This year’s University College Day (UCD) will be held virtually on Wednesday, April 21 starting at 9:30 a.m. The theme for this year is UBUNTU: Connecting Humanity.

“UCD is an important opportunity for students, faculty and staff in the university to showcase their best work that they have been working on this year,” says Dr. Jenny Dean, assistant professor of mass communication and chair for this year’s UCD. Any person, not part of Texas Wesleyan, is also welcomed to attend.

The keynote speaker’s webinar will be on Zoom and all other presentations will be on Blackboard Collaborate.

These links and other important information about UCD are found in Blackboard’s main page under the University College Day tab. The schedule for each of the events are found in Texas Wesleyan’s homepage under the University College Day webpage tab. UCD information was also emailed out to students.

“[Students] should expect a pretty intimate experience with seeing each of the presenters present and an opportunity to ask a lot of questions,” said Dean. It is an opportunity to learn new things.

This year’s keynote speaker is Elliott Connie. He is a former Texas Wesleyan student, who is really successful in doing solution-based therapy. He will present on the idea of how you do social justice in a time of unrest from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Dr. Linda Metcalf, professor of graduate counseling and director of graduate counseling programs, has known Connie for about 13 years. Metcalf said that Connie was one of the first students she has taught in the counseling program at Texas Wesleyan, and he played baseball as an undergraduate here at Texas Wesleyan as well.

Metcalf believes that Connie will be a great guest speaker at UCD because he is a “Wesleyan graduate and African American student; he knows first-hand prejudice, racism and yet, he knows resilience when push[ing] through all kinds of blocks,” said Metcalf.

Metcalf believes that Connie is a passionate, hopeful and giving professional who has worked with all sorts of couples, from all backgrounds. He also “inspires people with his talks,” said Metcalf.

Metcalf said that “students can expect a presentation full of excitement and drama and passion that will come across with what people today need in order to function in a world that it is still not kind as it needs to be.”

After the keynote speaker, Victoria Nord, coordinator for student affairs, encourages students to attend Ram Jam, which will consist of six virtual events and will be hosted from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Nord said that students can attend these 30-minute events hosted by campus organizations, such as the programing activities committee and Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), who are doing a vine/Tik-Tok bingo and the Alpha Xi Delta (AXD), that will be hosting “Welcome to the Jungle” program about health care. For students to attend these events, they need to go into RamSpace and click on the events that will be hosted on April 21, which each have their own zoom links.

“Ram Jam is a student led program that is just supposed to be a really fun and stress-free relieving activity,” as it allows students to relax and converse with peers. It is a time for people to “decompress from the presentations and then build that energy back up” to attend more presentations, said Nord.

Catherine Pitre, sorority member of Lambda Tau Zeta and forensic accounting major, said, “Our goal is to give students a chance to know our members, and to have fun while doing it.”

“It’s important for people to see and recognize all the hard work that is taking place on campus over the last year. I think we have all been kind of in our own little silos, in our own classes and what we’ve done virtually. We haven’t really interacted as a community, and UCD brings us back to that option to come back together as a community,” said Dean.