The campus community is invited to the Mellon-funded Generative Futures Kickoff, the inaugural event in the Generative Futures series centered on Critical Language Inquiry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, featuring Dr. Ruha Benjamin.

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. in Celeste Theatre, Benjamin will deliver the series’ inaugural lecture. A professor at Princeton University and Founding Director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab, Benjamin is an internationally recognized scholar whose work explores the relationship between technology, inequality, imagination, and social change.

She is the author of Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019).

A book signing will follow the lecture, with books available for purchase. 

The event is free and open to the Colorado College community and the public.

The Generative Futures series is sponsored by the Mellon Humanities for All Times grant.

Questions? Contact the Generative Futures team at generativefutures@coloradocollege.edu.

14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

Family Weekend returns Sept. 25-27, bringing Tiger families to campus for three days of events, activities, and plenty of reasons for students to get in on the fun.

Friday kicks off with the Outdoor Education Fall Bike & Gear Sale from 2-4 p.m., followed by the Student Research & Internship Symposium from 3-5 p.m. in Cornerstone, and the Family Weekend Block Party from 7-9 p.m. on Tutt Quad, featuring live music from CC student bands, Josh & John’s Ice Cream, firepits, and s’mores. Throughout the weekend, families and students can also enjoy campus events, athletics, performances, and Family Night Out at Trainwreck, with food, arcade games, billiards, golf simulators, and more.

Check out the full Family Weekend schedule and make some plans with your people.

Hear from Ken Salazar ’77 on Monday, Sept. 28, from 6:30-8 p.m. in Celeste Theatre for a conversation about identity, diversity, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the future of North America.

Salazar, a former U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Interior, and Ambassador to Mexico, will discuss ideas from his book, Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America. Santiago Guerra, Professor of Southwest Studies, and Rosalie Rodriguez, Interim Dean of Students and College Diversity Officer, will facilitate the conversation.

Salazar’s book will be available for purchase, and a book signing will follow the event. Admission is free, but seating is limited so register today! Registration closes the day of the event, Monday, Sept. 28.

Colorado College is transitioning from Canva to Adobe Express. CC’s institutional Canva access will end on Wednesday, Oct. 14, and Adobe Express will be our design platform moving forward.

If you currently use Canva, please take a few minutes before Oct. 14 to back up and download any files you want to keep. After that date, you will no longer have access to your files through CC’s institutional Canva account.

Adobe Express offers CC-branded templates, fonts, and design tools to help you create materials that align with our refreshed brand. For more information and resources, visit the Office of Communications & Marketing website. If you need help getting started or have questions, stop by our Adobe Express open office hours in Spencer 421 on the second Tuesday of each month from 11 a.m.-noon or the fourth Tuesday of each month from 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Institutional Equity & Belonging (IEB) has selected Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars as this semester’s Antiracist Book Club (ABC) selection. Both a prequel and sequel to his bestselling novel There There, Wandering Stars spans generations as it explores the lasting impacts of colonization alongside Indigenous perseverance, resistance, family, community, and hope.

Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to pick up a copy and take part in ABC programming throughout the semester. Complimentary copies are available at the CC Bookstore with a CC ID while supplies last, with limited digital and audiobook copies available through Tutt Library.

Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and a 2025 MacArthur Fellow, will visit CC on Monday, Nov. 9, for an evening event in Kathryn Mohrman Theatre, giving the campus community an opportunity to hear directly from the author later this semester.

Spend First Friday at the Fine Arts Center on Friday, Oct. 2, from 5-8 p.m. and celebrate the opening of Here and Now, Then and Always, a new exhibition pairing works from the FAC Museum’s permanent collection with new commissions by Colorado artists.

Explore the galleries, hear from the exhibition curators, and see how artists across generations have explored place, identity, community, and change. Admission is free and includes the opening celebration, First Friday activities, and access to all museum galleries. RSVPs are encouraged.

Students kicked off the new academic year with the annual tradition Worner After Dark. Photo by Parker Seibold

Block 2—often the busiest time in the fall semester—is upon us! We at the Crown Center hope that you will take time out of your busy schedules to connect with colleagues at our workshops, gatherings, and events. Block 2 offerings invite us to reflect on teaching practices, plan for future growth, and think through challenges together.

Critical Language Inquiry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Ruha Benjamin
Wednesday, Oct. 7, 7 p.m.
Celeste Theatre, Cornerstone Arts Center
Free and open to the public

Dr. Benjamin will give the inaugural presentation in the Generative Futures Lecture Series. Dr. Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Dr. Benjamin is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship. Copies of Imagination: A Manifesto are available at the CC bookstore and at the event. Sponsored by the Mellon Humanities for All Times grant. Have questions? Connect with the team by emailing us at generativefutures@coloradocollege.edu

Crown Center Faculty and Staff Workshop Series: Reading Strategies

Rebecca Tucker (Art History), Tina Valtierra (Education), and Christopher Monahan (Physics)
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 12:15-1:30 p.m.
Tutt Library 105
Registration
Develop practical approaches to help students engage with assigned readings.

Book Launch Event

Tuesday, Sept. 29, 3:30-4:30 p.m.
Cornerstone Arts Center Film Screening Room
Free and open to the public
Help celebrate the publication of Crown Associate Director Jessica Hunter’s novel, A Killing Cold.

Generative Futures Connecting Conversations

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 3:30-5 p.m.
Cossitt Lounge
The Crown Center is hosting a series of semi-structured conversations around the broad themes of the Generative Futures Mellon Grant (Critical Language Inquiry and Critical AI Literacy) throughout the year. Participating in a Connecting Conversation counts toward eligibility for Generative Futures course development grants. Drop in and share your thoughts on a variety of topics. Snacks will be provided!

Crown Center Early Career Faculty Workshop Series: A Year in the Life of CC

Friday, Oct. 2, 12:15-1:30 p.m.
Tutt Library 105
Registration
Sustain a successful academic year by planning for the rhythms of teaching, service, scholarship, and campus life. Work through strategies to shape your year in a way that offers a compelling narrative for your third-year review and tenure files.

Sharing Our Teaching Successes: A Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Workshop with Nancy Chick

Friday, Nov. 13, 12:30-5 p.m. (Block Break 3)
Tutt Library Tim Fuller Event Space 
Registration
Learn techniques for writing critically about your teaching goals, strategies, and outcomes, along with tips for publishing your work. 

This event kicks off the Crown Center’s new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Program, a three-year pilot initiative to support CC faculty in sharing innovative pedagogical practices through publications and conference presentations.

Help the College Understand Students’ Attitudes about AI
CC is participating in a survey with other ACM colleges titled “A Survey of Experience with and Attitudes towards Generative AI Among Undergraduates at SLAC Schools.” This survey will help us better understand how undergraduate students at small liberal arts colleges like ours perceive AI. Please encourage your students to complete the survey between Sept. 28 and Oct. 9.  If you can set aside time in class for students to complete the survey, it will greatly improve our response rate. The survey takes less than 10 minutes to complete, and participants can enter a drawing to win a $20 gift card to the CC bookstore.

14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

If YES, then join the 2026-2027 Building Bridges program! Meet someone new, learn about a different part of CC, get a free lunch, and win some sweet CC swag.
Here are the specific details:

Who: Any CC staff or faculty member.

What: Sign up now, and faculty and staff organizers, members of the Faculty Executive Committee (FEC), Staff Council (SC), and the Office of Institutional Equity and Belonging (IEB) will match you with a faculty member (if you’re staff) or a staff member (if you’re faculty), based on your interests but also with some randomness built in. We will create some groups of three if the numbers aren’t perfectly balanced—please let us know if you would especially like this or prefer not! You and your Building Bridges group will choose some ways to interact. The basic package is for the staff member to visit the faculty member’s class or engage with their research/outreach in some fun way, and for the faculty member to visit the staff member’s office/workplace or engage with their work in some fun way, and for the partners to have lunch together at Rastall with lunch passes provided by the Dean of Faculty. This could be as little as 3 hours, during work hours, spread over the whole academic year. We will also provide you with a list of other activities that you can try with your partner—attending CC events, cross-constituency social stuff, and other minor adventures. We will have some giveaways. We have some excellent CC swag and a little funding to make this fun!

How/When: Sign up by filling out this short survey by Tuesday, Sept. 29 and we will match you on Sept. 30. Save the date to meet your partner at our Lunch Launch on Monday, Oct. 5.

Why: To have fun and build community across constituencies at Colorado College.

Questions? Email Building Bridges Coordinator Beth Malmskog at <a href="mailto:bmalmskog@coloradocollege.edu" style="text-decoration: underline; color: #4764af;" title="mailto:bmalmskog@coloradocollege.edu“> bmalmskog@coloradocollege.edu 

Presented by Staff Council, the Faculty Executive Committee, the Office of Institutional Equity & Belonging, and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.

14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

Click on the links below to learn more about the event and/or RSVP for the event! 

Research and Internship Symposium

Friday, Sept. 25 | 3-5 p.m.
Cornerstone Arts Center
Oral presentations begin promptly at 3 p.m. in Celeste Theatre. Story-map and poster presentations begin at 4 p.m. in Cornerstone Main Space. Come and support your students! Learn about their summer experiences and research.

E-Waste Drop-Off Event

Thursday, Oct. 1 | 1-2 p.m.
Breton Hall Garage #8 in Lot C-1
Have College-owned e-waste to get rid of? Bring it to our e-waste drop-off event for proper recycling.

Connect to a community partner to co-create community-engaged classroom projects for a spring 2027 course through the PEAK Project. Submit an Educator Interest Form by the end of Block 2 (Sunday, Oct. 18). Until funds are exhausted, matched partner/faculty pairs are eligible for project development stipends ($500 each). 

We especially encourage faculty to consider course connections to applied project ideas submitted by community partners including research to support trout conservation, understanding the impacts of residential rain barrels, exploring what is keeping young people from political movement work, and storytelling around a local civic education program.

Did you know CC is a member of Campus Compact? Campus Compact empowers colleges and universities to advance their academic and civic missions by partnering with communities to address complex social issues and further equity, justice, and prosperity for all. More information can be found on Campus Compact’s Website.

Encourage your students to check out Career Center events including panels, employer recruiting sessions and networking opportunities. The upcoming lineup of employer and career events can be found on our Career Center Calendar of Events page. Students have access through the EE student newsletter and Handshake.

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 3 for the U.S. Midterm Elections. Are you ready? 

In Colorado, all eligible registered voters automatically receive a mail ballot, which they can return by mail or at a ballot drop box. It is easy to register online using the last four digits of your Social Security number or your Colorado ID. If you register at least eight days before Election Day, you will receive your ballot by mail. After that deadline, you can register to vote in person up through Election Day. Visit GoVoteColorado.gov to register, update your registration, or change your address. You must update your voter registration each time you move. To register or update your registration in another state, visit vote.usa.gov. Visit the CC Votes webpage to learn more about the upcoming election and how to vote. 

Start your week sustainably! Bring your own clean mug and get any 16 oz. coffee or tea drink for just $4 at Susie B’s or Colorado Coffee! Only on fourth Monday, Oct. 12, until 11 a.m.

14 E. Cache La Poudre St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903