Student Learning to Advance Truth and Education

As a reinvigoration and expansion of the College of Arts and Science’s 2019 “Reckoning” initiative, IAAR-SLATE is a program for undergraduate education. Students involved in IAAR-SLATE activities participate in an array of unique learning experiences, strengthening their grasp of the importance of a society that is just and humane.

We aim for Carolina students to become critical thinkers and actors and to achieve this we employ a critical and robust pedagogy. Faculty and community experts are vital to student learning in IAAR-SLATE. They serve as leaders in student education. Through focused class assignments led by faculty, independent research projects under faculty mentorship, and dialogues led by community leaders, thousands of students in the program gain important insights and gain an appreciation for the significance of scholarly research (including research that informs classroom assignments) and community lived experience as mechanisms for advancing truth.

Anna Agbe Davies
Co-Director

Dr. Agbe Davies leads IAAR-SLATE’s Coursework Component. As Faculty Teaching Director, she shapes the vision for students’ experiences in classes affiliated with IAAR-SLATE. Dr. Agbe Davies is also a historical archaeologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interest focuses on the African diaspora ranging from the plantation societies of the colonial southeastern US and Caribbean to 19th and 20th-century towns like New Philadelphia and Chicago in Illinois and Durham, North Carolina.

Renée Alexander Craft
Co-Director

SLATE’s Research Component is led by Dr. Renée Alexander Craft, Professor in the Department of Communication and Curriculum in Global Studies. As Director of SLATE-Research, Dr. Alexander Craft creates the vision for and organization of undergraduate research activities that fulfill the program’s mission. Dr. Alexander Craft’s own research interests concern the relationship among sociohistorical constructions of Blackness, Black cultural performance, and discourses of Black inclusion and exclusion within a hemispheric American framework. She has explored these topics in her work looking at an Afro-Latin community located in the small coastal town of Portobelo, Panama, whose members call themselves and their carnival performance tradition “Congo.” ​

Past Events

Annual SLATE Undergraduate Research Symposium 

Since its inauguration in 2021, the program has convened an annual interdisciplinary SLATE Undergraduate Research Symposium to showcase the original or faculty-led research projects undertaken by our Undergraduate Research Fellows over the program’s 10-week summer experience. 

2023 Symposium, September 12th-13th

2022 Symposium, September 7th-8th

2021 Symposium, September 8th-9th

Inaugural IAAR-SLATE Keynote Address 

Using Project-Based Learning To Recover African American History in Elizabeth City, NC, June 16, 2021

Between 2017 and 2021, students at Elizabeth City State University have participated in several projects and events related to local African American history in Elizabeth City, N.C. under the direction of Dr. Melissa N. Stuckey.  Elizabeth City has been the site of nationally significant events occurring from the era of slavery through the Civil Rights movement. In spite of this, the city and region rarely get more than passing mention in scholarship about African American history. Dr. Stuckey will highlight her use of project-based learning and public engagement that has resulted in building up the archive of source material available for the study and public awareness of African American history in Elizabeth City.