November is Native American Heritage Month, which is also the month many people in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving. While it’s tempting to ignore history and focus on the benign, familiar archetypes of Pilgrims and Indians, the reality for Indigenous Peoples is far more complex. At CU Denver, Native student Queana Maher, students from the Native American Student Organization (NASO), and Professor John Ronquillo, PhD, co-chair of the university’s new Equity Task Force, discussed what Native American Heritage Month means to them.
As more organizations increasingly recognize the need to move beyond solidarity statements and into the work of creating more equitable policies and cultures in their workplaces, the CU Denver School of Public Affairs dedicated its inaugural First Fridays event for the 2020-21 academic year to this topic. The virtual event, Leading Towards Equity: Stories of Organizational Change, held on Sept. 11, brought together panelists who have been doing this organizational work for some time.
CU Denver School of Public Affairs was a co-host for the 2019 conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), held at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel from November 7 to 9. This year’s conference theme was “Rising to the Challenge: Engaging Diverse Perspectives on Issues and Evidence,” and more than 20 of the school’s faculty and students are participating. Below is a list of presentations by CU Denver School of Public Affairs.