Pauline E. Kayes is President of DiversityWorks (Champaign, IL), a coalition of educators providing comprehensive diversity education for universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, communities, and businesses. For 30 years, the focus of Kayes’ career in higher education has been teaching, research, and activism in women’s studies, educational equity, multicultural education, and intercultural competence. In addition, as a professor of English, Humanities, and Women’s Studies, Kayes has not only taught and mentored many culturally diverse and minority students but also provided leadership in both college-wide and state-wide diversity committees, initiatives, and strategic planning. She has a B .A. in English and Philosophy (with valedictory honors) from St. Joseph’s College (Indiana) and a M.A. in English (Women’s Studies) from Purdue University.
From 1994-2001, Kayes directed a HECA grant-funded project on creating inclusive educational communities for culturally diverse students for the Illinois Board of Higher Education. In that capacity, she worked with thousands of faculty, administrators, and staff from over 75 colleges, universities, and K-12 schools in Illinois. In 1994, she received a Ford Foundation grant to facilitate a summer institute on multicultural curriculum transformation for Illinois faculty in the humanities and social sciences. Through projects like these, Kayes has organized numerous conferences, institutes, intensives, and retreats on a variety of topics in the fields of multicultural education, diversity education, and intercultural competence, featuring some of the most renowned experts in the field (i.e. James Banks, Myra and David Sadker, Carlos Cortes, Milton Bennett, Geneva Gay, and Sonia Nieto).
For the past fifteen years, Kayes has been facilitating the six workshops of the Cultural Diversity in Education program she designed for educators in both higher education and K-12 schools. In 1998 the Cultural Diversity in Education program was named a “promising practice” by President Clinton’s Initiative on Race and featured in the book Pathways to One America in the 21st Century: Promising Practices in Racial Reconciliation. In addition, she created a series of workshops for business and the community entitled the Cultural Diversity at Work program. In the past six years, Kayes has been facilitating hundreds of workshops across the country on intercultural competence skills and diverse faculty and staff hiring. She is the producer of the 2007 DVD/ workbook program New Paradigms for Diversifying Faculty and Staff in Higher Education: Uncovering Cultural Biases in the Search and Hiring Process, which is being used by over 200 colleges and universities.
Kayes is the author of “Access, Equity, and Cultural Diversity: Rediscovering the Community College Mission” (Multicultural Education: Strategies for Implementation in Colleges and Universities, Western Illinois University, 1992); “From Policy to Action: Implementation of North Central’s Statement on Access, Equity, and Cultural Diversity” (NCA Quarterly, Spring 1997); and “New Paradigms for Diversifying Faculty and Staff in Higher Education”(published in the Winter 2006 issue of Multicultural Education). With Yvonne Singley, she published “Why Are 90 Percent of College Faculty Still White?” in the November 2006 issue of Diverse Issues in Higher Education and “Time for Community Colleges To Lead on Diversifying Faculty” (Diverse Education, October 2010).
In the past ten years, Kayes has completed over 250 hours of advanced education in multicultural education and intercultural competence through the Intercultural Communication Institute (Portland, Oregon): in racial and cultural identity development, in negotiating intercultural conflict; in strategic and action planning on diversity for colleges, business, K-12 schools, and communities; and in understanding hate crimes. In addition, she has been certified to administer and analyze the Intercultural Development Inventory to assess levels of intercultural sensitivity in individuals and institutions. In January 2000, Kayes was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. “Drum Major” award from the Champaign, Illinois Human Relations Commission for her leadership on cultural diversity education in the local schools and community.