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Building Anew: Anchoring Student Success in a Divided Landscape

Seminar

Imagining Something Different: A Participatory Model for Connection, Collective Growth, and Healing

Wednesday, January 21, 2026
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM East Coast USA Time
Location: Independence Salon B/C - Level M4

    Primary Presenter(s)

  • Meaghan Kozar

    Project Director, Inclusive Campus Initiative
    Michigan State University, United States

    PDF

    • Co-Presenter(s)

  • Swapna Hingwe

    Director, Counseling and Psychiatric Services
    Michigan State University, United States

  • Paola Leon Arizmendi

    Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence and Academic Innovation, Lyman Briggs College
    Michigan State University, United States

  • Brenda Nelson

    Associate Director of DEIB for Culinary Services, Residential and Hospitality Services
    Michigan State University, United States

Participation is limited to 25 people.

What does it take to foster belonging in a time of disconnection and constraint? This interactive seminar will offer a reflective, healing-informed approach to cultivating connection, legacy, and care across campus roles. Drawing from Michigan State University’s Inclusive Impact Conference, participants will explore how memory, cultural expression, and creativity can support student success and community resilience.

Through guided mapping, small-group dialogue, and shared reflection, attendees will examine the tensions between institutional messaging and lived experience and consider practices that foster trust, collaboration, and continuity in their own contexts.

This session invites participants to reflect on what sustains them, what’s at risk, and what’s possible. Together, we will consider how care and connection might serve as durable strategies for student retention, meaningful campus engagement, and the kind of institutional practice that attends to dignity, recognition, and the uneven conditions under which students and those who support them work and learn.