A new task force at the University of Virginia will gather, solicit and prioritize recommendations about racial equity, UVa President Jim Ryan announced Wednesday. Among the three members selected was Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy Dean Ian H. Solomon.

As the director of social entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, professor Christine Mahoney had spent a good deal of her time devising innovative approaches for solving social challenges around the world. However, it gnawed at Mahoney that she hadn’t been able to do as much as she would have liked right here in Charlottesville.

This past June, Batten professors Lucy Bassett and Andrew Pennock participated in the University’s Teaching Race at UVA seminar. Launched in the summer of 2018, the seminar which is an initiative of the Office of the Provost grew out of a desire to deepen faculty’s understanding of the University’s and greater Charlottesville’s complicated history with race.