I.Keynote Speech: Securing Our 21st Century Future: The Role of Diversity in Higher Education

• I.Keynote Speech: Securing Our 21st Century Future: The Role of Diversity in Higher Education

Congratulations! You have just been asked to give a keynote speech to the upcoming higher education conference in your state. The conference chair has asked you to talk about the role of diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice in higher education and on our campuses, especially given the current political climate not just in the U.S., but in a number of other countries and locales around the globe. As a starting place, she has provided you with this quotation from Daryl Smith’s book:

Diversity is a powerful agent of change. Indeed, diversity is an imperative that must be embraced if colleges and universities are to be successful in a pluralistic and interconnected world. While technology has long been recognized as a transformative element of society, the dynamics of diversity are reshaping the world and its institutions with equal impact. Like technology, diversity offers significant opportunities to fulfill the mission of higher education and to serve institutional excellence, albeit in new ways. The question is not whether we want diversity or whether we should accommodate diversity, for diversity is clearly our present and our future. Rather, it is time to move beyond old questions and to ask instead how we can build diversity into the center of higher education, where it can serve as a powerful facilitator of institutional mission and societal purpose.

[Smith, D. (2015). Diversity’s promise for higher education (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.]

For this assignment, you will write and deliver a 5-7 minute speech entitled “Securing Our 21st Century Future: The Role of Diversity in Higher Education” addressing what you see as the need for, and the role of, diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice in higher education and on our campuses. You should use all available information you have been learning from our class, plus any other outside resources you deem appropriate to craft your speech. You will need to submit your actual speech to me in addition to delivering your speech. You may either do your speech in class, or my preference is that you do a high quality video, upload it to YouTube, and then share the link with the class. You will need to deliver/upload your speech no later than April 21.

Your speech will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Use of Time: the speech is balanced and an appropriate amount of attention is given to each major point or content area; the presentation makes full use of the time allocated – it does not seem rushed or superficially drawn out, and does not end too early or go past the designated ending time.

Delivery: information is presented in a motivating manner and seems designed to pique the interest of the audience.

Content: the topic areas of the speech are covered comprehensively and in appropriate depth and detail — but not in an overindulgent manner; the presentation stays coherently centered on the primary points being made.

Critical Thinking: the speech demonstrates critical thinking skills appropriate to a graduate-level class; statements of opinion are reinforced by empirical evidence or outside research.

Proactive Bias: the focus of the speech is on application of the material as opposed to just describing, summarizing or critiquing what is covered.