It’s right in Indiana Tech’s mission statement: our university’s desire to “motivate students toward lives of significance and worth.”
But what does living a life of significance and worth look like? That depends on who you ask.
- For some it’s having the wherewithal to actively participate in what our world has to offer—to relish in its beauty and share it with those you love, and to live with compassion, help others and treat them as you hope they would treat you.
- For others, it’s identifying a vocation you are good at and excelling at it, gaining confidence and gratification as you rise up the ladder of success and riding that momentum all the way to the top rung.
- For most, it’s a melding of both approaches—to varying degrees—that helps us find our significance in this life and gives us a sense of worth.
During this year’s Tech Talks series, we are going to introduce you to different people in our community and see what living a life of significance and worth means to them. Perhaps these interactions will help you clarify what it means to you.
Fall Event Schedule
This 45-minute, high-energy program combines live entertainment, interactive polling and compelling video to lower the stigma surrounding mental health and reveal how this awareness contributes to a life of significance and worth. The webinar encourages students to talk to a trusted adult so that their secret struggle—whatever it is—does not have the final say on their future.
Seitz Conference Center
American Association of University Women’s Work SMART event is specifically designed to teach participants how to negotiate salaries for a new job. In every two-hour workshop, participants will gain confidence in their negotiation style through facilitated discussion and role play.
From stocking street-corner food pantries to driving disabled veterans to their doctor’s appointments, not-for-profit organizations and community volunteers do immeasurable good within our city. Serving others with compassion is their idea of living a life of significance and worth. During our Service Festival, Indiana Tech will host area not-for-profits and Indiana Tech students who volunteer to showcase their causes and inspire attendees to embrace the value of serving others.
D'Agostino Art Gallery
“A Life of Significance and Worth” can be viewed and defined in many ways, and we want to know how you see this lived out in the world around you. As we look ahead to the upcoming year, the Tech Talks committee is planning to feature a display in the Snyder Academic Center lower level gallery that highlights individuals who are living lives of significance and worth. We will feature individuals by displaying pictures and a write-up about the work they are doing or contributions they are making.
Online
JoAnne Bland, co-founder and former director of the National Voting Rights Museum in her hometown of Selma, Alabama, will talk about her participation in the Civil Rights Movement and follow with a Q&A session.
JoAnne was a highly active participant in the Civil Rights Movement from her earliest days and was the youngest person to have been jailed during any civil rights demonstration during that period. She grew up in a segregated Selma, where her mother died in a "white" hospital while waiting for a transfusion of "black blood." Her grandmother encouraged Bland and her sister to march and become a freedom fighter for the Civil Rights Movement. Fearing for their lives, her father disapproved, but it did not stop Bland who became active in the movement when she was eight years old.
About Tech Talks...
The Tech Talks series is a collaboration between Indiana Tech’s Academics and Student Affairs departments. The purpose of the co-curricular series, which centers on a yearly theme, is to promote active dialogue and awareness about important issues of social justice across the globe.
Through this series, the university hopes to:
- Foster a sense of campus community and acceptance
- Promote critical thinking about the historical and social contexts of contemporary social challenges
- Raise awareness of global issues impacting the development of a just society
- Educate students on the ways in which global issues can be addressed through a variety of professional disciplines
- Engage the campus and the greater Fort Wayne community in joint dialogue on issues of justice
- Educate students on the role of empathy with those impacted by social injustice in the promotion of a civil society