2025 National Conference Call for Proposals

Jennifer King Rice began her appointment as senior vice president and provost in July 2021.

She was previously dean of the College of Education, where she focused her efforts to align educational resources with initiatives to advance excellence, equity and social justice in preschool through graduate school. Rice has served on the faculty and in college leadership roles at UMD for more than 25 years, and has been recognized as a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Before coming to Maryland, she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Rice’s research draws on the discipline of economics to study policy questions concerning excellence and equity in K-12 education systems. An expert on school finance and teacher policy, she regularly advises state and federal agencies.

A prolific scholar, she has served on the editorial boards of American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Education Finance and Policy. In addition to positions as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow and a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute, she is a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy.

She completed her B.S. in mathematics and English at Marquette University and earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in educational administration and social foundations from Cornell University.

Terrell Strayhorn is an academic at heart. Professor, center director, and principal investigator, Terrell has an unapologetic commitment to conducting, marshaling, and translating scientific research for the purposes of advancing equity, removing systemic injustices, and improving the material conditions of our most vulnerable populations in society. He is President/CEO of Do Good Work Consulting Group, leading an awesome team, working with hundreds of colleges, universities, districts, and agencies in “moving the needle” on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging outcomes for staff and students.

Terrell loves to write. He has published 12 books and over 200+ book chapters, journal articles and other scholarly publications. He believes strongly in connecting research findings to addressing broader social problems and putting research to practice, thus, he frequently writes Op-Eds, letters to editors, and blogs. He’s a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, AllBusiness, Thrive Global, and Psychology Today.

Just as much as writing, Terrell loves sharing ideas with others. He has given hundreds of invited keynotes and lectures at 2000+ universities, schools, companies, churches, and conferences across the globe. What drives this passion is the ability to connect his research and talents to address some of the world’s greatest problems, especially in education.

On a more personal note, Terrell is an accomplished musician, vegan 🌿, and runner.

Deborah A. Santiago is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Excelencia in Education, America's premier authority on efforts accelerating Latino student success in higher education. As an innovator, thought leader, and educational visionary, she has led research and advanced evidence-based practices and strategies for more than 20 years. She has held leadership positions with education organizations around the country, including the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans and the Los Angeles Alliance for Student Achievement.

She co-founded Excelencia in Education in 2004 to inform policy, compel action, and collaborate with those ready to accelerate student success with an unapologetic Latino lens. Among her many contributions, Deborah has addressed federal legislative issues in higher education at the Congressional Research Service and informed program and policy implementation at the U.S. Department of Education. She also improved awareness and education opportunities for Latinos with federal agencies as the Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. Among Deborah’s community efforts, she has provided program design and implementation for dropout prevention and parental engagement for the ASPIRA Association and translated data for community engagement at the Los Angeles Alliance for Student Achievement.

As CEO, Deborah leads Excelencia’s programming and engagement efforts, including expanding and leveraging community-informed research in improving educational opportunities for students, working directly with education leaders, and informing campus practices as well as state and federal policies. Driven by a deep desire to advance asset based, student-centered understanding of the needs and opportunities for the Latino community, Deborah is a sought-after speaker about Hispanic Serving Institutions, college affordability, and equity in higher education. Her work has been cited in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

She serves on the Advisory Board of TheDream.US. and the technical panel for the Carnegie Classification led by the American Council on Education.

Nikos Varelas is Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Effectiveness and Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics. Prof. Varelas’ research field is experimental high energy particle physics.  His research interests concentrate on precision measurements of Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory that describes the strong interaction responsible for the nuclear force; searches for more fundamental building blocks of matter beyond the quarks and leptons in the Standard Model; searches for large extra spatial dimensions, quantum black holes, dark matter; and on studies of the Higgs boson.  Prof. Varelas is currently working on the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. He was a member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.  His group's technical contributions at CMS have centered on the development and operations of the Level-1 Calorimeter and High-Level Trigger Systems.

Prof. Varelas has served as the co-spokesperson of the Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD (CTEQ) Collaboration, member of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields, Chair of the Fermilab Users Executive Committee, and Senior Fellow of the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab.

Prof. Varelas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a University of Illinois Scholar.

Provocation Panels: A panel of 3-5 presenters who will offer brief (5-8 minutes) prepared statements. Following these statements, session attendees will engage in dialogue.

Vignettes/Case Studies: Brief narrative descriptions/stories designed to stimulate discussion around issues or situations that undergraduates or leaders/practitioners at research universities commonly face in relation to one or several of Boyer 2030’s 11 provocations. The main aim is to promote thought and discussion on various aspects of undergraduate education in light of the equity/excellence imperative. Vignettes should be flexible enough that individuals from different roles can bring their perspectives forward in discussions of solutions and actions.  

Roundtable Talks: Up to three individual presentations of 10-15 minutes on a common theme or topic raised in the Boyer 2030 Report followed by attendee discussion. Proposers can submit an entire roundtable or an individual talk to be combined with others. 

Hot Topics: A group of presenters identify a broadly relevant theme. The presenters facilitate conversation via discussion tables on the "hot topic" and provide time for a debriefing across tables to collect summary responses and solutions.

Posters: Individual or collaborative presenters. Posters allow presenters to visually present ideas and facilitate dialogue among colleagues. Posters might showcase successful programs or initiatives related to the Boyer 2030 provocations, share research or evaluation related to institutional efforts, present case studies, or other forms of inquiry. Posters will be displayed over UERU’s two-day conference and highlighted at UERU’s Wednesday, January 22 luncheon. 

Student-Centered Panels: Designed to center our work from the perspectives of the undergraduates we seek to serve, these panels highlight our undergraduates' experiences as they describe institutional barriers they have faced and curricular and co-co-curricular experiences that have been most valuable to their educational journeys at our institutions.