Feb 21, 2016
Ep. 53: LaVera Crawley and Alec MacLeod are an interracial
couple. LaVera is a African-American doctor, who grew up in
Cincinnati, received her undergraduate and medical degrees at
Historically Black Colleges, worked on a Navajo reservation as a
M.D., and now serves as a Palliative Care Chaplain.
In the field of medicine and ethics, LaVera is internationally
known for her work on health disparities for palliative and
end-of-life (EOL) care. She served as an expert on racial, ethnic,
and cultural issues for the 2004 NIH State-of-the-Science of EOL
Care Consensus Conference; was commissioned by the California
Healthcare Foundation to conduct an in-depth summary of EOL health
care delivery for California’s multi-ethnic, multicultural, and
racially diverse population; and served a 3-year appointment as an
ethics advisor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
She was honored with the Soros Faculty Scholars Award for the Open
Society Institute's Project on Death in America in 1999-2001, The
Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute in 2003-2008,
and the Stanford University Faculty Fellows Award in 2007.
After a 16+ year career at Stanford as an empirical bioethicist,
LaVera Crawley embarked on a new career in the art of spiritual
companionship, bringing together her work in medicine, ethics,
social justice, teaching, research, and public health with her
longstanding interest in spirituality. After completing her
clinical pastoral education (CPE) in chaplaincy, she began serving
in her current role as a Palliative Care Chaplain at the Alta Bates
Summit Medical Center. She is also in training to become an
Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) Certified
Supervisor.
Inspired by the Schwartz Center’s Clinical Pastoral Education
(CPE) Program for Healthcare Providers, LaVera’s goal as a Chaplain
Supervisor is to create and implement a CPE Fellows Program for
physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and other
healthcare professionals to enhance provider skills and
competencies in addressing the spiritual, existential, and
religious needs of patients and families facing life-threatening
illnesses.
Her husband, Alec MacLeod, is a White man of Dutch an English
extraction, who grew up in rural, upstate New York,lec MacLeod is a
Professor in Undergraduate Studies. He received his undergraduate
education at Hampshire College where he studied philosophy and fine
arts. Alec also holds a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from
Stanford University (1983) and has studied information science at
the University of California at Berkeley.
His primary areas of preparation are in the studio arts, art
theory and information science. He is a practicing visual artist
whose work has been exhibited nationally. Additionally, his work in
the area of cultural studies includes the visual culture of the
internet (especially implicit assumptions in the design of
graphical user interfaces), representations of "the Other" in U.S.
colloquial English, and visual explorations of theories of
perception.
As an educator, Alec has used participatory collaborative
methods of inquiry to explore the ways in which pedagogical
approaches can assist learners in examining and changing their
assumptions about race and ethnicity. He has trained as a
multicultural trainer at Equity Institute and Visions, Inc. A
member of a research collective, the European-American
Collaborative Challenging Whiteness, he has participated in an
inquiry into white identity and ways in which white people can
become more aware of their identity and its implications. The group
has presented its work at educational conferences and recently
authored an article entitled "White on White: Communicating about
Race and White Privilege with Critical Humility" in Understanding &
Dismantling Privilege: the Journal of the White Privilege
Conference.
Alec has over twenty-five years of experience as a facilitator
of learning in higher education as a classroom teacher and as an
administrator. He was a member of the design team for the
undergraduate cohort based degree completion program and the
inaugural director of that program. In addition to his
interdisciplinary courses in the Undergraduate program, Alec
teaches courses in visual thinking, creativity, and visual
culture.
Listen as LaVera and Alec speak with Alex about their marriage,
their careers, and their views on race and diversity.
For more on host, Alex Barnett, please check out his
website: www.alexbarnettcomic.com or
visit him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/alexbarnettcomic)
or on Twitter at @barnettcomic
To subscribe to the Multiracial Family Man, please click here:
MULTIRACIAL FAMILY MAN PODCAST
Intro and Outro Music is Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod
(incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons - By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/