The Intercultural Center is in the process of being completed./Amy Wetzel
A new Intercultural Center is being implemented on campus by the recently appointed Associate Dean for Multicultural Affairs and Student Transitions, Robert Benjamin.
The center, located in the old Veritas office in the Mann Student Center, will provide a location for intellectual and social conversations. The goal is that it will serve to challenge and better ENC’s tight-knit community.
The Intercultural Center will be open to all students, staff, and faculty, and will provide the community with a supportive environment to freely discuss and reflect upon certain campus topics pertaining to different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic classes.
Its mission is to “enhance our community’s intercultural knowledge, competency, and leadership through its programs, support, resources, and advocacy,” Benjamin said.
The center will host various workshops, exhibitions, and lectures to discuss important issues such as race, ethnicity, and socio-economic class.
Benjamin hopes that the Intercultural Center will help the ENC community embrace the evident diversity on campus.
ENC’s vision statement focuses highly on “embracing its multicultural and urban environment” and does this by “preparing its students to lead and serve in a diverse world.” The Intercultural Center is designed in part to help fulfill these parts of the ENC vision statement.
“We all have a heritage. It is up to all of us to fully understand our own, along with the heritages of others. We need to learn what others value, and how others face issues in this life,” Benjamin said.
“This center will prove to change the [campus] dynamic by challenging us to think out of the box,” Benjamin said, “More complicated thinking will turn into a greater outcome. We will achieve this outcome by evaluating and understanding multiple perspectives, not just our own.”