Symposium focus: diversity, sustainability, and community

Skidmore College will host a symposium on Diversity, Sustainability, and Community Service on Friday March 11, in conjunction with New York Campus Compact.  Angela Park, founder and executive director of  Diversity Matters, will be keynote speaker.

Our world is increasingly more diverse (human population) and less diverse (biological world). On college campuses, community service offices often work in isolation from student diversity program offices and sustainability coordinators. However, these three areas have many shared interests and goals. The symposium will focus on building greater collaboration between these fundamental areas, and explore the following questions:

-Why are students interested in environmental activism mostly white and how can we be more inclusive in our campus environmental programs?

-What can community service directors learn from diversity directors?

-How can student diversity programs benefit from creating service opportunities in the community?

-How can our civic engagement efforts build bridges across student subgroups, and move beyond the choir?

-How can we share our perspectives and collaborate on projects such as alternative spring breaks, civic leadership training, and service-learning initiatives? 

-How can we build strategic alliances to achieve shared goals and garner more resources and recognition for our work?

Angela Parkis founder/executive director of Diversity Matters. Previously, she worked at the White House in both terms of the Clinton/Gore administration, was cofounder and deputy director of the Environmental Leadership Program, and coordinated state-level sustainable development policy initiatives at the Center for Policy Alternatives.

Park has testified before Congress and state legislatures and been published most recently by Yale University Press, Grist Magazine and The Diversity Factor. She is an adjunct professor at Antioch University New England and serves as vice chair of Women's Voices for the Earth. The Women's Information Network has named Park a Young Woman of Achievement.

Diversity Matters is a national nonprofit organization that aims to make diversity and inclusion foundational assets of environmental and social change. We are dedicated to making justice and equity core to the internal policies and practices and external programming of progressive work. The DM team brings decades of collective experience on social justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, cultural competence, organizational development, and leadership. We have worked with a wide range of grassroots and national nonprofits, companies, foundations, and educational institutions and base our work on knowledge of the culture and histories of environmental and social change organizations and movements. 

The New York Campus Compact is an association of college and university presidents and their campuses committed to promoting active citizenship as an aim of higher education.  We encourage member institutions and prospective members to utilize the resources available on this site for college and university presidents, community service and service learning coordinators, faculty and students.

Riley Neugebauer, Skidmore's sustainability coordinator, organized the conference.