Dr. Cindi Love, Executive Director
The Strengths of ACPA
Truth is, we are living in the first time and with the first generation of college students who have ever been able to engage in mass collaboration. That one reality changes the way we are going to respond to one another as human beings around the planet from this point forward.
I want to talk about the strengths of ACPA and what it means about connecting us all together in the future. Already the best in class in research and scholarship. Already holding the brand for commitment and social justice, and already the place where young adults all over the county have come to me saying, "ACPA is where I learned how to be a social justice educator." These are incredible strengths to build upon. But the most important thing about ACPA to me is its ability to connect and to learn how to connect in new ways as well as traditional ways. Today, people come to our conference as their primary means of interacting with ACPA. I envision a time when we'll all go to conference together but it will be virtual as well as face to face. I envision a time when social media and the Web are not just ways for us to talk about what's happening in our lives, but they're actually the ways that we're able to provide education, access and equity...inclusion to people who don't have that today.
I hope that we want to take every tool available to us today, every type of social media and take those things to another level. I'd like to see ACPA members center in on the idea that mass collaboration is great for courses, but what if we used it to really move the world, to move an idea forward. That would be incredibly cool. I hope as I move into this role as executive director, yes you'll tweet, you'll Facebook, you'll email me, you'll pick up your phone, you'll call, you'll take my calls when I call you. I hope if you’re in Washington D.C. you'll come see us because I'm waiting to hear what's important to you.
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Advancing ACPA
I've been asked, "How do you advance ACPA in secondary and tertiary education?" I think the answer is simple - advance ACPA members and you advance ACPA.
If there is a policy decision underway in our nation or around the world that involves the kinds of issues that ACPA advocates for and stands for, ACPA members should be involved in the development of that policy and bringing it forward and seeing it through. If there is a practice that needs to change on campus anywhere in the world that affects students and affects their lives, their safety, their security, their future, ACPA members should be involved in promulgating the changes to that policy and making sure it works. Advance ACPA by advancing our members. That's how it works.
I've been fortunate in that I have worked in more than 85 countries in the course of my career, and what I have discovered in working in all of those places is that, to be successful, you have to let the people who live in those places and work in those places and grow up in those places tell you what they need, how they need help, how they need support and how to move forward. We can't dictate that for anybody and be successful. I feel very fortunate not only to have had for profit experience in all of those countries but also to have served on the United Nations UUO Commission for LGBT human rights, with Amnesty international, with SOGI and in a number of areas that I think, I feel at least, I perhaps have made the greatest contribution of my life. I hope I bring some of that understanding to ACPA and I hope you bring yours so that we can make the world a better place.
Friends ask me, "Why do you want to move to Washington D.C. when you have lived in Texas all of your life. Your family has been here for a hundred years?” I actually think Washington D.C. is one of the most exciting cities in the world, probably next to Hong Kong if I had a place to choose. I love the history there. I love the fact there are people from all over the world working there. I love that my heroes are memorialized there. When I have a day off in D.C. I go to the Roosevelt memorial and I stand beside Eleanor Roosevelt and I think about the United Nations declaration of Human Rights. And for a moment I think, even someone from West Texas, someone with no real power or presence in the world can be an Eleanor Roosevelt in the life of another person if we just care enough to take a stand and stick it out. That's what I love about Washington D.C. It reminds me of that capacity that each one of us has.