Honors Symposium Looks at Practical Issues of
Diversity in Business
Event: Business Honors Symposium 2004, “Responding to Change & Diversity.” Hear from a dynamic slate of speakers, including former United States Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall and Texas State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, as they help students anticipate changes in corporate America resulting from the globalization of labor, shifting demographics and the increasing numbers of women in professional roles.
When: February 7, 2004
Where: The McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
Who May Attend: Registration is open to the public via the symposium's website.
AUSTIN, Texas—Thanks to a strong lineup of speakers and a discussion-oriented format, attendees to the annual Business Honors Program Symposium on Feb. 7 at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business will have a chance to get beyond the clichés that often surround discussions of diversity in the workplace.
Featured speakers will cover a range of topics related to diversity.
- Marshall, the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter and a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, will discuss the increasing competition that high-wage, highly educated American workers face from workers in developing countries.
- John Traphagan, director of the university’s Center for East Asian Studies, will explain the wide-ranging implications of a predicted 50% decline in the population of Japan by the end of the century.
- Steve Murdock, the official state demographer of Texas, will examine the impact on the state of a Hispanic minority that is trending towards becoming the majority.
Additional panels will cover “Women in the professions: balancing a personal and professional life,” and “Ethnic and cultural diversity: capitalizing on individual differences.”
The honors students attending the symposium are enrolled in the country’s fifth-ranked undergraduate business program, according to U.S. News & World Report. Many of them are expected to enter leadership positions in the years after graduation.
The symposium was set up to help students appreciate more fully that “the world dominated by white, European males will have vanished by the end of this century,” says Dr. Eli Cox, director of the Business Honors Program at McCombs. By the close of the century, predicts Cox, the industrialized world will be comprised largely of the elderly, and will decline in population. “The exception is the United States—with Texas as a bellwether—which will grow and become more ethnically diverse, shifting its affinity away from Europe and towards Latin America and Asia,” says Cox.
The topic of ethnic and cultural diversity is particularly pertinent for the McCombs School. Under Dean George Gau, increasing the diversity of the student body is one of six key initiatives in the school’s new strategic plan.
Registration for the 2004 Business Honors Program Symposium is open to the public, via the symposium’s website.
Reunion Coincides With Symposium
University of Texas at Austin Business Honors alumni from 1964, 1974, 1984 and 1994 may be particularly interested in attending, as the symposium coincides with their class reunions. In addition to the symposium, an afternoon of golf and a barbecue are planned. A complete schedule of reunion events can be found at the Business Honors site.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
