Stacy Hawkins

Professor Hawkins teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Employment Law and an original seminar on Diversity and the Law. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of law and diversity and has been published in the Fordham Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, UCLA Law Review Discourse and the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, among others. She is a recognized expert on employment law and diversity and has been interviewed or quoted in various news outlets, including TIME, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Courier Post, Law 360 and Philadelphia Magazine.

She is an experienced employment lawyer and diversity professional. Prior to law teaching, Professor Hawkins spent more than a decade in private practice advising clients in both the public and private sector on the development and implementation of legally defensible diversity policies and programs. She served as Special Diversity Counsel to Holland & Knight, LLP and was the first Diversity Director for Ballard Spahr, LLP. As a management side employment lawyer, Professor Hawkins has counseled and defended employers in a wide range of legal matters, including labor relations, employment discrimination, wage and hour compliance, and affirmative action planning. She has held or holds a number of professional and civic appointments, including as an Advisory Board Member of the Public Interest Law Center, as an inaugural member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Diversity Team, and as a member of the Board of the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group. Professor Hawkins earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center where she was the national champion of the Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition.

Publications:

• Finding Common Ground: A Response to Asian Americans, Racial Stereotypes, and Elite University Admissions, 103 B. U. L. REV. ONLINE 131 (2023)

• Reverse Integration: Centering HBCUs in the Fight for Educational Equality, 24 U. PENN. J. L. & SOC. CHANGE 241 (2021)

• Trump’s Dangerous Judicial Legacy, 67 UCLA L. REV. DISC. 20 (2019)

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “States Where Unemployment Claims Are Increasing the Most: Ask the Experts,” WalletHub (January 19, 2023)

• “Ending Affirmative Action Will Be An ‘Earthquake’ for Colleges, Companies,” Newsweek (November 16, 2022)

• “Diversity Hindered by Race-Neutral Admissions,” Banfield/NewsNation (November 1, 2022)

Previous Organizations: 

• Georgetown University Law Center

• Holland & Knight, LLP

• University of Virginia

Accomplishments:

• Chancellor’s Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership (2023)

• BLSA Champion of Social Justice (2022)

• Rutgers University – Camden Remarkable 31 (2019)

Living Learning Communities (“LLCs”) are a vital resource in higher education. They not only serve as the site of on-campus housing for residential students; they also offer academic enrichment by providing educational programming centered on a particular area of student interest, such as language or cultural immersion. In addition, LLCs can often provide critical social and emotional support for participants as well. By giving students a wrap-around college experience, LLCs can serve as a bridge between the discrete academic and social spaces that students often navigate separately on campus, thereby fostering deeper connection and engagement – both of which help improve student academic achievement. 

Rutgers University offers students a number of opportunities to participate in LLCs. Not surprisingly, the largest number of LLCs exist on the New Brunswick campus, which is the main university campus and the largest of the four Chancellor-led Units (CLUs).9 In addition to the Honors College, New Brunswick offers a host of both language and cultural immersion LLCs. Of particular interest to this project is the Paul Robeson House (“Robeson”). Dating back to 1976, Robeson centers the Black student experience by “striv[ing] to engender curiosity, interest and understanding of the history and origins of the African Diaspora and the relevance and importance of that understanding in [the] day-to-day life” of participants. Robeson largely serves Black students. 

In 2016, the Honors Living Learning Community (“HLLC”) was launched in Newark with the goal of “provid[ing] continued opportunity and prosperity to . . . those who have been systematically disenfranchised by systems of inequality [by][c]onsidering anew the notions of talent and excellence.” The HLLC is “committed to revolutionizing honors, cultivating talent, and engaging communities” for these students as it “promotes critical intellectual inquiry, increases cultural competence, and explores what it means to be a responsible citizen.” Although the HLLC does not center the Black student experience, like Sankofa and Robeson do, a significant number of participants in the HLLC are Black students. 

Modeled on both Robeson and the HLLC, Sankofa was launched on the Camden campus in 2021 with initial grant support from the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (“ISGRJ”). Sankofa is designed to support Black student success by centering the Black student experience through residence-based social/emotional, cultural/educational, and academic support programming. Each of these LLCs share a common goal of supporting the academic, social, and cultural enrichment of students by offering programming (both curricular and co/extra-curricular) that provides a socially-enriching and culturally-grounded experience for participants.

The program was designed by Professor Stacy Hawkins as an applied research project based on a review of the extant literature on Black student academic success in higher education.1 The program was administered by Professor Hawkins in collaboration with the Offices of Residence Life and Student Academic Success.

In addition to administering the Camden program and evaluating participants’ engagement and academic performance, and with the support of the Office of Diversity Inclusion and Community Engagement, Professor Hawkins also evaluated the educational impact of select LLCs that similarly serve Black students on both the New Brunswick (Paul Robeson House or “Robeson”) and Newark (Honors Living Learning Community or “HLLC”) campuses. The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) provided background demographic data as well as academic data for participants across all three LLCs. Collectively, student data from Sankofa, Robeson, and the HLLC were aggregated in order to assess the effect of these LLCs on participants’ academic achievement.

Qualitative data reveal that participants report having positive experiences in these LLCs. Student feedback reflects the benefits students perceive from their participation, including improved adjustment to campus life, enhanced social relationships, and deeper academic engagement. Additionally, quantitative analysis of student academic data demonstrates a positive effect of these programs on academic achievement as measured by participants’ grade point average (GPA) during the first year of program enrollment.

Although results for Sankofa are limited to only two cohorts (the 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 academic years), the preliminary analysis of program effects is encouraging. Moreover, the historical data available for Robeson and the HLLC (spanning 2016-2020), together with the two additional cohorts from both LLCs mirroring the Sankofa program years (2021-2022 and 2023-2024) confirm the preliminary results from Sankofa. These programs serve the needs of Black students in ways that engender positive social engagement. Together with the additional academic support provided, these programs appear to have the intended effect of boosting participants’ academic achievement as measured by GPA.

This longitudinal project will continue to track each of the existing cohorts across all three LLCs through 4-year graduation, with expected graduation for the last cohort (2023-2024) in 2027. At that time, the size and richness of the dataset should provide the basis for a more robust analysis of the effects of these LLCs on student engagement and academic achievement, including not only GPA, but also persistence and graduation rates. This information, in turn, can inform the development of policy and the allocation of resources to better support a student population (Black students) that has long been underserved by more universal approaches to student success.