knew you mattered,\u201d said Professor Audrey Lensmire. \u201cShe believed that our work was a collective effort toward equity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Augsburg\u2019s annual campus professional development conference, Days in May, typically attracts strong participation from faculty and staff. But the crowd that filled Hoversten Chapel on May 15 was larger than usual. Faculty, staff, alumni, family, and students packed the house to celebrate and remember the legacy of Associate Professor of Education Jennifer Diaz, who passed &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":11846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3235,5,3232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-faculty","category-on-campus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11847,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845\/revisions\/11847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}