Colorado School of Mines kicked off Delta Days, a week celebrating and promoting diversity, January 21.
The week began observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with a faculty and staff breakfast. At the event, three members of the Mines community were honored for their efforts in enhancing diversity across campus: Maureen Durkin, director of policy and planning; Bruce Goetz, director of undergraduate admissions; and Clifford Sanden, undergraduate student in the Department of Petroleum Engineering.
The recipients of the MLK Day Recognition Award, as it is called, were selected with this criteria:
- Developed an innovative program, policy, or activity which has enhanced diversity within the unit, department, or program.
- Contributed distinctively to fostering understanding and respect for diversity within the campus community.
- Demonstrated a commitment to a philosophy of inclusion by initiating positive interactions between persons of different cultural backgrounds.
- Demonstrated outstanding progress or achievement in one or more of the four priorities of the President’s Diversity Initiative which include: campus climate, broaden and deepen faculty diversity, increase female student enrollment, and increase underrepresented minority enrollment.
Dr. Winston Grady-Willis, professor and department chair of African and African American Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver was a guest speaker at the event. Dr. Winston Grady-Willis earned a BA in history from Columbia, an MPS in Africana Studies from Cornell, and a PhD in history from Emory. Prior to coming to MSU Denver he was director of intercultural studies and associate professor of American studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. While at Syracuse University, where he taught and labored in the Department of African American Studies, he received the Meredith Teaching Recognition Award. His book, "Challenging U.S. Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights," 1960-1977 (Duke), seeks to provide a gendered examination of the contemporary black freedom movement. His articles have appeared in Presence Africaine, The Black Panther Party Reconsidered and Black Prison Movements, USA.
For a full list of Delta Days events, click here.
