Attend this month's WST Learning Community dinner with Dean Stephanie Ray and Dr. Aby Parsons, Student Services, and listen as they give a brief talk about valuing community.

Dean Stephanie Ray is the Associate Dean of Students/Director of Diversity Programs at Georgia Tech. While at Georgia Tech, Dean Ray helped to initiate Womens Awareness Week, which led to the creation of the Women's Resource Center and organized Georgia Tech's National Coalition Building Institute Diversity Training Team. Ray also created Disability and Diversity Week and Religious Awareness Week. She also advises the Diversity Forum and is the advisor to the newly created Speech and Debate Team. Ray is a graduate of Western Kentucky University, where she majored in history and speech communication. She obtained a masters degree in Student Personnel Services in Higher Education from the same institution.

Dr. Aby Parson joined Georgia Tech as the inaugural director of the LGBTQIA Resource Center in April 2014. She received her BA in American Studies and MRes in contemporary U.S. women’s literature from the University of Central Lancashire, and her PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University. Prior to becoming Director of the Resource Center, Dr. Parson worked with the Office of LGBT Life and the Office of Health Promotion at EmoHeadshot of Aby Parsons, Director of the LGBTQIA Resource Centerry, and volunteered extensively with the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center and Georgia Equality. She has spent her entire career providing support, opportunities, and mentorship to students, from serving as a literacy educator and case worker in UK secondary schools to directing summer leadership programs for high school Girl Scouts in North Carolina and California. Social justice, community service, and diversity are at the foundation of everything she does.