Olivares will report directly to the dean of the Arts, Sciences & Engineering faculty. The move elevates the recognition and consideration of the importance of diversity issues within the Deans’ Office.

The Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center celebrated its fifth anniversary on Friday, January 19. Named after the longtime University dean, vice president and senior advisor to the president, the center is a joint venture of the Office of the Dean of Students and the David T. Kearns Center and is located in Douglass Commons. It promotes cultural awareness and engagement, educates on issues of identity, culture, and diversity, and provides opportunities for collaboration. Nearly 2,000 people visited the center during the 2016-17 academic year. “We are all members of the human race,” Burgett said. “This center celebrates that, and enables us to develop fluency and appreciation for one another.”

Four-time Emmy Award-winner and pioneer of Latino broadcasting Maria Hinojosa says “it’s pretty surreal” to be delivering the University’s MLK Commemorative Address this week. She calls Martin Luther King Jr., her “first American hero, the first person who made me believe I had a voice in this country.”

In this essay, Sasha Eloi-Evans ’05, ’17 (W), the academic programming coordinator for the Office of Minority Student Affairs and a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, reflects on diversity in higher education in the nearly 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honor society for liberal arts and sciences, celebrates its birthday this month, and we honor the 17 students who were elected last spring as juniors.

During Monday’s ceremony, Runner discussed his path from college dropout to dean, and his desire to make the University a place of inclusiveness for all.

Feldman Ballroom in Douglass Commons was transformed into a 16th century English court for the annual Boar’s Head Dinner, a University tradition since 1934. The banquet was inspired by a 16th-century Oxford University legend in which a student walking through the woods was attacked by a wild boar and saved by a fellow scholar who thrust a copy of Aristotle’s work down the boar’s throat.

The four-time Emmy winner and host of National Public Radio’s Latino USA and PBS’s America By The Numbers will deliver the University’s 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Address on Friday, January 19.

Language Center director Teresa Valdez speaks at an event Tuesday celebrating the center’s one-year anniversary. Located in Douglass Commons, the center’s mission is to raise intercultural awareness and promote the 18 languages offered on the River Campus. Valdez says enrollment in foreign language classes has increased 22 percent since the center opened last fall.(University of Rochester photo / Jordan Mangefrida)