ASPiRE’s Her Passion

Mary Slade became the first Executive Director of VCU ASPiRE over the summer and jumped right into the program.

“The day I was offered the job was a transformative day in my life,” Slade said. “I knew there was nothing I wanted to do more than to come to VCU.”

In addition to leading the ASPiRE effort, Slade is developing and teaching one of the sections of “The Foundations of Community Engagement” course this fall.
Slade joined VCU with more than two decades in administrative and faculty positions in higher education.

“The first time I engaged with students as a college professor changed my life. I saw a side of students that I had never seen – a commitment to being civically engaged and working to change other people’s lives as they transform their own,” Slade said. “I want to help them do that for the rest of my career.” 

In addition to teaching courses in community engagement, she has developed civic engagement curricula for middle and high school students.

Most recently, her teaching and scholarship has focused on community engagement and service-learning pedagogy in the teaching of honors students and she has led more than 20 service trips with collegiate and pre-collegiate students, focusing on disaster relief or social change in economically depressed areas.

Slade has written three books, a monograph, eight book chapters, 24 print and video media contributions, 25 refereed articles, 28 invited articles and 24 program evaluation reports and has worked on more than 22 funded projects totaling more than $5 million. She served as the primary author and principal investigator for most of them.

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