Whiteboard Project Highlights Campus Diversity
People open up when asked to elaborate—you get to know them just a little bit more week by week.
Sep 16, 2022
Ask and you shall receive. Are you searching for a way to build community? Unable to curb your curiosity? Want to discover new perspectives and ideas? Look no further than the entrance of the Learning Hub!
One of the first things you see when you walk into the main doors of the Learning Hub is the whiteboard sitting pretty in front of an art wall. This board has a new question written up top every week that anyone who walks past can answer. The questions can range from personal and specific to open-ended and vague but one thing always stays consistent: the sheer amount of responses we get.
Created by Saaida El Dursi—one of the student staff members who keeps the LRC up and running—the idea came as a way of promoting community engagement. Saaida chose CU Denver “Out of all the schools I looked at, it was the most diverse” so why not provide an outlet to showcase the thoughts of our diverse community?
You might remember Saaida from another story written about her, where she speaks candidly about how she took advantage of the Learning Resource Centers’ resources – and became the perfect candidate to work here and start helping others. In her words
“The variety of cultures and backgrounds seen on campus is a major advantage to studying in Denver.”
Saaida’s efforts to boost engagement between all students are proven every week as the board is always overloaded with a wall of distinctive multi-colored handwriting.
Through people’s handwriting and responses, you see the diversity of the campus’ community through various, unique answers.
One week the question was, “What is your dream job?” The answers ranged from bakers to interior designers to trophy wives to data analysts. In fact, the same person answered both baker and data analyst (can you say “best of both worlds”?). There had even been one lucky soul who said they were already exactly where they wanted to be! This is no surprise, seeing how CU Denver offers such great resources to get you from a sticky note on a board to a job offer—just check out the Career Center!
People open up when asked to elaborate—you get to know them just a little bit more week by week. These questions are great because they serve as a natural jumping off point towards conversation with student staff, students, and faculty alike. They are conversation starters both for people writing their answers side-by-side, as well as for onlookers taking in the answers.
As a Learning Hub Ambassador (LHA) overseeing the desk that overlooks the board, I get the distinct advantage of witnessing people’s reactions to other responses. There’s satisfaction to this as more and more responses get written. Less serious answers pull out smiles and chuckles, and the out-of-left-field answers make way for even more questions. It gets a dialogue going for a long time. We encourage people to add a tally mark to whatever answer they similarly connect with, not only to gauge how popular a response is, but so that the initial responder can visualize how many people agree with them!
Learning Hub Links: