Groome honored with 2024 Lepage Faculty Award for EDI

Sanda Groome, senior professor of practice and area coordinator of business and legal studies, was named the 2024 recipient of the Albert Lepage Faculty Award for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

The award, which honors Freeman School faculty members whose teaching or research significantly advances the ideals of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), was presented at this year’s Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Awards Gala, which took place March 12 at the Audubon Tea Room.

Groome was recognized for her pioneering work in EDI education at the Freeman School. Her course Preventing Discrimination in Business was the first course at Freeman dedicated exclusively to race and inclusion. The course, which she introduced in 2020, examines the effect of legal and regulatory requirements on business decisions regarding race and inclusion, focusing on legal as well as social responsibility implications of business decisions regarding racial and discriminatory issues in a variety of business endeavors and industries.

She also teaches the service-learning course Court Watch NOLA, which engages students with legal and social justice issues by sending them into local courtrooms to act as trial observers.

Groome served on the Freeman School’s Strategy for Tomorrow Committee, which advised the dean on ways to advance the principles of EDI at Freeman, and she currently serves on the EDI Faculty Advisory Committee. In addition, she has completed EDI professional development programs including Anti-Racism 101: Practicing Skills to Promote Racial Equity, Tulane Beyond the Numbers: Practicing Awareness of EDI and Ani-Racism, and Disability Rights: Ensuring Accommodations and Understanding Disability.

“Sanda has shown extraordinary commitment to EDI in terms of both the content and methods of her teaching,” said Adrienne Colella, the James W. McFarland Distinguished Chair of Business, who serves on the selection committee. “Preventing Discrimination in Business is the only course solely dedicated to EDI issues in the Freeman School, and she also works with TIDES students and Court Watch NOLA service-learning students to actively engage them in legal and social justice issues prevalent in our community.”

Groome joined the Freeman School as an adjunct professor of legal studies in 2006 and became a full-time professor of practice in 2008. Prior to joining the Freeman School, she served as an attorney with firms in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Tulane University and a JD from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University.