UA students at national conference on race and ethnicity in D.C.
Twenty-two student scholars from The University of Akron are attending the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) this week in Washington, D.C. UA, a co-sponsor of the event, has the largest contingent of students at the conference. Six of the 22 UA students were chosen to give a presentation on June 1 before the gathering to spotlight “Inclusive Excellence,” the University’s framework for excellence that incorporates diversity at its core while linking the quality of the educational experience.
In Washington, D.C., this week are, in the front row from left, Julie Kreuz, Naomi Drakeford, Carolyne Collins and Kevin Watlatsi. In the second row, from left, are Stephanie Djurik, Avery Roper, Priya Srinivasan, Crystal Bell, Chris Opoku-Agyeman, Aaron Gober-Sims and Ashok Varma Manthena. In the third row, from left, are Amanda Cole, MinJi Kim, Kathleen Hobson, Kristan Pitts and Marcus Phelps. In the fourth row, from left, are Porsha Chisholm and Sarah Mozena. Not pictured are conference participants Pulkit Gupta, Zachery Childress and Jung Eun Kwak.
The 23rd annual conference, sponsored primarily by the Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is designed to assist higher education institutions to create inclusive environments, programs and curriculum, as well as help to improve campus racial and ethnic relations and expand opportunities for educational access and success by culturally diverse, traditionally underrepresented populations. The conference has attracted more than 1,400 participants from virtually everywhere in the United States and several foreign countries.
UA ambassadors
The 22 students representing UA make up the Student Inclusive Excellence Committee, according to Lee A. Gill, associate vice president for inclusion and equity and chief diversity officer at the university. They all will be freshmen, sophomores or juniors in fall 2010. The Student Inclusive Excellence Committee will then serve UA as ambassadors of the inclusive excellence concepts – positively impacting programs and awareness of broader diversity issues.
“These students have the opportunity to completely immerse themselves in the varied topics of inclusive excellence,” says Gill. “They will return to campus with a much broader understanding of what the terms diversity and inclusive excellence mean.”
Diversity adds richness to educational experience
At UA, Gill says, making excellence inclusive seeks to bring about comprehensive educational reform based on research and theory, not only about "what works" to help all students achieve new forms and levels of excellence, but also about how diversity in the academy adds a richness to the educational experience of students while producing a robust creative environment for faculty and staff.
“This is an excellent opportunity for all of us,” says Marcus V. Phelps, an Honors College student and rising senior economics major at UA who is one of the six presenters. “As students, we can only benefit from attending a conference like this and interacting with our peers from across the country and the world, and it will hopefully teach us how to make our own contributions to an increasingly diverse and global society.”
Notable keynote speakers during the week include William E. “Brit” Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and former president of The Ohio State University; Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution and a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma; Juliet V. Garcia, president of the University of Texas-Brownsville and the first Mexican-American woman in the nation to be named a university president; and Michael Eric Dyson, renowned scholar, author, and radio host, and professor of sociology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Dyson also was a keynote speaker during UA’s “Rethinking Race: Black, White and Beyond” series in February.
Media contact: Laura M. Massie, 330-972-6476 or massie1@uakron.edu