Introducing the Expert Panel

January 4, 2018

Dear Tulane Community,

The Wave of Change initiative promises to seek and implement innovative solutions to sexual violence. Since beginning our work this semester, we have solicited feedback from students, faculty and staff through the Wave of Change website, Town Halls across campus, and our Interactive Workshop & Visioning Session. With the new semester ahead, we are ready to announce the next stage in our work to end sexual violence at Tulane.

We have assembled a panel of leading national experts on college sexual violence prevention.  Together with our own internal experts, this panel will help us identify the ways to build and sustain a culture of safety and consent within our community. Besides being the foremost leaders in the field, each member of this panel was selected for their extraordinary commitment to innovative thought leadership and research in the field. The panel of experts will be led by Dr. Felicia McGinty and Dr. Kevin Swartout.

Dr. McGinty is the Vice Chair of Student Affairs at Rutgers University, where she has employed her student-centered philosophy in the areas of counseling and psychological services, creating climates of support for diverse student populations, and facilitating the university’s End Sexual Violence campaign. Dr. Swartout is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University, where he researches sexual violence perpetration and victimization, and their relation to substance abuse. Along with Dr. McGinty, Dr. Swartout has played a pivotal role in the formation and work of the ARC3 (Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative) Survey.

Supporting our co-chairs, the panel of outside experts will include Lynn Rosenthal, the former White House advisor on Violence Against Women; Lisa Wade, Professor of Sociology at Occidental College and an expert on sexual culture in higher education; Ray Douglas, Professor of History at Colgate University and an advocate for male sexual assault survivors; Tracy Hipp, a sexual violence researcher with expertise on LGBTQ populations; and L.B. Klein, a researcher and consultant on gender-based violence prevention with Catalytical Consulting LLC. Their full biographies are available on the Wave of Change website.

Together, the panelists’ expertise spans empirical research, policy design addressing perpetration and impact on survivors, and the intersection of sexual violence and race, gender and sexuality. We are so grateful to them, and to each of you, for the continued commitment to the health and safety of our community and the Wave of Change.

Thank you,