The mission of the Gulf-South Summit is to promote networking among practitioners, research, ethical practices, reciprocal campus-community partnerships, sustainable programs and a culture of engagement and public awareness through service-learning and other forms of civic engagement.
The conference theme is “Changing the Narrative: Storytelling as Social Action.”
Allison Nanni, director of community engagement for Samford’s Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership, is one of three conference cochairs. Several Samford students, employees and community partners will be participating in the summit.
Samford faculty members Rachel Casiday and Betsy Dobbins will present “Lessons from the Field: A Residential Course in Environmental Health” based on a course they taught in summer 2017 that explored water quality issues in rural Perry County, Alabama. Casiday is associate professor of public health, and Dobbins is professor of biology and Wilton H. Bunch Interdisciplinary Faculty Fellow. They will be joined by Cyndi Lowry of the Alabama Rivers Alliance.
Samford President Andrew Westmoreland will bring greetings at a Friday morning breakfast session.
Nanni noted that service-learning and community engagement are central to Samford’s mission. In the most recent year for which data is available, Samford students contributed 927,291 hours of service valued at $21.4 million.
Other summit cosponsors are Birmingham-Southern College and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
