Diversity Conference
Thank you to all who made this conference possible!
Friday, April 16, 2021, 8:30 am – 4 pm (central time)
This virtual conference featured breakout sessions from speakers from around the world, including Midland College faculty and students. It also featured a social justice speech competition featuring the top speech students at Midland College.
This day was filled with engaging speakers, thoughtful and meaningful discussions, and guided self-reflection as we uncovered and examined diversity, equity, and social justice issues and topics. This Virtual Diversity Conference was hosted by Midland College, Department of Languages, Speech, and Communication, as well as the Midland College Teaching & Learning Center.
Conference Program
The program included workshop and presentation sessions, panel and roundtable sessions,
a speech competition, and two featured speakers.
conference Program At-A-Glance (all times in CsT)
| 8:30 - 9:10am | Opening Session & Keynote |
| BREAK | |
| 9:20 - 10am | Panels & Roundtables: Concurrent Session 1 |
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| 10:10 - 11:10am | Workshops & Presentations: Concurrent Session 2 |
| BREAK | |
| 11:20am - 12pm | Social Justice Speech Competition |
| 12 - 12:45pm | Lunch Break |
| 12:45 - 2pm | Spotlight Speaker |
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| 2:10 - 2:50pm | Panels & Roundtables: Concurrent Session 3 |
| BREAK | |
| 3-4pm | Workshops & Presentations: Concurrent Session 4 |
Detailed Conference Program (all times in CsT)
Session recordings can be found below. Please note: not all of the sessions were recorded due to presenter preference.
A Sense of Belonging: Welcoming All Students to Our Community College Campuses
Watch this session: |
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Social Justice Panel Yolanda West, Clark Atlanta University Steven Gaines, Midland College |
Watch this session: |
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Higher Education Panel Nick J. Sciullo, Texas A&M University-Kingsville Alisa Garza, Our Lady of the Lake University |
Watch this session: |
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Celebrating Mexican Culture in Midland Panel William Christopher Brown, Midland College Aileen Muñoz, Midland College Student Evelyn Martinez, Midland College Student |
Watch this session:
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Quelling the Tide of the COVID-19 Impact on Student Mental Health: How Professors Can Create a Safe-Haven Through Writing Across Disciplines Roundtable Melissa Boyce, Midland College |
Watch this session:
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"Is it My Job to Make Karen Comfortable?" Roundtable Felicia R. Stewart, Morehouse College |
This session was not recorded. |
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Revisiting 'A Conspiracy of Fishes': Parallels between Gamergate and the 2021 U.S. Insurrection Andrew S. Latham, Midland College |
This session was not recorded. |
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Understanding Implicit Biases Debbie McNeely, Midland College Jay Schwarz, Midland College Sondra Richards, Midland College |
Watch this session: |
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I Am Home: A Culturally Responsive Approach for Instructors Workshop Jeremiah E. Shipp, Winston-Salem State University |
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Public speaking students at Midland College will present their speeches on social justice topics for an opportunity to be awarded first, second, or third prize. The results of the speech competition will be announced at the beginning of the Spotlight Speaker session at 12:45pm. Congratulations to our three winners!
Watch this session: |
Enjoy the break!
Implicit Bias and Legacies of White Supremacy
This session was not recorded. |
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Migrants and Borders Panel Ikram Lecheheb, University of Jordan Umar Nizarudeen, Government College Madapally, University of Calicut |
Watch this session: |
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Pop Culture Panel Kate Wood, Our Lady of the Lake University Michael Vozniak, West Virginia University |
This session was not recorded. |
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What Do Disabled Academics Want? Language, Culture, and Access Roundtable Kaitlyn Bone, Texas Woman's University |
This session was not recorded. |
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Religious Diversity in Public Education Roundtable Steven Gaines, Midland College Faculty |
Watch this session:
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Ageism in the Time of Instagram Workshop Michelle Taylor, Temple University |
Watch this session: |
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Achieving Social Justice by Recognizing Micro-Aggression Implications, Impact and Solutions Ivan Page, Albany State University |
This session was not recorded. |
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The Future Has Past: Public Education, AI, and Our Students' Employment Future(s) Jaime R. Águila, Midland College |
This session was not recorded. |
Featured Speakers
KeyNote Speaker: Michelle Cantu-Wilson
Keynote Title
A Sense of Belonging: Welcoming All Students to Our Community College Campuses
As we engage more with the issues surrounding equity, communication, culture, and social justice, it is important to remain grounded not only as education practitioners but also as people with lived experiences. And our lived experiences tell us that belonging matters. The climate and culture of a campus speak to students, and the seemingly small interactions they have with us and other stakeholders all set the tone for the total student experience. It is imperative that we not only discuss the issue of belonging but that we also explore its impact on student success by evaluating how leaders, faculty, and staff effectively shape the student journey at our institutions and what it means when they don’t.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Michelle Cantu-Wilson is the Director of Teaching and Learning Initiatives and Special Projects at San Jacinto College in southeast Houston. She is a member of the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE) and is the co-host of LatinX Learners along with Daniel Villanueva, Vice President of Enrollment at the University of Houston-Downtown.
Michelle has worked closely with the Diverse Student Populations – Equity, Education, and Excellence Department at the college and has been involved in district-wide equity work that has seen the creation of college-wide Equity Chats for employees. These chats aim to create a safe space where colleagues can discuss equity issues such as racial injustice.
In her former role as a faculty member, she created the San Jac 1st Gen student club and mentoring program aimed at supporting first generation college students through mentoring relationships with faculty and staff who were once first gen students themselves. Michelle has also worked with the college’s Office of Judicial Affairs and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to create and lead district-wide trainings on supporting students with autism.
Michelle is from Brownsville, Texas and resides in Houston, Texas with her husband, Brock, her three children, Emma, Ava, and Easton, and her dogs Sonny and Bella. She is an avid reader and writer, and her go-to motto is “Nothing bad is going to happen if you care about your students too much.”
Spotlight Speaker: James Chase Sanchez
Session Title
Implicit Bias and Legacies of White Supremacy
In this workshop, Dr. James Chase Sanchez will guide the audience through raw interview footage of people discussing race and racism from his last documentary, Man on Fire, which was about the legacy of white supremacy in Sanchez’s hometown of Grand Saline, TX. Participants will spend time in small groups and a larger group discussing the rhetorical underpinnings of each interview’s ideological perspectives on race. In the end, Sanchez will tie these individual interviews to rhetorical, sociological, and critical race theory perspectives to show how we can reframe implicit bias and white supremacy.
Speaker Bio
James Chase Sanchez is assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Middlebury College in Vermont. He comes there after living in Texas his entire life.
Sanchez’s research interests are in cultural and racial rhetorics, public memory, and documentary filmmaking, and his research has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, and Present Tense.
He will have two books published this year: a co-authored manuscript titled Race, Rhetoric, and Research Ethics and a single-authored manuscript titled Salt of the Earth: Rhetoric, Preservation, and White Supremacy. The latter monograph is partly based upon a documentary Sanchez produced, titled Man on Fire, which won an International Documentary Association Award in 2017 and aired on PBS via Independent Lens in 2018. Sanchez is currently producing a new feature-length documentary about two elite New England boarding schools that have covered-up sexual assault and rape allegations for several decades.
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