Dean’s Updates

International Roundtable Reflection and Invitation for New Questions

Thanks to colleagues at Institutional Research (Bethany Miller and Adam Johnson), we are pleased to share the above assessment data of the 31st International Roundtable held in October. Our registration system logged 180 attendees of this year’s IRT, 70 (39%) of whom were community members, alums, or parents. We have reasons to congratulate ourselves as a community, and we also have work to do to bring more students, faculty, and staff to Roundtable events. 

As a qualitative sociologist, I am drawn to your words that help us understand what worked and what could be improved, such as “[I wish for] more time with the prairie.”

After attending the standing-room-only keynote speech by Dr. John Kim, some of you wished for more room, more places to sit. There were also wishes for “more risk taking and experimentation”, more authenticity and vulnerability, and for maintaining the transdisciplinary approach of IRT 2024. 

One of my own favorite moments was spent in the Koch Gallery where Professor Megan Vossler curated a participatory art exhibition. What a privilege it was to be part of an artistic collaboration featuring our students!

Another memorable moment from IRT2024: during the pre-IRT event Public Resting and Embodied Reading, our keynote speaker Dr. Bayo Akomolafe fell asleep at his own words read out loud by guest artist, Marcus Young.

Having sensed the tension between Macalester’s activist traditions and his thinking on posthumanism and post-activism, Bayo wished for more time with the Macalester community – a wish on its way to becoming true. Macalester has invited him to be the Humphrey Distinguished Professor in 2025-2026. In addition to hosting community events with KAIGC, Bayo will also teach an American Studies course “Parapolitics and Blackness” in Fall 2025.

Moving towards IRT 2025, we gift ourselves the luxury of exploring transdisciplinary ideas akin to the theme of IRT 2024 “Slowing Down, Seeking Roots, Making Sanctuary: Belonging Beyond the Anthropocene”. We invite you to linger and consider: Having experienced or knowing something of the IRT in 2024, what intrigues you now? What questions do you think we should explore as a community?

(Artwork in response to Bayo Akomolafe’s book Letters to My Daughter, by Liz Bolsoni, a current member of KAIGC Embodied Reading Group, Program Coordinator at Office of Student Research and Creativity)