Conference

Keynote Address: Dr. Kathleen Wong(Lau)

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Abstract

Dr. Kathleen Wong(Lau)’s areas of expertise are intergroup dialogue, intergroup empathy, intercultural communication, gender and communication, intercultural conflict management, women of color in academia, and women’s leadership in STEM disciplines. Her work is particularly focused on social and economic class within higher education. She completed her BS at California State University, East Bay and PhD at Arizona State University.

As Director of the Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies at the University of Oklahoma she has served as a trainer and consultant in intercultural conflict management for the military civil affairs division at Fort Bragg, the OU Athletics Department student athletes and staff, and local law enforcement in Norman, Oklahoma.

Prior to her academic career, she worked as a union butcher in a traditional butcher shop that served African American and Chinese American clientele in downtown Oakland, California. She also worked for several years as a bilingual educational counselor in a TRiO funded community center in Chinatown (San Francisco), providing supportive services for Southeast Asian refugee families interested in adult education and higher education. She was the principal of Kalamazoo Chinese School and chair of the Science Fair at elementary school in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She speaks Cantonese fluently and is a second generation Chinese American, the daughter of working class pre-1965 immigrant parents from Hong Kong.