Kaye Edwards
Kaye Edwards
Associate Professor
KINSC S207C
(610) 896-1191
kedwards@haverford.edu
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Education

B.S., Indiana University
Ph.D., University of Colorado

Biography

A member of Haverford’s faculty since 1986, Edwards received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and did post-doctoral research in tropical parasitology in Boston. She began her career at Haverford in the Biology Department, and is currenlty a member of Independent College Programs.  For the past 23 years, she has taught courses that explore various facets of social justice, including how they are embodied in the health of communities and how they are informed by Quaker faith and practice.  She is the founding director of Haverford's new interdisciplinary minor in Health Studies and serves as the faculty director of Haverford's Quaker Affairs Office. Edwards was Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship from 2003-2006 and is the founder of Haverford House, CPGC’s post-baccalaureate community-action program in Philadelphia.  She is a convinced Friend and a member of Radnor Monthly Meeting and a sojourner at Boulder Friends Meeting, where she serves on the Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee.  In addition, she co-chairs the Capital Campaign Steering Committee for Pendle Hill, a Quaker study, retreat and conference center, and serves on the Corporation of Haverford College and on the International Advisory Committee for Projet Jeune Leader, a sexual and reproductive health program in Madagascar.  She is a former board member of ProNica, a Quaker organization that works in solidarity with community groups in Nicaragua and leads delegations for North Americans to learn about the country, its history, its land, and its peoples.

Courses:

  • Senior Seminar in Health Studies 
  • Community Engagement and Social Responsibility

Research

As I prepare for retirement in June, 2017, when my husband and I will return to Colorado, I am devoting my energies to learning more about American Indian health and well-being, which is the organizing theme for my Senior Seminar in Health Studies.  

  • Last spring, I traveled with 5 students from that class on a CPGC-sponsored study tour in Arizona and New Mexico.  Through conversations with health care providers at Indian Health Service, private, and Navajo Nation hospitals, with NIH researchers, educators, public health workers, and with citizens of the Navajo, Hopi, and Apache Nations, we learned about the resilience of Native cultures and about programs to improve the health and well-being of American Indians in the Southwest.  I intend to further these connections and develop mutually beneficial collaborations.  
  • For the past five years, I have been an active member of the Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee of Boulder Friends Meeting.  In 2015, I became a trained facilitator for the committee's experiential workshop, "Roots of Injustice, Seeds of Change: Towards Right Relationships with Native Peoples."  
  • I currently serve on the organizing committee for the conference, "Quakers, First Nations, and American Indians from the 1650s to the 21st Century," which will be held on November 10-12, 2016 at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College.  I am particularly interested in understanding how the historical trauma of colonization has become embodied in the descendants of Native peoples who were sent to Indian boarding schools.