2012 Last Lecture
Presented by Forrest Crawford, Department of Education
October 17, 2012
Dr. Forrest C. Crawford has worked for Weber State University since 1977. A native of Oklahoma, he has been an active resident of Utah since 1972; earning his bachelors from Weber in 1975, masters at the Graduate School of Social Work-University of Utah in 1977 and Education Doctorate at Brigham YoungUniversity in 1990. Dr. Crawford is a member of and has affiliation with an array of State, National, and International civic and academic boards including (in summary): Image de Northern Utah, NAACP, Phi Kappa Phi and Utah Alliance for Black School Educators. He served on the board of directors for the Utah Inclusion Center (formerly national conference for Community and Justice NCCJ) for 10 years, the Family Summit Foundation: A Center For Grieving Children and has served as Education Section Chair for the Utah Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. He is currently president of the Board for Northern Utah HIV/Aids Coalition, Utah Humanities Council Vice Chair and completed chair duties at Education, Training and Research Associates located in Santa Cruz, California. His international work includes, Executive Board for the International Society for Teacher Education (ISFTE), where he is now presiding Secretary General through 2013, and Children’s Heaven, an orphanage for teen girls in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Dr. Crawford was one of the major catalysts behind establishing a variety of local groups including: The Utah Coalition for the Advancement of Minorities in Higher Education (1990) where he served as its first president, Delta Sigma Theta Inc. (1998), a professional society for Black Women, The Utah Black Leadership Forum (2004), The Gandhi Alliance for Peace, and was co-founder of the state of Utah’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Human Rights Commission (1991) serving as its Chair for five years. Dr. Crawford is the recipient of awards too numerous to list. He has researched, lectured and authored many speeches, editorials and essays on Human Rights, Teacher Education Development and Multicultural Education. He has presented papers (summary) in Israel, Holland, South Africa, France, Kuwait, Brazil, England, and Taiwan to name a few, and was a visiting lecturer 2006-2007, at the University of Navarra in Pamplona (Northern), Spain. In addition, Crawford is currently a Professor of Teacher Education at Weber State University where he also serves as its Assistant to the President for Diversity.