On Jan. 22 and 23, DU will be hosting its 14th annual Diversity Summit on Inclusive Excellence.
The event began in 2001 with a few undergraduate students and has quickly grown to include an average of 600 annual participants.
Last year’s event focused on diversity in higher education, in connection with the campus-wide celebration of DU’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The theme of this year’s summit is “Fifty Years Since Selma: Your Voice Still Matters,” and, according to the Diversity Summit website, will focus on the “actions that made progress possible 50 years ago” and what people today do to continue this progress.
The Selma to Montgomery marches occurred in 1965, as a part of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, in support of the Voting Rights Act. Many activists were involved, including Martin Luther King Jr.
Giving this year’s Diversity Summit this overarching idea keeps it consistent with the State of Colorado’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, which aims at unifying and educating communities throughout Colorado on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as organizing celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
This year’s keynote speaker is Michelle Bernard, the CEO and founder of the Bernard Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy, as well as a political and legal analyst appearing frequently on MSNBC and programs like NPR’s All Things Considered. Her speech will take place Friday afternoon in the Driscoll Center Ballroom, where she will be presented with the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media’s Anvil of Freedom of Award for outstanding journalism and democracy.
The conference will begin Thursday night and continue all day Friday with different speakers and workshops. Those wishing to submit a workshop idea are still able to on the DU Diversity Summit’s website.
Also included in the conference are the presentations of the Champions of Change Awards. These awards are given out each year to members of the community who have advanced the tenants of Inclusive Excellence at the University of Denver. One award is given to an undergraduate student, a graduate student, a faculty member, a DU staff member and an administrator. Nominating forms are available on the CME’s website.
Pre-registration for the event is required, and is available to students and members of the community only on the Summit’s website. For people affiliated with the DU campus, the event is free; for students from other schools, it is $10, and for other community members, it is $45.
