Thanks to the Liberal Arts Enrichment Fund, I was able to attend the 2nd Annual Black Doctoral Network Conference in Philadelphia, PA from Friday, October 24th to Saturday, October 25th, 2014. Over the course of this weekend, I attended three workshops, networked with professionals, and presented my research in a poster competition. My Penn State Liberal Arts education prepared me well to actively participate in all of the workshop discussions, ask questions, and communicate my own views and ideas to the other workshop participants with clarity. The three workshops I attended covered black relationships and dating as an academic, stress management, and the results of current genetics research in tracing heredity and ancestry of African Americans.
Throughout the conference I was able to connect and have enlightening discussions with other undergraduate students, current graduate students, and professors and professionals about what the environment in academia is like for people of color as well as receive advice for how to best prepare myself for graduate school. This was the first year that the Black Doctoral Network Conference has included an undergraduate poster competition, and I greatly enjoyed presenting my poster and talking to the judges and other attendees about my research. My poster detailed my analysis of Algerian author Mouloud Feraoun’s self-identification as French or as Algerian as evidenced in his autobiographical novel The Poor Man’s Son. I also received encouraging feedback from the judges on how to improve subsequent presentations of my research. Overall, attending this conference reassured me of the diversity in academia across all fields of study and made me excited to join this intelligentsia as a professor of history in the near future. I look forward to attending this conference in years to come. Thank you again to the Liberal Arts Enrichment Fund for making this valuable conference experience possible.