Students at the Margins - Day One

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Oct 11, 2014
by Louise Hallman
Students at the Margins - Day One

First global conference on minority serving institutions opens in Salzburg

Michael Nettles and Marybeth Gasman open the Salzburg Global program on minority serving institutions

The first ever international conference on minority serving institutions has opened in Salzburg.

Hosted at the historic palace of Schloss Leopoldskron by Salzburg Global Seminar, in partnership with Educational Testing Services and the Center on Minority Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania, and sponsored by the Kresge Foundation, the program Students at the Margins and the Institutions that Serve Them: A Global Perspective is the first of its kind.

Minority serving institutions (MSIs) exist all over the world – albeit they may not all refer to themselves as such. Whilst there is much research being conducted on and many networking opportunities offered  for MSIs, especially the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HCBUs), in the US, there does not currently exist a global forum for like-minded institutions to come together to learn about and from each other and collaborate on better ways to serve their respective minority communities. 

In addition to institutions that specifically serve minorities, the program will also address how “mainstream” institutions can better serve all marginalized students, be they minorities, first generation, low-income, undocumented students, adult learners, veterans, and refugees, amongst others. 

Marginalized students are not always the minority; as one participant from South Africa pointed out, in her country “the margins make up nearly the whole circle.” Another participant asked: “Who decides the margins?”

Opening the session, co-chairs Michael Nettles, senior vice president of ETS and Marybeth Gasman, UPenn professor and director of the Center on Minority Serving Institutions both spoken not only of the professional but also the personal interest and investment they had in the session’s topic (Nettles as a child of HCBU-attending parents and Gasman as the first and only of ten children from her poor rural family to attend college), and they urged the more than 50 participants to move outside of their comfort zones this week and find potential collaborators beyond their usual sectors and national boundaries. 


The session "Students at the Margins and the Institutions that Serve Them: A Global Perspective" is being conducted in partnership with Educational Testing Service and Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. You can follow all discussions on Twitter with the hashtag #SalzburgMSI and read all our coverage on the session page: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/537