Students from throughout the Great Lakes Colleges Association will gather at Hope College on Friday-Saturday, Nov. 1-2, for the 12th annual GLCA Black and Latino Student Leadership Conference.
Registration is underway for the event, which is featuring the theme "The Color of Our Future," celebrating the students' roles as future leaders in society. The objective of the conference is to enhance the leadership skills of students at the 12 institutions that are members of the GLCA, and to provide participants with an opportunity to socialize and build campus coalitions. Based on past participation, the organizers are anticipating that approximately 150 will attend.
Following mid-afternoon registration, the event will open with a keynote address and dinner on Friday, Nov. 1, at 5 p.m. The speaker will be Dr. Teresa Gilliams- Holman, who is an assistant professor of English at Hamline University in Minneapolis, Minn.
The conference marks a return to Hope for Gilliams-Holman, who was a visiting assistant professor of English at the college during the 1999-2000 school year, one of the inaugural "Preparing Future Faculty" fellows to teach at Hope through the college's on-going relationship with Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Entertainment after the dinner event will include comedian Rodney Johnson and a musical performance by a guest soloist with the Hope College Gospel Choir. A student dance will follow.
A series of workshops will run throughout the morning on Saturday, Nov. 2. The workshops will address a range of topics, such as leadership development, relationships, career planning, race relations, student of color organizations and stereotypes in the media.
The conference will close with lunch and a second keynote address. The speaker will be Rafael Jimenez, founder of The Republica Trading Company Inc., which is an e-commerce and content production company that targets the Latino and multi-ethnic populations. He is also a producer with MTV and a partner in Urban Latino magazine.
The GLCA consists of 12 selective private liberal arts colleges located in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. The members of the consortium are Albion College, Antioch College, Denison University, DePauw University, Earlham College, Hope College, Kalamazoo College, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Wabash College and The College of Wooster.
The co-chairs of this year's Black and Latino Student Leadership Conference are Alfredo Gonzales, who is associate provost at Hope, and Glinda Rawls, who is director of multicultural life at the college. Sponsors of the event include the GLCA as well as several Hope-based programs and organizations: the college's Black Student Union, Comprehensive Plan to Improve Minority Participation at Hope, Creative Dining Services, Dean of Students, Hispanic Student Organization, Multicultural Life Office, Office of the Provost and Student Activities Office.
Registration for GLCA participants is $65 per person, or a group rate of $385 for six students and one campus adviser. The rate for non-GLCA participants is $75. Because the organizations are helping sponsoring the event, members of the college's Black Student Union and Hispanic Student Organization may attend at no cost.
The registration deadline is Friday, Oct. 25. Additional information may be obtained by calling the Office of Multicultural Life at Hope at (616) 395-7867 or by viewing the office'swebsite.