Dilafruz Williams is Professor
of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Graduate
School of Education and also Professor of Public Administration in the Mark
O’ Hatfield School of Government, at Portland State University, Portland,
Oregon. She is also co-founder of the The Environmental Middle School in the
Portland Public School District. She was elected to a four-year term on the
Portland School Board in July 2003. Dilafruz’s area of interest has long
been community and environmental engagement, democracy, and civiceducation.
She has degrees in Public Administration, Botany, and Philosophy of Education.
Besides higher education, she has taught Biology and Mathematics in grades 6-12.She
serves as a consultant for professional development of faculty in higher education
and K-12 educators and conducts workshops and training related to environmental/place-based
education and also academic service-learning/civic engagement with special focus
on the following:
Dilafruz has authored several articles and chapters dealing with service-learning, civic engagement, environmental education, and holistic education. She has also co-edited a book entitled: Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment (SUNY Press). Dilafruz is a graduate of Harvard, Syracuse, and Bombay Universities and finds much pleasure in gardening, traveling, reading, and being politically active in the community. She is currently doing research on Ethnobotany that also includes the use of myths and folklore drawing upon her origins in India and Zoroastrianism. As director of Community-University Partnerships at Portland State University she initiated and built strongschool-community-university partnerships in the Portland metropolitan area bringing a variety of disciplinaryperspectives to address community problems. She also serves on local, regional, and national Advisory Boards and provides leadership in a number of professional organizations. Below is a sampling of Dr. Williams' scholarly work related to the LECL program: Williams, D. & Taylor, S. "From Margin to Center: Initiation and Development of an Environmental School from the Ground Up." This piece covers the history, philosophy, and recent developments of Portland’s Environmental Middle School. While describing imaginative new curricula and pedagogical methods, it connects that curriculum with the pedagogy of place in Portland, Oregon. Williams, D. "Introduction - Re-engaging Culture and Ecology." As an introductory chapter to the edited volume, this piece criticizes public information processes on environmental problems that instill fear and cynicism. It challenges and redefines sustainability in a way that gives hope rather than despair and provides alternative strategies to encourage sustainable living through education. Williams, D. "Political Engagement and Service Learning - A Gandhian Perspective." This article highlights what the service-learning movement can learn from Gandhian political philosophy. Service learning must have elements of political and societal transformations. It discusses political disengagement in the U.S., and how the Gandhian notion of service and political engagement informs how universities could work with communities.
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