from left: Ryan Owens ’11, Elite Williams ’13, Yamelva Rosario ’13, Kadiatou (Katie) Tubman ’13, Tanya Alexander ’13, Sarayfah Bolling ’11, Georgia- Swan Ambrose ’11, Karen Muñiz and Helena-Jasmine Sowah ’13.
Eight Union students were among more than 50 students gathered at Colgate University recently for a day-long Student Diversity Leadership Conference sponsored by the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium.
A cooperative venture of upstate liberal arts schools, the consortium includes Union, Colgate, Hamilton, Hobart and William Smith, St. Lawrence and Skidmore.
“It was great opportunity for the students to explore their own campus diversity issues and to see what other institutions are doing,” said Karen Ferrer-Muñiz, Union’s director of Multicultural Affairs, who accompanied the Union group.
The conference featured a keynote address by Michael Benitez, Jr., a social justice educator, speaker and activist-scholar, whose work integrates hip hop pedagogy, academic inquiry and personal experience. He addressed such issues as diversity leadership, student advising and retention, student empowerment, and in- and out-of-the-classroom experiences.
“Diversity is a journey, not a destination,” Benitez said. “You don’t reach a place called ‘diversity’ and end your journey. Diversity is an intentional process that requires patience.”
For Ryan Owen ’11, the opportunity to exchange ideas with his peers “was a very valuable experience. I learned a lot from everyone there, and I gained a new appreciation for Union. We have a lot of good things in place, and the conference opened my eyes to new ways to take advantage of the resources at our disposal.”
Other Union students at the conference included Tanya Alexander ’13, Georgia Swan-Ambrose ’11, Sarayfah Bolling ’11, Yamelva Rosario ’13, Helena-Jasmine Sowah ’13, Kadiatou (Katie) Tubman ’13 and Elite William ’13.
This was the first major event sponsored by the New York Six, which will sponsor a number of diversity programs for its members’ faculty and staff this year, culminating in a diversity summit.
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the consortium is designed to facilitate collaboration among its member institutions. The six schools share expertise and resources, enhancing opportunities for students, faculty, and staff while reducing the colleges’ individual and collective operating and capital costs.