The New Features and Dialogue Sessions are designed to provide conference attendees with genuine opportunities for dialogue and exchange. These sessions will be facilitated by persons with expertise and experience in each topic area. Facilitators will provide a suitable structure and ground rules for discussion and will work to enable constructive dialogue, exchange, sharing, and learning around the session topic.

New Features

Wednesday, May 31—2:00-3:30 p.m.
• ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION OF COLLEGE PRESIDENTS: Leading With Heart

Not all institutional missions or visions include diversity, and for those that do, some justify diversity by making an economic or business case. However, there are those presidents who have visions that explicitly include creating campuses that strive for inclusion and social justice by making a conscientious case based on "heart visions." Heart visions are inspiring, and the dialogue that ensues will help us understand how they were brought to fruition. This session will provide a glimpse of what it has meant personally to lead an institution that not only talks about inclusion, but also is in the business of "practicing what it preaches." This special roundtable offers a rare opportunity to listen to a select group of college and university presidents who have successfully led significant diversity initiatives at a Hispanic serving institution, two historically Black colleges, a predominantly White institution and no majority-slim majority institutions. The range of diversity issues, include class, race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, religion and ability. This session will be of particular benefit for presidents, senior officers, trustees, emerging leaders and others in higher education who are interested in hearing what it has taken to make institutional change on four very different campuses.

Johnnetta B. Cole, Ph.D., President, Bennett College for Women—Greensboro, North Carolina
Z. Clara Brennan , Ph.D., President, St. Augustine College—Chicago, Illinois
Kim Goldenberg, M.D., President, Wright State University—Dayton, Ohio
Bob H. Suzuki, Ph.D., Past President, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona—Los Angels, California
Sharon J. Washington, Ph.D., Special Assistant to the President for Diversity Initiatives, Bennett College for Women—Greensboro, North Carolina (Moderator)

Wednesday, May 31—2:00-4:00 p.m.
• ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION—Student to Student: Diversity at Chicago Area Colleges and Universities

NCORE student participants are invited to join a roundtable discussion featuring student representatives from Chicago area colleges and universities who will update NCORE student attendees on the state of diversity and multiculturalism on their campuses.

Student Representatives From: University of Chicago, DePaul, University of Illinois, and the City Colleges of Chicago
Representation by Other Area Schools will be finalized.
Pamela H. Chao, Professor of Sociology, American River College—Sacramento, California (Coordinator/Moderator)

Thursday, June 1—10:30 a.m.-noon
• A CONVERSATION WITH TIM WISE —Disasters, Natural and Otherwise: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, and when New Orleans flooded in its aftermath—thanks to inadequate levee protection—the magnitude of race and class inequality that compounded the "natural" aspects of the disaster was laid bare for all to see. Yet, as Tim Wise explains in this session, followed by an interactive dialogue, the suffering borne by the poor and persons of color, especially in New Orleans, was nothing new. Indeed, the systems of government and commerce in the United States regularly fail such folks, and were never intended to protect them. In this discussion, Wise explores the daily assaults upon the poor of New Orleans, and upon African Americans generally, all of which preceded Katrina and had been occurring outside the glare of TV cameras for generations. By placing Katrina and its aftermath in historical context, and examining the ways in which the media helped perpetuate negative stereotypes of poor blacks in its hurricane coverage, this discussion will elevate the race and class dialogue around this event to a more scholarly and yet accessible level. Issues to be explored and discussed include: (1) the difference in white and black perceptions of the role of race in the nation's response to the hurricane; (2) the budgetary priorities that left New Orleans vulnerable to flooding in the first place; (3) the way in which low income Louisianans (especially African Americans) have long been marginalized by all levels of government, and by both political parties; (4) media coverage of the catastrophe and the media's role in perpetuating racial and economic stereotypes; and (5) a historical analysis of how poverty in the cities has been perpetuated by deliberate government policies, and how it is this institutional racism and classism that must be understood if we are to make sense of what happened in the wake of Katrina.

Book Signing: Disasters, Natural and Otherwise: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina by Tim Wise to be scheduled.

Tim Wise, Anti-Racism Educator, ZNet Columnist, and Director, Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE)—Nashville, Tennessee

INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION AND DIALOGUE SESSIONS:

Saturday, June 3—9:00 a.m.-noon
• Get REAL: A Frank Discussion Between Brown and Black America

THE DESCRIPTION IS FORTHCOMING

Charles "Chuck" Romero, Diversity Director; Chair, Diversity Advisory Council; Co-Director, Center for Excellence for Minority Medical Education, University of Kansas Medical Center—Kansas City, Kansas
Bukeka Newby-Shoals, Accomplished Orator, Workshop Facilitator, and Performing Artist, CVE Network Enterprises—Kansas City, Missouri

Saturday, June 3—9:00 a.m.-noon
• Sustained Dialogue: It's Not Just Talk...It's a Social Movement

In 1999, students began using a unique process called Sustained Dialogue (SD) to proactively improve race relations on college campuses. A network of Sustained Dialogue practitioners has since formed, connecting students at over a dozen colleges, universities, and high schools. The Sustained Dialogue Campus Network (SDCN), represents a budding social movement of passionate students, deeply engaged in changing the dynamics of their communities. Come learn the theory behind Sustained Dialogue, and how students create a safe space to address divisive issues, like race relations, that are often taboo in social settings. In this space, participants learn from one another and are changed by the experiences they share so that they can begin to truly understand the problems that face their communities and what power they have, as a group of individuals, to address them.

Tessa Garcia, Program Director, Sustained Dialogue Campus Network—Washington, D.C.
Clark Herndon, Program Director, Sustained Dialogue Campus Network—Washington, D.C.

Saturday, June 3 —1:00-3:30 p.m.
• Intergroup Dialogue as Supplemental Instruction: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

Intergroup Dialogue has been used in a variety of settings and with mixed success. The session will cover basic components and challenges (e.g., ground rules, engagement of participants, exercises, and managing and working with conflict) of this pedagogical tool. The presenter will also discuss different social identities that are invoked traditionally in dialogue courses in higher education settings. Finally, the session will examine the confluence of race/ethnicity and other social identities that characterize college students today, and how these layers of complexity can further the dev elopment and outcome success of intergroup dialogue as a form of supplemental instruction.

Delia S. Saenz, Ph.D., Director, Intergroup Relations Center, Arizona State University—Tempe, Arizona

SPECIAL NEW FEATURE:

One-on-One Meeting
With Experts Experienced on Teaching and Social Justice Issues

Thursday, June 1, 2006—10:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
and
Friday, June 2, 2006—9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Each meeting is for 30-Minutes. Interested participants should sign up and schedule for the meeting time at Registration Desk on-site. For more information on each of these experts, you will have a short bio to review.

Jim Bonilla, Ed.D., Associate Professor, Conflict Studies, Graduate School of Management; Faculty Coordinator for Diversity Resources; and Director, The Race, Gender & Beyond Faculty Development Project, Hamline University—St. Paul, Minnesota
Rita Hardiman, Ed.D., Multicultural Organization Development Consultant—Hadley, Massachusetts
Bailey Jackson, Ph.D., former Dean and current Faculty, Social Justice Education Program, School of Education, University of Massachusetts—Amherst, Massachusetts
Sharon J. Washington, Ph.D., Special Assistant to the President for Diversity Initiatives, Bennett College for Women—Greensboro, North Carolina