Keynote Speakers

Timothy K. Eatman, Morning Keynote, Thursday, March 27

Publicly Engaged Scholars in the Academy of the 21st Century

Timothy K. Eatman, Ph.D. serves as a Syracuse University School of Education faculty member in the Higher Education department and as Co-Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA) headquartered at Syracuse University. Imagining America is a national consortium of one hundred colleges and universities that are committed to higher education as an active agent for the public good, whether exploring how arts contribute to community development, recognizing the wealth of knowledge produced through partnerships bringing together community and campus stakeholders, or making it possible for a faculty member’s public scholarship to “count” when he or she comes up for tenure and promotion. Tim is co-author of Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University, a seminal Imagining America research report on best practices for faculty rewards for engaged scholarship.

Tim is a visiting fellow with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) and regularly serves as a faculty member for AAC&U Summer Institutes on High Impact Practices. He sits on the editorial board of University of Michigan Press - The New Public Scholarship book series, Urban Education, Diversity, and Democracy and reviews for several scholarly journals and publications. Tim is the recipient of the 2010 Early Career Research Award for the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) and is currently serving an year appointment as Honorary Professor at the University of South Africa (UNISA), working as a critical policy reader and consultant of the service learning/community engagement enterprise at that institution.

Barbara Shores, Luncheon Keynote, Thursday, March 27

Reflections on Dynamite Hill

Barbara Shores is executive director of the Jefferson County Office of Senior Citizens Services. With her sister, Judge Helen Shores Lee, Ms. Shores is co-author of The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill: The Untold Story of Arthur Shores and His Family’s Fight for Civil Rights. This book recounts their lives during the struggle for civil rights in tumultuous 1960s Birmingham, and the courageous activism of their father, prominent civil rights attorney Arthur Shores.

Wayne Flynt, Thursday Introductory Keynote

Wayne Flynt, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Auburn University, has actively devoted his life to bringing the issues of history and poverty and their social impact to the forefront of the public's consciousness. Widely regarded as the “dean” of Alabama historians and the state’s most eminent scholar on Southern politics, race, educational reform, and poverty, Dr. Flynt has received numerous awards for his works, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize.

David Phillips, Luncheon Keynote, Friday, March 28

Addressing Complex Social Problems through Collective Impact

David is a consultant at FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm specializing in strategy, evaluation, and research. FSG's international teams work across sectors by partnering with foundations, corporations, nonprofits, and governments to develop more effective solutions to the most challenging social issues. FSG is a thought leader in the collective impact approach to addressing complex social problems, and is dedicated to building the collective impact field of practice. Their work on collective impact has been featured several times in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and analyzes how organizations from multiple sectors, including higher education, can more effectively collaborate on problems affecting a community.

David brings a diverse background of nonprofit and for-profit strategy consulting experience, with a particular emphasis on collective impact, education, and workforce development initiatives. He has worked with multiple collective impact initiatives such as an effort in Kent County, Michigan to align the "cradle to career" education continuum, and a workforce development initiative in Silicon Valley. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, David received a BA from Rhodes College in Memphis and an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.