November 18, 1999

Ramapo College Vice President and Faculty Member Invited To Kellogg Foundation Conference of Fellows

(Mahwah) -- In an effort to address the challenges and opportunities facing communities everywhere in the new millennium, Dr. Sharon Rubin, vice president of Academic Affairs at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and Demetria Royals, associate professor of media arts at Ramapo, were selected to join some 600 other community leaders and change agents from across the nation and around the world at the first-ever conference of fellows from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's National Leadership Program (KNLP) and International Leadership Program (KILP).

The five-day Leadership Forum, held earlier in November, brought together program participants, their advisers, and such distinguished guests as Nobel Peace Prizewinner Oscar Arias. Royals and Rubin were both on the planning committee for the invitational conference. According to Rubin, this was "an extraordinary opportunity to learn how leaders from the United States and abroad are tackling problems at the local level which we all share."

Rubin was one of the first Kellogg National Leadership Program Fellows. Her fellowship was awarded in 1980, the first year of the program. Among her activities during the three-year Fellowship period was analysis of business-higher education collaborations in this country, Japan, and Australia. According to Rubin, "The Fellowship had a profound impact on my life. It helped me develop an interdisciplinary perspective and increased my sensitivity to international cultural issues. It increased my confidence and gave me a network of colleagues to consult about problems and issues."

Royals, who heads her own film company, was a Kellogg Fellow from 1994-97. The Fellowship allowed her to expand her media production skills by embarking on a three-year study of CD-ROM and multimedia creation, and Web design. "The fellowship not only provided me with the skills and resources to expand my mastery of media production, but it also trained me to think in new ways about issues of inclusion, equity, and social justice," says Royals.