Oct. 28, 2002

Contact: Barbara Watkins, KU Continuing Education, 785-864-7881

KU Continuing Education wins regional award for Langston Hughes symposium

LAWRENCE -- University of Kansas Continuing Education was the unanimous choice of the judges when it received a prestigious programming award during the University Continuing Education Associationÿs Region IV/V conference in Minneapolis, Minn. earlier this month.

KU's entry in the "Innovations and Contributions to Continuing Education" category was "Langston Hughes: Let America Be America Again," an international symposium in February 2002 honoring the birth centennial of the beloved American poet, who spent much of his childhood in Lawrence.

Barbara Petersen, director of administration and budget for KUCE, accepted the award. Winning the regional competition makes KUCE eligible for national competition in the innovations and contributions category. National UCEA winners will be announced in Chicago in April 2003.

The February symposium included a Web site component funded with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant supporting a national poetry project, which is ongoing. In addition to the Web site, which included resources for teaching poetry, the NEH grant supported other outreach efforts to encourage poetry reading in classrooms and by groups and individuals.

The symposium offered several major events that were offered free to the public, including presentations by author Alice Walker and actor Danny Glover, and scholarships for community residents to attend the symposium. A symposium planning team directed by Maryemma Graham, KU professor of English, and Bill Tuttle, KU professor of American studies, garnered financial support from sources both on and off campus to make possible the free public events. In addition, the symposium generated numerous related events in the community.