Dr. Menah Pratt-Clarke, Vice President for Strategic Affairs and Vice Provost for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), will be the speaker at Jarvis Christian College’s 2018 J.N. Ervin Lecture on Thursday, March 22.

The Lecture, part of the College’s Founders/Homecoming festivities, begins at 11 a.m. in the Smith-Howard Chapel.

Dr. Pratt-Clarke also is Professor of Education in the School of Education in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, with affiliations in Africana Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies and the Department of Sociology.

She has more than 20 years of administrative, academic and legal experience in higher education, with a focus on executing and coordinating large-scale strategic initiatives that promote institutional transformation. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Dr. Pratt-Clarke had senior administrative positions and faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Pratt-Clarke has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa with a major in English and minors in Philosophy and African-American Studies. She received a master’s degree in Literary Studies from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in Sociology from Vanderbilt University. In addition, she earned her doctorate in Sociology and her law degree from Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Pratt-Clarke is frequently invited to speak on issues of diversity and inclusion, race and social justice, equity, leadership, education, women and gender, and promoting a more just and inclusive society and empowering the powerless.

Dr. Pratt-Clarke’s research interests include critical race studies, Black feminism, and critical race feminism, with a particular focus on issues of transdisciplinary analysis of diversity issues in higher education. In addition to her first book, “Critical Race Feminism and Education: A Social Justice Model” (2012), two other books, “Journeys of Social Justice: Women of Color Presidents in the Academy” (Peter Lang, 2017) and “Reflections on Race, Gender, and Culture in Cuba” (Peter Lang, 2017) were released last year. Her most recent book, “A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about race, gender, and class in America” (Peter Lang, 2018), was released this year.

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