Honors College to Host Lowcountry Citizens’ Summit

What’s the best way to help your community move toward positive change? Most experts agree that active engagement can make the biggest difference, and that’s just what the staff, faculty and students within the Honors College intend to foster when they co-host the Lowcountry Citizens’ Summit on Saturday, March 30, 2019.

This full-day event will feature a series of panel discussions moderated by leaders from various sectors of the Charleston community. Students, staff and faculty from the College will be joined by representatives from Charleston area organizations and citizen leaders for a day of broad conversations to help Charleston become a more productive and equitable community.

According to Robert Maynor ’17, assistant director of student engagement for the Honors College, much of the support for this event comes from Honors College students who are part of the Scholar-Citizen Initiative, a group dedicated to fostering relationships between individuals on campus and in the Charleston community. Maynor says that this group also endeavors to raise awareness about critical social issues and seeks to effect positive change through civic engagement and education.

Morgan Seidel, a senior Honors College student who is the executive director of the Scholar-Citizen Initiative, says the summit provides both the Charleston community and the students at the College the ability to connect with other groups of people who share their same passion.

“Typically,” Seidel says, “conversations regarding social justice issues, specifically on college campuses, are stratified and create a microcosm of a ‘solution’ that only includes the perspective of other college students. When we are able to come together as a united front to discuss with community leaders, students and outside perspectives, we are given the unique opportunity to workshop creative ideas for all involved.”

This year’s event will feature a panel discussion titled “Redefining Leadership.” The panel will emphasize women in leadership as part of the College’s Year of the Woman celebration. Panelists include Vanessa Brown, of the Charleston County School District and the Shared Future Project, and Julie Hussey, of the League of Women Voters and Civic Communications, LLC.

The Lowcountry Citizen’s Summit will begin at 10 a.m. in the Stern Center Ballroom. It is co-sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity and the Riley Center for Livable Communities. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested through this link: https://cofc.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eu5F7XfmNqhwUbH. For more information, visit the event’s Facebook page.

Article by Dan Dickison. For more on this story, check out The College Today!

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