Class Dismissed: Book Launch & Discussion with Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack
Class Dismissed:
When Colleges Ignore Inequality & Students Pay the Price
Book Launch and Discussion
Saturday, September 28, 2024
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
George Sherman Union (GSU), 2nd Floor
775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
Register Here!
Join Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack for an engaging discussion on his new book, Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price. Dr. Jack is the inaugural faculty director of the Newbury Center and associate professor of higher education leadership in the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Following his remarks, Dr. Jack will be joined by Maria Dykema Erb, the inaugural executive director of the Newbury Center, to discuss how Boston University is tackling those barriers that first-gen and low-income students face, and how the Newbury Center is serving as a model to support undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.
Dr. Anthony Jack
(he/him/his)
Anthony Abraham Jack (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2016) is the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Boston University Newbury Center and Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University.
His research documents the overlooked diversity among lower-income undergraduates: the Doubly Disadvantaged—those who enter college from local, typically distressed public high schools—and Privileged Poor—those who do so from boarding, day, and preparatory high schools. His scholarship appears in the Common Reader, Du Bois Review, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, and Sociology of Education and has earned awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Tony held fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation and was a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2016, The National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan named him an Emerging Diversity Scholar. In May 2020, Muhlenberg College awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work in transforming higher education.
The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Huffington Post, The Nation, American Conservative Magazine, The National Review, Commentary Magazine, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Times Higher Education, Vice, Vox, and NPR have featured his research and writing as well as biographical profiles of his experiences as a first-generation college student. The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students is his first book. It is available in English and Chinese. His second book project, Class Dismissed: When College Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price, is due out in August 2024.
Maria Dykema Erb
(she/her/hers)
Maria Dykema Erb, M.Ed. is the Inaugural Executive Director of the Boston University Newbury Center which was established to foster the holistic development and success of first-generation undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Maria has over three decades of higher education experience having worked at the University of Vermont, Elon University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and currently at Boston University. She has worked in a broad range of areas including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging; student recruitment/admissions, enrollment management, academic advising, retention, and outreach; academic dean’s office and graduate/professional school program administration; and student affairs/life.
As a Korean transracial adoptee, Maria grew up in a Dutch immigrant family on a dairy farm in Vermont. Going to college was not the common pathway for her rural community, but Maria knew that would be her key to future opportunities. Throughout all of Maria’s career, the common theme has been providing access to higher education for all students either directly or indirectly in her job responsibilities.
As a proud first-generation college graduate, Maria holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Hampshire and Master of Education degree from The University of Vermont (UVM).
As a higher education and student affairs practitioner, Maria has shared her scholarship through numerous presentations and book chapters. Most recently, she has chapters in: Know That You Are Worthy: Experiences from First-Generation College Graduates; A Handbook for Supporting Today’s Graduate Students; A Practitioner’s Guide to Supporting Graduate and Professional Students; and Fostering First Gen Success and Inclusion: A Guide for Law Schools (in press).