The GLBT Center will introduce a Lunch & Learn Series as a part of its GLBT Advocate Program. The GLBT Advocate Program: Lunch & Learn Series will meet monthly and work to advance the content knowledge and skills acquisition of faculty and staff around topics related to intersectional social justice. Featuring the academic research and advocacy work of faculty and staff who focus on dismantling systemic and institutional barriers present for marginalized communities, this program will work to provide concrete skills and strategies that may be used to create a culture of support and advocacy for the GLBT community.

This semester’s Lunch & Learn topics will explore strategies to integrate social justice into the current curricula, ways in which language influences the construction of gender and how faculty and staff can support student activism and advocacy. During these meetings, participants will engage in a facilitated discussion led by a faculty member who is conducting research, providing services or engaging in advocacy work geared towards the experiences of the GLBT community. The GLBT Center will host the first installment of the Lunch & Learn Series, “The Social Justice Syllabus: Tools for Integrating Inclusion into the Curriculum,” presented by Dr. Elizabeth Nelson, teaching assistant professor, director of COMM 110, and director of First Year Inquiry on September 20, 2017 in Talley 5101 from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Participation in the Lunch & Learn Series will fulfill the event requirement for participants in the Advocate Program. Requirements for the Advocate Program include participation in at least one workshop and one event hosted by the GLBT Center during the academic year. In addition to the Lunch & Learn Series, the GLBT Center will continue to engage faculty and staff in the GLBT Advocate Program through continuing education opportunities. The program will debut four new workshops this semester, “Internalized Oppression,” “Creating Accomplices: Supporting Queer and Transgender Students of Color,” “Shifting Our Framework for Supporting Students with Disabilities in the Classroom,” and “Indistinct Distinctions: Sexism, Heterosexism & Trans Oppression.”

• Register online for one or more of these workshops.

Preston Keith is assistant director of the GLBT Center.