Conference shows how to make campuses more diverse, inclusive

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Jorge Chapa

The theme for a daylong conference April 10 is “Race, Diversity and Campus Climate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” The conference, which will be held at the Illini Union, is sponsored by the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society and will feature keynote speaker Arturo Madrid, the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University.

The conference will highlight research projects by students and faculty and staff members, who will discuss their experiences, and provide empirical evidence of diversity’s positive impact on the Urbana campus. The event will include presentations of academic papers and posters as well as panel discussions and speakers.

The goal of the conference is to present information that the UI and other universities can use to make campuses more diverse and inclusive; to provide a context for discussions about student life, curricula, teaching and research; and to brainstorm how to foster inclusion and social justice.

“This conference presents a unique opportunity to define, critique and sort out questions of race and diversity as they impact college campuses,” said Jorge Chapa, director of the center. “The University of Illinois is part of this discussion, and this event is a commitment to discussing issues and finding solutions. We also are very pleased to have a scholar like Dr. Madrid deliver a lecture that will set the tone for the conference.”

Madrid’s keynote speech is titled “Globalism and its Discontents: Old Thoughts for a New Century.”

Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of education, recently appointed Madrid to the National Commission on the Future of Higher Education. In 1976, he was the recipient of the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and presented to him by President Bill Clinton in recognition of “his outstanding contributions in developing the intellectual resources of the Latino community and pioneering scholarship on Chicano literary and cultural expression.”  

From 1984-1993, Madrid served as the founding president of the Tomas Rivera Center, the nation’s first institute for policy studies on Latino issues. Madrid has held academic and administrative appointments – including appointments at Dartmouth College, the University of California at San Diego and the University of Minnesota – and has served as director of the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education and as national director of the Ford Foundation’s graduate fellowship program for Mexican Americans, Native Americans and Puerto Ricans.

Madrid holds a doctorate in Hispanic languages and literatures from UCLA as well as several honorary degrees from other institutions.

Founded in 2002 at the recommendation of the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative Committee, the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society is one component of a campuswide diversity initiative and supports research and service projects related to the practice of democracy, equality and social justice. The conference is one in a yearlong series of events sponsored by the center that includes public lectures by invited experts, open forums for the campus and its surrounding community and the publication and dissemination of conference-related research and presentations.

The conference is free and open to the public; advance registration is required. A registration form and more information about the conference and the center are available online.

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