Decolonizing Education
Undergraduate Research Symposium
SCSU’s Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual academic event that highlights our undergraduate community’s contributions to research, while offering students a platform to showcase their work.
As we work towards an anti-colonial and anti-racist framework, we acknowledge that knowledge is not objective. We want to focus on expanding the boundaries of traditional research contributions by creating a space that engages a variety of identities, histories, and non-colonial methods of knowledge.
URS will be taking place from March 30th to April 1st, 2023.
Call for Submissions
Theme
Decolonizing education means rebuilding a school system that supports all students, staff, and teachers. A system that puts forth the needs of all students and is responsive to the particular needs of each and every individual. Due to decades of underfunding and a foundation of Eurocentric pedagogical bias, BIPOC and low-income students are at a disadvantage in our education system. We need to prioritize and provide space for more representation in all aspects of education. Whether that be through governments advocating for progressive equity-based policy, or BIPOC teachers in the classroom; we need to reinvent our education system so that students across identities are able to thrive.
Science Prompts
How can Indigenous healing practices be incorporated into public health in efforts to move beyond the Western hegemony?
In what ways can research be adapted to incorporate alternative methods beyond the traditional strategies of data and information collection?
How does Indigenous-led knowledge promote biodiversity conservation or climate justice efforts?
Management Prompts
How can funding sources shift away from big banks and large corporations to empower more socially-conscious investment strategies?
In what ways can financial institutions support Indigenous-led businesses?
What tools and resources can be implemented to empower BIPOC entrepreneurship?
Humanities Prompts
How has mainstream credited research tokenized and/or exploited beliefs and knowledge of BIPOC communities?
What alternative pedagogical methods of learning and teaching could be introduced into classrooms of the Western education system?
How can Indigenous-led knowledge keeping be incorporated into policy-making to improve existing decolonial efforts?