November 2019
As a member of the College of Architecture Diversity Council, I always think about how my own work and our Diversity Council as a platform can contribute to a more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming campus climate for my fellow Aggies and everyone else in our campus community. Last year, a representative from the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC, now GPSG) brought a new idea to our Council meeting and we were able to support their idea by sponsoring some materials. This year, we borrowed that idea and expanded it to an even larger scale so that more people can participate and benefit from it.
The event is called Diversity Greeting Cards. The reason behind this event is that we have a very diverse body of students here in the College of Architecture. Many international students came from around the world to study design, planning, and construction here at Aggieland. We also have domestic students of different ethnicities, with diverse cultural and religious traditions. Not to mention our faculty and staff from very different places and backgrounds. So we want to make the holiday season, which is right around the corner, more warm, inclusive, and welcoming for everyone. That led to the idea of creating greeting cards based on different holiday and festival celebrations: New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Diwali, Holi, Chinese New Year, Mid-autumn Festival, Iranian New Year….
We host a table for participants to color a postcard, draw their own design, and we sponsor stamps to help them mail out the greeting cards to their friends and families in any corner of the world. Our participants told us that the coloring activity itself is a great de-stressing moment for them. And we are happy that we can help them to send out some old-school greeting cards so they can be better connect with their friends and families. I do want to take a moment and thank those previous students who brought this idea to our Diversity Council last year. We hope that this year we can offer this opportunity to more people, not only students in our College.
This year our Diversity Greeting Cards event table will be on the 2nd floor Atrium of Langford Architecture Building A (ARCA). We will be there every weekday at 1-2pm from Thursday November 14 to Tuesday November 26. Come say hi, share the holiday and festival traditions in your culture, and create a beautiful greeting card for your loved ones! We will mail it for you! See you there.
---Mingqian Liu
Mingqian Liu is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Architecture
The event is called Diversity Greeting Cards. The reason behind this event is that we have a very diverse body of students here in the College of Architecture. Many international students came from around the world to study design, planning, and construction here at Aggieland. We also have domestic students of different ethnicities, with diverse cultural and religious traditions. Not to mention our faculty and staff from very different places and backgrounds. So we want to make the holiday season, which is right around the corner, more warm, inclusive, and welcoming for everyone. That led to the idea of creating greeting cards based on different holiday and festival celebrations: New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Diwali, Holi, Chinese New Year, Mid-autumn Festival, Iranian New Year….
We host a table for participants to color a postcard, draw their own design, and we sponsor stamps to help them mail out the greeting cards to their friends and families in any corner of the world. Our participants told us that the coloring activity itself is a great de-stressing moment for them. And we are happy that we can help them to send out some old-school greeting cards so they can be better connect with their friends and families. I do want to take a moment and thank those previous students who brought this idea to our Diversity Council last year. We hope that this year we can offer this opportunity to more people, not only students in our College.
This year our Diversity Greeting Cards event table will be on the 2nd floor Atrium of Langford Architecture Building A (ARCA). We will be there every weekday at 1-2pm from Thursday November 14 to Tuesday November 26. Come say hi, share the holiday and festival traditions in your culture, and create a beautiful greeting card for your loved ones! We will mail it for you! See you there.
---Mingqian Liu
Mingqian Liu is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Department of Architecture