Cultural Diversity Conference
This conference offers critical thinking and skill-building opportunities for business persons, professionals, students, faculty, organizations and communities. It is an educational opportunity designed to enhance or change behavior so that the behavior reflects cultural competence or the ability to effectively provide services across cultures. For the purposes of the conference, cultural competence is defined as the ability to interpret the experiences and behaviors of a cultural group in a way that makes members of the group feel respected and encouraged to pursue their definition of success.
This "capacity building" conference is to enrich the curriculum of university students and provide rich employer, employee, and faculty development opportunities. This conference is further to provide resources to institutions and organizations in increasing cultural competence through the establishment of partnerships.
This focus on business and service organizations as partners with higher education will increase awareness of the issues in the field of cultural diversity and provide opportunities for personal, professional, institutional, and community growth.
The conference is usually scheduled biennially in October or November of odd years starting on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University. There is always featured an opening keynote by an internationally renowned celebrity. There are other plenary sessions, 50-100 workshops and roundtables and several day-long institutes. Throughout the conference the world-views, histories and visual and performing arts of cultures from around the world and particularly in the Southeastern region of the US are highlighted.
You may consider being one of the conference sponsors by doing one of the following:
- help a group of students attend this event (each students x $200 registration fee); or
- underwrite the cost of one of the major conference activities ($5,000-$100,000)
During the year of the conference, a link to a conference registration form will be placed here. Please contact The Office of Institutional Diversity, at 615-898-5975 or cdinit@mtsu.edu for additional information.