Sharon Block Joins the Office of Inclusive Excellence ♥ ★
Dear campus community,
I welcome Professor Sharon Block as interim associate director of the Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE). Her appointment begins on November 1.
Sharon Block is a professor of history in the School of Humanities and a former fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her research focuses on issues of race, equity and inclusion in academia, the history of sexuality, and colonial America. Her scholarship includes examining issues of rape and sexual harassment, and history of the body, as well as aspects of identity, including gender and the histories of African Americans and Native Americans, and methodological approaches that include computational data mining, digital humanities, and pedagogy.
In her role in OIE, Dr. Block will direct the Diverse Educational Community & Doctoral Experience (DECADE) Faculty Mentors Program, one of our office’s acclaimed programs which currently engages 45 faculty consultants in departmental planning and programming to recruit and retain diverse graduate students. She also will represent UCI at the University of California (UC) and national meetings to support inclusive excellence in graduate education and chair our Society of Inclusive Excellence Fellows, which include former and currently hosted fellows and their mentors from the prestigious UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship and UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs. These competitive postgraduate programs have supported over 800 participants since the UC PPFP founding in 1984, nurturing talented postdoctoral scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service contributes to diversity and equal opportunity across UC.
A designated Inclusive Excellence Professor, Dr. Block brings to OIE many distinguished accomplishments and active engagement in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Her scholarship, including such books as Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), engage us in thinking about contemporary strategies to end power-based violence through policies and practices. She also is a former UCI Chancellor’s Fellow and recipient of several awards to enhance student mentoring and scholarship, including support through the UC-Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative.
Professor Block earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.
Douglas M. Haynes, Ph.D. (Pronouns: he/him/his)
Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Chief Diversity Officer
Director, ADVANCE Program
Professor of History