Johnson County Community College
Press Release
College Information and Publications
913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122
1/31/08
Story by Peggy Graham
JCCC Names First Diversity Administrator
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Carmaletta Williams, Grandview, Mo., was named the first executive assistant to the president, diversity initiatives, at Johnson County Community College, effective Jan. 18.
Williams, a JCCC English professor until her recent appointment as executive assistant to the president, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a doctorate in English from the University of Kansas.
Williams’ position is charged with fostering diversity among students, faculty and staff and building diversity awareness within the college and the community. Specific goals include increasing minority student enrollment and faculty/staff diversity.
“Embracing diversity allows us to be advocates for all people on our campus regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, geography, ethnicity, religion, culture, different abilities and challenges and even differing world views and perspectives,” Williams said.
Williams has been the recipient of more than 20 awards and honors including the Who’s Who Among American College Professors, 2004, 2005; Minority Opportunity Fellowship Grant, KU, 1999, 2000, 2001; KU Black Faculty and Staff Council’s Student Achievement Award, 1999, 2000, 2001; KU Black Faculty and Staff Council’s Alumni Award, 2000; Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Study in Ghana, 1997; and the 1997 Kansas Professor of the Year Award, awarded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
At JCCC, Williams was awarded the college’s first-ever Diversity Award in 2005, five Distinguished Service Awards, the Burlington-Northern Santa Fe Faculty Teaching Award and the League for Innovations’ Innovation of the Year Award.
A prolific writer, Williams has published academic journal articles, encyclopedia entries and study guides for high school teachers, many on the topics of Langston Hughes, an early 20th century black poet and writer, and the Harlem Renaissance, including Hughes in the Classroom: Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me (NCTE 2006).
Williams’ primary research specialty is racial identification and African American migration. She is co-editor of an e-book titled Of Two Spirits: American Indian and African American Oral Histories. This book is the result of a grant, The Shifting Borders of Race and Identity: Intersections of African American and Native American Cultures, supported by a Ford Foundation and awarded to KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities and Haskell Indian Nations University, for which Williams served as a consultant from 2003-2006.
Williams was granted a visiting scholar fellowship at Yale University while doing research at its Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library during a 2007 fall sabbatical. She was a participant in the National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute, African American Struggles for Freedom 1866-1965 at Harvard University in 2002.
Williams has also produced several fiction books, including a children's book and two novel manuscripts under consideration for publication.
Since 1993, Williams has made more than 300 presentations before academic, professional and community groups. Many of the presentations have been under the auspices of the Kansas Humanities Council including a first-person characterization of noted black writer, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and versions of Free Did Not Mean Welcome: African American Migration to Kansas.
Williams served as a consultant to the government of Guinea, West Africa, to establish an exchange between L’Ecole Nacionale de Postes et Telecommunications and JCCC; to the Billionaire Entertainment Group to interview South Africans about their lives during and after the fall of apartheid for a documentary film; to several major publishers, including Prentice-Hall on black history; and to the National Poetry Project on Langston Hughes at KU.
Williams, who was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo., has a strong commitment to the success of JCCC and diversity.
"I have been working on diversity programming and training at JCCC for the past 17 years,” Williams said. “I know this institution, am familiar with the community and have a vision for the future of the college. With the commitment of our president to diversity initiatives and the establishment of this office, JCCC will be a model for other institutes of higher education."
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