What happens to our campus community this summer if the Supreme Court, in two cases against Harvard & UNC, bans the consideration of race in college admissions? How will the race based biases that we inherently carry impact our ability to build intercultural competence if the community has no diversity to challenge those biases? In this discussion on disrupting bias we will consider its impact on the quality of education large universities are able to provide.

Biography
Damon P. Williams serves as the inaugural associate dean for inclusive excellence and chief diversity officer, advancing the College’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and supporting a climate of equity and belonging across our community. Williams is a member of the academic faculty in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), where he is a senior lecturer and director of ISyE’s Center for Academics, Success, and Equity, which he founded in 2020. He also speaks nationally on higher education and diversity in academia.

Williams earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2002 and then a master’s and Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. He returned to Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Teaching and Learning and a part-time lecturer in ISyE in 2010. He turned his attention to teaching and advising full-time in 2014.

Williams also earned a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and serves as senior pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church in southwest Atlanta.

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