This symposium is designed to ignite lasting change. By bringing together diverse voices and perspectives, we will focus on:

• Collaborating across sectors and communities
• Building actionable plans to navigate complex challenges
• Empowering communities by addressing current needs to foster inclusion

For additional information

Contact CEIC via email.

Sponsorship opportunities available.

In an era of increasing polarization, the ability to speak freely across differences is more than a constitutional principle to study, it is an essential life skill to be constructively developed and practiced. Community spaces, and especially universities, can provide the essential infrastructure to achieve the constitutional ideals embodied in the concept of freedom of expression. This practical workshop applies the elements of an expressive activity policy to various scenarios to explore how institutions balance free speech principles with operational needs and community concerns.

The workshop features student voices sharing their experiences navigating controversial topics, learning through disagreement, and engaging across differences within established frameworks for public expression. Participants will learn to distinguish between content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions versus impermissible content-based limitations. The session provides actionable guidance for educators, administrators, and community leaders who manage public spaces and navigate expression-related challenges.

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand the essential legal elements for creating policies and procedures that protect expression while maintaining institutional operations and community safety
2. Apply time, place, and manner frameworks to real-world scenarios involving expressive activity in public spaces
3. Identify practical strategies to work with constituents within the community to create an environment conducive to public expressive activities

Explore and examine the difference between community “engagement” and genuine power-sharing. Participants will examine common surface-level engagement practices, identify where decision-making authority truly resides, and learn practical frameworks for shifting from consultation to co-governance. Learn to elevate community voice, accountability, and shared leadership with concrete tools and strategies to support equitable and inclusive growth.

Learning Outcomes

Coming soon

Effective change doesn’t happen by accident; it requires planning that scales with complexity and respects community voice. This interactive workshop maps the change journey—from Awareness to Understanding, Engagement, and Ownership—and explores how inclusive planning can turn good intentions into lasting impact. Participants will learn practical, adaptable tools for tailoring communication to diverse audiences, anticipating resistance in ways that honor lived experience, and creating conditions for shared ownership so change is sustained and locally led.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

1. Examine the human journey of change and its implications for change leaders
2. Provide strategies for understanding change constituencies and anticipating sources of resistance
3. Explore how to adapt change management practices based on change complexity and constituent needs
4. Identify ways to create conditions for shared ownership and sustainability

A facilitated panel discussion featuring SVSU international students Gabriel Bartholomay from Brazil, Computer Science; Esther Gariba from Ghana, M.S. in Computer Science and Information Systems; and Ankit Sanjel from Nepal, Computer Science

International students diversify campuses and enrich the global learning environment for both the university and local communities. Many serve as cultural ambassadors, building bridges for mutual understanding. This session provides an overview of SVSU’s international student services and campus internationalization efforts. Centering the lived experiences of international students, it offers actionable strategies for moving forward together to create more inclusive and supportive learning environments. Participants will gain insight into systemic barriers, campus climate, and practical strategies to foster belonging and student success.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Understand SVSU’s international student services and campus internationalization
2. Identify academic, cultural, and systemic challenges faced by international students
3. Apply inclusive and forward-thinking strategies to better support international students’ sense of belonging and mutual understanding

“Have a Great Mental Health Day!” is a practical, strengths-based wellness presentation focused on simple, everyday behaviors that support emotional balance, stress regulation, and overall functioning. Rather than focusing on crisis or pathology, this session highlights small, sustainable self-care habits that individuals can integrate into daily life to improve mood, concentration, energy, and resilience.

Participants will explore evidence-informed mental health practices that promote well-being, normalize help-seeking, and reinforce the idea that mental health care is a daily practice—not just something addressed during difficult moments.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

1. Increase Awareness: Demonstrate increased awareness of how daily habits influence mental, emotional, and physical well-being
2. Apply Practical Strategies: Identify at least three self-care behaviors they can realistically incorporate into their daily or weekly routine
3. Strengthen Help-Seeking Attitudes: Exhibit reduced stigma and increased comfort with accessing professional and community mental health resources when needed

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand how the Michigan Department of Civil Rights is continuing enforcement of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act within the current political and regulatory environment.
2. Examine emerging national policy developments, including Project 2025, and their potential impact on civil rights and anti-discrimination protections.
3. Identify implications for employers, educational institutions, and community organizations navigating changing compliance and equity expectations.
4. • Strengthen awareness of advocacy, engagement, and leadership strategies that support the protection of civil rights at the local and state level.

This interactive roundtable session centers on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a foundational civil rights framework and a practical tool for advancing inclusive growth across communities. Rather than focusing on technical compliance or legal requirements, the session emphasizes intentional planning, shared responsibility, and everyday decision-making that takes people with disabilities into account from the outset.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

1. Explain the purpose of the ADA as a civil rights framework that supports participation, equity, and economic opportunity, not just legal compliance
2. Commit to at least one actionable step their organization or business can take to advance disability inclusion
3. Recognize shared responsibility for access across public, private, nonprofit, and educational spaces

This workshop shares the design and implementation of Consumers Energy’s Energizing Equity Series; an initiative built on meeting customers in their communities and listening first to understand lived experiences. Through intentional, community-based engagement, Consumers Energy worked to better understand the needs of ALICE and marginalized customers while taking deliberate steps to rebuild trust in communities where relationships had been strained.

The session explores how insights gained through this listening led to tangible affordability outcomes, including a shift toward pairing traditional energy assistance with energy reduction strategies. By focusing on both immediate support and long-term energy cost reduction, the Energizing Equity Series demonstrates how trust centered engagement can drive more sustainable, equitable solutions.

Learning Outcomes

1. Describe how community centered listening and meeting people where they are can rebuild trust with ALICE and marginalized customers.
2. Distinguish between energy assistance and energy reduction strategies and explain how combining both supports long term affordability.
3. Apply key elements of the Energizing Equity Series model to their own community engagement or affordability focused initiatives.

In this session we’ll explore social structures of privilege and marginalization. In an engaged dialogue format, we’ll discuss the ways that we can leverage our identities to support positive change in our institutions and communities. Participants will leave with ways to think about themselves and their communities in a critical way to align values and action.

Learning Outcomes

1. Discuss social identities and their impacts
2. Critically analyze their values and actions
3. Explore systems of privilege and marginalization

The transition from high school to college is often treated as a series of administrative hurdles—financial aid, enrollment, and orientation. But for the student, it is a profound identity shift. In this interactive session, George Copeland of the SVSU Cardinal Partnership Program challenges the “compliance-first” model of student support. Discover how to move beyond simple retention and toward life design, where students are treated as co-architects of their college journey.

Drawing from the Cardinal Partnership’s four-year leadership scaffold, this workshop provides a blueprint for building agency, normalizing uncertainty, and reframing leadership as a practice rather than a title. Whether you are in higher ed, the nonprofit sector, or corporate social responsibility, you will leave with practical tools to move from “doing for” students to “designing with” them.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

1. Identify the “Charter Cardinal Model” Core: Understand how our four-year scholarship scaffold integrates identity work and leadership training into the standard college transition
2. Move from Support to Partnership: Learn practical techniques we use to shift students from passive participants to active “life designers” and program co-creators
3. Replicate Peer & Cohort Strategies: Gain insights into our near-peer mentoring and cohort models that build immediate belonging and reduce isolation for first-generation students
4. Build Cross-Sector Bridges: Apply our framework to connect education, nonprofit, and corporate partners and create a continuous support ecosystem for students

Crises – whether economic, organizational, or community based – are moments when trust is tested, inequities are exposed, and momentum can either stall or accelerate. This session explores how inclusive, prepared crisis communications support economic resilience, community trust, and sustained growth. Attendees will leave with practical tools to communicate clearly, equitably, and confidently when it matters most.

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand how crisis communications directly impacts equity, trust, and participation
2. Identify common communication breakdowns that occur during disruption
3. Apply inclusive crisis communication principles to their own organizations
4. Begin building a “ready, not reactive” crisis communications mindset

Communities face complex health and social challenges that cannot be solved by a single organization or perspective. This interactive workshop explores how community efficacy, diversity, and social capital can drive meaningful and sustainable solutions to shared health concerns. Participants will learn about current initiatives underway in the community and engage in facilitated small‑group discussions to generate practical, community‑informed solutions to key health issues, including obesity and chronic disease, maternal and infant health, community health equity, and behavioral and substance health.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

1. Explain the role of community efficacy and diversity in addressing complex community problems
2. Describe how social capital strengthens collaboration and improves health outcomes
3. Identify current community‑based efforts addressing priority health issues
4. Develop and share actionable solution ideas through collaborative group work