This Fall, Tech’s Office of Institute Diversity will be holding the Seventh Annual Diversity Symposium. This event seeks to recognize students, faculty, staff, and units such as an office, department, school, or lab, who have actively influenced and positively promoted diversity and inclusion within the Tech community. A member from each of the four separate categories will be selected and recognized at the 2015 Diversity Symposium Awards Luncheon.
The award was created three years ago, by Archie W. Ervin, Vice President for Institute Diversity at Tech. Ervin works to implement policies and programs that will enhance gender, racial, and social diversity among the Tech community.
“All full-time faculty members, staff members, students, and units at Georgia Tech are eligible for the Diversity Champion Awards,” said Annette Filliat, Communications Manager at the Office of Institute Diversity. “Nominations, including previous nominees and self-nominations, may be made by all full-time Georgia Tech faculty, staff, or students for any award category. Keona Lewis, Program Review and Research Manager of Institute Diversity, is the chair of this year’s Diversity Champion Awards Committee.”
Award recipients must demonstrate leadership in and commitment to building a culture of excellence, diversity, equality and inclusion in the Tech community. They should have organized, conducted and/or supported events and activities that promote cross-cultural understanding, respect and inclusion of diverse individuals and groups.
Sponsored by the Office of the President and Institute Diversity, the Seventh Annual Diversity Symposium will occur on Wednesday, September 9, 2015 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center and the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. National Urban League President, Marc Morial, will be the keynote speaker during the luncheon, during which the Diversity Champion Award recipients will be announced.
“The Georgia Tech community benefits from an increasingly diverse environment. The Institute strives to recruit, develop, retain, and engage a heterogeneous cadre of students, faculty, and staff with a wide variety of backgrounds, perspectives, interests, and talents,” said Ervin. “Ultimately this campus community exemplifies the best in all of us — in our intellectual pursuits, our diversity of thought, our personal integrity and our inclusive excellence.”
The Symposium will also feature a variety of panels, lectures, workshops and forums for the discussion of diversity at Tech in the modern age. At a University well known for its world class research capabilities, this Symposium seeks to make Tech an institute world renowned for its excellence in diversity as well.