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The John T. Casteen, III Diversity - Equity - Inclusion Leadership Award honors a member of the University of Virginia community who best demonstrates a dedication to leadership and the ability to create a setting in which the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion is paramount.
Frank Dukes: Mediator and Moral Compass
E. Franklin Dukes, director of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation in the UVA School of Architecture from 2000 to 2015, has also devoted his career to bringing the University and local communities together.
When history professor emeritus Phyllis K. Leffler team-taught a seminar, “UVA History: Race and Repair,” with Dukes several years ago, they held classes at the Quality Community Council office and at the Jefferson School’s Heritage Center, a former school for black children during segregation. Dukes invited people from the community to join them.
“I can truly say that I have never had teaching experiences richer and more personally meaningful than these classes in my more than 30 years of teaching,” Leffler wrote in supporting Dukes’ nomination for the diversity award.
Leffler and nominator Leah Puryear, who coordinates Trio, a federal program housed at UVA that includes Upward Bound, are both members of the group Dukes founded in 2007: University and Community Action for Racial Equity, or UCARE.
“He has dedicated his life to the work of improving the condition of those who not only work, but also live in the Charlottesville community in ensuring equity for all,” Puryear wrote. “Frank is known for his work regarding race and reconciliation, not only here at UVA, but also in Charlottesville, the commonwealth and the country.”
When UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan established the Commission on Slavery and the University, Martin credited groups including UCARE and the student-led Memorial for Slave Labor for their efforts to address that history. Students in both initiatives benefitted from Dukes’ mentorship, his nominators wrote.
Dukes also used his experience of mediating differences to lead the Response Working Group for the President’s Ad Hoc Group on University Climate and Culture in 2014. His longtime Architecture School colleague, Elizabeth K. Meyer, now dean of the school, lauded Dukes’ participation in that group.
“I can attest to the respect we felt for the extraordinary amount of work done by this working group, and the synthesis evident in their final report,” she said.
Knowing him, first at the Architecture School, for more than 20 years, Meyer said, “I am in awe of his moral compass, professional abilities and tenacious spirit. … Because of Frank Dukes, the University is a less flawed place, moving closer to the ideals of our founding, than it was when I matriculated as a student in 1974 and joined the faculty in 1993.”