Session 2: Community and Social Service Organizations
Mark Grey, University of Northern Iowa
Steven Larrick, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Steve Adams, Iowa State University Extension Service

Katherine Fennelly

Katherine Fennelly is a professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Her research and outreach interests include leadership in the public sector, the human rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States, and the preparedness of communities and public institutions to adapt to demographic changes. She teaches courses on immigration and on leadership, and conducts research on diversity in rural communities.

Mark Grey

Mark A. Grey is a professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa and director of the UNI New Iowans Program. The New Iowans Program provides consultation, training and publications to Iowa communities, organizations and employers as they deal with the unique challenges and opportunities associated with influxes of immigrant and refugee newcomers. Grey received his Ph.D. in applied anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He has published extensively in academic journals on immigration in the Midwest. He has also published extensively for non-academic audiences. His handbooks include Welcoming New Iowans: A Guide for Citizens and Communities and Welcoming New Iowans: A Guide for Managers and Supervisors. Grey also wrote, with Dr. Anne Woodrick, Welcoming New Iowans: A Guide for Christians and Churches (produced with Ecumenical Ministries of Iowa).

David Griffith

David Griffith is a senior scientist and professor of anthropology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He has written extensively about rural workers in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, including immigrant farm and food processing workers and fishing families. His books are: Jones’s Minimal: Low-wage labor in the United States (1993, SUNY Press), Any Way They Cut It: Food processing and small town America (with Don Stull and Michael Broadway, 1995, University Press of Kansas), Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States (with Ed Kissam, 1995, Temple University Press), The Estuary’s Gift: an Atlantic Coast Cultural Biography (1999, Penn State University Press), and Fishers at Work, Workers at Sea: A Puerto Rican Journey through Labor and Refuge (with Manuel Valdés Pizzini, 2002, Temple University Press).

Steven Larrick

Steven Larrick is a community development coordinator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture. With more than 25 years experience in housing and community development, he is a member of the Quality of Life Research Team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying resident perception of quality of life issues in rural communities with food processing industries that attract immigrant work forces. He is active in the United Nations Association and his local neighborhood association that represents the largest Hispanic population in Lincoln. He earned a BA degree in economics from Grinnell College and an MSc degree in rural sociology from the University of Alberta.


Rev. David Ostendorf

David Ostendorf is a United Church of Christ Minister currently serving as director of the Chicago-based Center for New Community. Since 1974 he has been engaged in social, economic and racial justice organizing, and in that capacity has worked closely with the nation’s religious and civic community at every level. The Center, established in 1995, is committed to building democratic communities for justice and racial equality. Its faith-based organizing commitments, and its commitments to build a racially just society are carried out nationwide. From 1981 until 1993 he served as executive director of PrairieFire Rural Action, a rural education, training and organizing group based in Des Moines, Iowa. Prior to that he served on the national staff of Rural America. He began his organizing work in the coalfields of southern Illinois. He has more than 50 articles on social, economic and racial justice issues published in newspapers, magazines and books. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with High Honor from Elmhurst College (1969) and the honorary Doctor of Divinity (1987); a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York (1972); and a Master of Science from the University of Michigan (1974), where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow.

Joyce Reed

Joyce Reed is the community relations manager for Tyson Foods, Inc. She is responsible for the community relation activities for 118,000 team members and almost 300 facilities and offices in 29 states and 22 countries. She has 24 years of experience in human resources, safety, sales and marketing at Tyson Foods, Inc. Reed is chairperson of the Jones Center for Families Board of Directors, vice chairperson of the Northwest Technical Institute Board of Directors, and a member of the Springdale Chamber Board of Directors. She is a member of the Springdale Leadership Council and City Future 2002 communication committee. She is also a certified critical incident stress debriefer.

Bill Pearson

Bill Pearson is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local #789, where he has been on staff for 26 years. The UFCW Local #789 has 8,000 members; 600 of these member work in packinghouses and are predominantly Latino. Pearson has worked closely with ISAIAH, a regional, faith-based citizen action coalition, on immigrant rights issues in Minnesota.

Sandra Charvat Burke

Sandra Charvat Burke is a sociologist who holds a research position with the Community Vitality Center in the Department of Economics at Iowa State University. Her work with the Community Vitality Center focuses on rural community society, development, entrepreneurship and population. Burke has more than 20 years experience with population issues for Iowa and the Midwest. She has been co-author of the annual volume, Iowa’s Counties: Selected Population Trends, Vital Statistics, and Socioeconomic Data, and has also written numerous specialized reports and publications. Minorities, diversity, immigration, aging and women’s issues are some of the topics of her presentations throughout the state. She has conducted data and census workshops, has developed population estimates for Iowa’s counties and the state, and consults on the use and analysis of census data. She has taught sociology and research methods classes and she is a recipient of Iowa State University Extension’s New Professional Award. Burke has chaired the Marshalltown, Iowa Diversity Committee for 6 years.

Katherine Fennelly

Katherine Fennelly is a professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Her research and outreach interests include leadership in the public sector, the human rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States, and the preparedness of communities and public institutions to adapt to demographic changes. She teaches courses on immigration and on leadership, and conducts research on diversity in rural communities.

Cornelia Flora

Cornelia Flora is Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology at Iowa State University and director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. A past president of the Rural Sociological Society, president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, and in-coming president of the Community Development Society, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Neal has authored a number of recent books and more than 185 book chapters on rural development in the United States and developing countries. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Heartland Institute for Community Leadership, the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, the Midwest Assistance Program, the Northwest Area Foundation, and Winrock International. She and her husband continue research in the Andean region of Latin America and on how Midwestern rural communities define new migrants as an asset or a liability.

William Kandel

William Kandel is a sociologist with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he conducts research on the geographic dispersion of immigrants and minorities in rural areas and the role of industrial restructuring in demographic change. He obtained his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation research examined impacts of temporary U.S. migration on Mexican children’s educational attainment. He also held a postdoctoral fellowship in international demography and income inequality at the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University.

Eileen Díaz McConnell

Eileen Díaz McConnell is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Latino Studies program at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, where she specialized in international immigration and issues of race and ethnicity, especially the Latino experience in the Midwestern United States. She has conducted research for the U.S. Census Bureau about the changing demography of Latinos. She has published in Population Research and Policy Review and Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, among other academic outlets.