Siena Heights University will present the second annual Scholarship Symposium on Wednesday, April 20.  The event will kick off with a keynote address by Dr. Danielle McGuire, who is an associate professor of History at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Her talk, entitled “The Power of the Past: History and the Art of Storytelling,” will illuminate why history matters to our contemporary society. Using examples from her research on racial and sexual violence in the civil rights movement, she will help understand how interdisciplinary research and powerful writing has the potential to change lives and do real work in the present.

After the keynote address, there will be a series of breakout sessions throughout the remainder of the day, including oral presentations in Dominican Hall and Studio Angelico, and two interdisciplinary poster sessions in Benincasa. More than 180 students will participate in the symposium; seniors and other students will present their senior projects and other fruits of their contemplation to the Siena and Adrian communities. Each presenter spending 30 minutes presenting their topics and then a 30 minute Q&A session follows.

Senior sport management major Kenneth DeGraaf, who is participating in the symposium, said, “For the senior symposium I will be presenting my senior case study all sport managements are required to complete before graduation. For this case I was handed a sports organization and was basically given the free will of what I want to do with the company moving forward.”

“Those attending our presentations will get a first-hand glimpse at this and how as future SHU alumni, we plan to handle such situations,” DeGraaf added.

If you don’t know much about a major, come out and learn more about what people outside of your major are doing and how they will impact the workforce they are entering.

There will also be electronic presentations available at http://shu-symposium.sienaheights.edu/ by students in the College for Professional Studies. The full program will also be available at that site. There are no classes that day, and the event is free and open to the public.

“Our cases are supposed to remain confidential until presentation day, so I can’t say all too much about it,” DeGraaf said, “If I tell you, I’ll fail the class.”

So, as much as I tried to get out of Kenneth, he couldn’t tell me anything, so go to the Scholarship Symposium to listen to Kenneth and the other hard working students excited to present! Since there is no class on April 20, we should see you there!