CAS CONNECT 2018

Her recent research includes studying gendered patterns within political campaigns, political participation and identity of American Indians, and the impact of gender on public opinion. Her main goals for this year include maintaining the college’s momentum. She is also focused on ensuring every department has the resources to succeed, implementing best practices across college policies for departments and promoting diversity and inclusion for faculty, students and staff. “As academics, most of our training is focused on how to be excellent researchers and teachers, so we often fall into mentoring students the way we were mentored,” Mendez said. “We’re piloting some programs and working with faculty to determine the best way to mentor our students.” Challenges of administration Laura Belmonte’s job description includes ensuring quality instruction. She has been teaching in the Department of History since 1996 after finishing her doctorate at the University of Virginia. She also earned a master’s at Virginia and a bachelor’s at the University of Georgia, all in history. She helped found the OSUWomen’s Studies Program and served as director of the American Studies Program. That led to her promotion to department head in 2014, where she served until her promotion this summer. “Laura is extremely passionate,” Mendez said. “She cares deeply about faculty and students. She wants to promote a diverse community of scholars Laura Belmonte and has the background to do that. I think she has a lot of great ideas that she was able to implement within the Department of History, which gave her the experience to translate those ideas to the college level.” Even as her administrative responsibilities increase, Belmonte continues to teach classes and conduct research. She enjoys those roles as well as the challenges of administration. “To me, it’s all just a different set of intellectual puzzles,” Belmonte said. “I like teaching, and it’s important to focus on that as the key mission of our university. Administration is engaging, and it’s a different way of helping students and faculty. And I think it’s important to maintain an active research agenda because I will be in a position of evaluating the scholarship of others.” Belmonte’s research is often focused on one of her passion areas: the LGBT rights movement. She has been a leading advocate in Oklahoma, founding one of the precursors of FreedomOklahoma. That led to extensive experience with nonprofits, where she learned valuable lessons about fundraising, organizational and budget management, governance and interacting with the media. She said those experiences have helped her succeed as an academic administrator. “I have also worked for a long time at OSU to advance diversity and inclusion, and part of my job in this role is to be the college equity officer,” Belmonte said. “Helping to diversify our faculty is immensely important to me. I have seen the impact that can make on our students.” 4 CONNECT 201 8