 Okay, Angie would you please introduce yourself to us and let us know why you're here. Yeah, let me get my screen up because you know how it goes we do the run through and we do all that to then be like what. Exactly. It went smoothly and now. Right, exactly. So, you know. Yeah, give me one second just so I can take your time. Okay, can you see my screen now. Is that. Yes, you see my screen in the second. Where's everybody coming from as we give Angie a moment. Are you new to graduate school I know shell has been here a while guided me through my time here. What about the rest of y'all. Okay. In the second year of master's program. Okay. Thanks for sharing. All right, is that good to go now. Yes, we're good to go. Thanks for sharing Kyle. Yeah. Yeah, I actually wanted to kind of see who's in the room too. But yeah, well, I guess I can do like a little short introduction first but we got intimate group here so I'm looking forward to, to seeing who came today but yeah good afternoon y'all good afternoon. Okay, I will say from the poll I was, I was expecting everybody to put super exciting I was like, yeah, you know, but you know it's Monday I'll give you, you know, I'll give you that I'll give you that because sometimes we just, we just not all the way there so it's all good hopefully I can spark some energy and y'all today and you know maybe that will kind of change throughout the time we have together so but yeah but thanks for choosing to learn more about the spectrum center. I'm here at University of Michigan and you know, to those who are in attendance with me live today, you know, I love seeing your faces and then those, you know who might be watching at a future time. Welcome. My name is Angie Freeman, I use they them pronouns and I'm the program manager for events and partnerships at the spectrum center. Yeah, I'm just, I'm, I'm happy to see that this affinity community resource week is happening I think it's just really important that we share with all of our students and specifically graduate students about what resources are available how to learn, you know, about what you all can get here at University of Michigan so, but yeah today I'll be I'll just be sharing a lot of information I'm just going to like, kind of go through it and, you know, refer you back, of course to our website a lot. You know, and coming into the center and talking with us to get more clarification on some things. But yeah, but yeah, can we I want to kind of see going off of what Sam was saying like who's in the room and you know I don't know if you're first year second year third year students. You know, PhD doctoral candidates, all the things like I want to know, I want to know y'all to so if you if you want to come off mute that'd be great. Hi Angie. I'm a doctoral candidate all the dissertation in sociology and I really enjoy the spectrum centers fall graduate student mixer. Oh yeah you came to that yeah yeah I've attended in the past yeah. Did you come did you come to the one this this past I couldn't make it last week. Oh okay okay okay it's all good it's all good it was live in here I'm telling you it was live it was a good time it was a good time but we'll do it again. And you know some of our students actually mentioned having something more specific. In addition to the graduate student welcome for graduate students so I'm working on that. So yeah, thanks Shelly. Anyone else. Hi Angie and this is Charmaine and we're robotics graduate students. Robotics huh okay is that like the dance rope, not this kind of robotic. I mean, maybe, maybe in my future somewhere. I can aspire to that at least. Thanks for sharing anybody else. Who else is here. My name is Kyle Smith I use him pronouns. I am a transfer student to the University of Michigan. So I'm in the educational studies PhD program. So while it's my third year of doctoral studies, it's my first year of Michigan, I'm with the second year cohorts I will be at 123 year all around. Nice. Yeah, thanks like. My name is David. I'm a second year master student in performing arts technology in the school music theater and dance. All right, all right so you yeah okay you can vibe with the music. I love it I love it. Hi everybody let's see there's 12345 people here. I think you can see cool. Alright, so I will continue but thank you all for coming off audio like that and you know, just Bob and with me so I appreciate that. So yeah, let's go ahead and dive into this so. Some topics that I will share with you today. Include the following so our LGBTQIA to us plus what that means you know at University of Michigan, what the spectrum center is what we do like what our offices like you know just describe a little bit of the the vibe that you can expect when you come in and then what resources we offer the programs that we host we do a lot of events. So I'll kind of dive into that a little bit. Opportunities for graduate students and then I'll be sharing like broadly opportunities we have for all students but you know I am aware that our guests today are, you know, graduate students so I'll try to share with you all a little bit. Some other stuff that we do, you know how you can connect with us and then we'll have some time at the end for some questions. So, I'm going to, I'm going to start off a little bit of, I'm going to start off with some bragging a little bit about our center but if anyone's familiar with the campus pride index, which is a benchmarking tool for I feel like if you know how queer friendly campuses and colleges and universities are the spectrum center we receive the five out of five stars, which is you know we're very very proud of that and we work really did diligently to provide just the best for our students and our queer students on campus so so that was like a huge thing and then also the same campus pride index. We're also named as one of the the 40 best, best of the best colleges, you know by by campus pride index as well. Lastly, we were named number one for LGBTQIA to us plus friendly colleges and campuses in the state of Michigan, which was cool. And then also fit in the nation so it's like, you know you kind of scale it down you like oh, you know first in Michigan within five like what. You know it's really cool it excites us, but we also know that you know we all, we still have a lot of work to do and we're always growing and learning. And you know we can't stay stagnant, you know we can celebrate these moments but we, we know that we have to keep striving just to be better and you know the cohort changes the quote you know the students population the needs, they change every year so we're aware of that and we you know try to try to keep on our toes as much as possible but but yeah overall like we're just, we're really proud. You know, to be where we're at today. And continue a little bit more about the center where the oldest LGBT resource center in the country, which is really, really cool if you think about the progress that we've made on colleges and university campuses with having queer centers gender centers resource centers on campus like we're the first one, which is really cool. And there's just been, you know, so many that have been created ever since and so yeah so we just celebrated our 50th anniversary a couple years ago, which was an amazing honor. We had like a big old celebration in the center and you know we we did it up was really big so sadly though our founder Jim toy passed away, very very recently. And, you know, we just continue to work hard to upload the legacy that Jim created and you know the the inspiration that Jim wanted for you and then also our students on campus so. So, a little bit about our spectrum center so you know we are a resource center on campus. We're not a, we're not a student club a lot of students and you know just our peers and colleagues will misunderstand us to be like a student organization or a club but we're we're an actual department where office resource center, but we, you know, really serve and support the members of our LGBT QA to us plus communities. And we do this through, you know, different. We do this through three main things which is education advocacy and community building. And I'll touch on a little bit of these as we go along, but yeah we just we just really work hard to enhance the campus culture and increase student belonging like we know that students thrive better when they feel like they belong and so we try to create that space when you come into the center and you know come and just hang out and vibe and which I'll share with you a little bit about what that's about if you haven't been in the center before. So we're located in the Michigan Union on the third floor so when you are so folks when you come off the elevator, you make a right and you look for all the gay flags at the end of the hallway. We're down there or you could just listen out for like our loud and laughing voices because you know we're we're always having a good time we're just you know hanging out with students, our staff. You know, we're we're always making some kind of noise. You know, just listen out for the voices or listen, you know, look for the flags but our office hours are listed here and after hours I wanted to note that we do invite student organizations to come in our center and just use the space so a lot of students will reserve our center and just come in and you know have group meetings or if they're doing something for their classrooms. So that is extended to you all as well like if you want to come in, especially like on the weekend or something like it's just quite. We also do after hours HIV and STI testing we do this weekly so we do it after hours. I think it's from five to seven on Tuesdays. And it's been, you know, we've gotten a lot of traffic, you know already this even this this fall semester which makes us very, very happy that, you know, we're taking care of ourselves and we're doing doing what we need to do. And then, yeah, we have events and programs and stuff after hours to which I'll go over. Drop in hours so we also have opportunity for you to just come in. Ask any questions with one of our staff like one on one. We've all dedicated dropping hours weekly for you to you can sign up for those online. And you can pick like who you want to meet with but yeah every week we're just kind of waiting for you to come in and, you know, come in and see us and, you know, if there's any meetings or, you know, whatever it is like we just are open arms and whatever you need and so we have that and in our family room this is like a little snapshot of our of our space. And yeah it's really cool vibe when you walk in like students are hanging out circled up around the round table doing homework, chatting, spilling tea like they be talking about a lot, a lot of different things. This cool is this is you know, it's it's a particular vibe and so students like you'll see students taking a nap or, you know, doing homework of course, you know, we have safe sex supplies like right when you walk in. There's a table with condoms, Lou dental dams, just information like all you know all of that like students just come in but I need two of these and then they walk out and like cool. So yeah, board games we have like a whole thing of board games you come in, and you can just play and play with those when we recently had the the internet outage on campus like, you know, we're like all right well, you know, we can't we can't get on the internet so let's just, you know, play it play a little game until it comes back on so it's always good to have that we have a library resource. As well so a huge library of books that you can rent out and you know borrow and all that kind of stuff so tons of things. Just come in if you haven't been in the space just come in and you know, and see us and see what it's about. It's pretty cool. Some resources that we have for LGBTQ plus students. So we have gender, gender and queer focused student organizations. I put graduate and undergrad because we, you know, we, we, we focus on on both and so I just want to let you all know that there's a ton of organizations student organizations on campus like as big as we are. When I came here I was like, Oh, we got that. Like, are they all active or what you know so. Yeah, a ton of undergraduate but we also have a lot of our graduate queer focused organizations to like, it's all the, the schools really like have their own so like, you know, out in business. The business school has one social work has a queer club public policy. Let's see stem, you know, we have I have a whole bunch of different graduate organizations so. So yeah, I just want to share that and then scholarships, we give out scholarships for our students we have project base grants to which I'll explain a little bit more later but basically if you have an idea for an event that you want to put on but you don't have the funding, you can submit to us a project based grant proposal, and we'll look at it and be like cool like this sounds great like we'll give you, you know $500 towards your event for you know it's up to $500 or so. So, you know, that that goes for graduate students as well so if you know come just come to us and you know you all have all the great ideas of course like, you know, I can only think of so many things, but you all know what y'all want and what what, what, you know, to specifically cater to the graduate community because I know it's different than undergrad. And then our gender affirming care and essential needs. So we do offer a lot of ton of information. I'll direct you a lot to our website for our gender, gender affirming care stuff but we, we have essential needs that we support students with when you come in and I'll, I'm going to get to this later but I'm excited to just share. But yeah, we have, for example, like binders that we give out to our trans individuals and then essential needs we have what he called, oh goodness. The name is escaping me right now, but I'll come back to I have another slide on that. And then lastly our gender inclusive learning environment which we call ghillie. So this is basically in housing, gender queer folks that want to live in a space that they really feel comfortable and supported. And I believe graduate housing has gender inclusive learning environments as well. So if you do live on campus, or want to definitely check that out too. So our trans community has a special place in our hearts. We like to just ensure that we focus some of our efforts on helping students navigate that particular part of their identities, including gender affirming healthcare, which Michigan, Michigan care or Michigan. Michigan University of Michigan hospital. I'm still a little bit new to to um so bear with me on that but our hospital provides a lot of that gender affirming care which is really great. And then students can also get coverage, you know they're also covered by their student insurance to get some of those services, which I think is really cool like how, you know, we work together in that sense. We're kind of resources for our trans students are chosen name and pronoun policy so you know our system that I've learned is really unique in the in the sense like if you want to change your your name that you want to go by it, it will what do you call sync it'll sync within all the different. Gosh, what am I trying to say it'll it'll sync within all the different like softwares that we use on campus. So that's pretty cool. It'll show up on. Between like Gmail and canvas and with your class with your professors in your email as a person. So, I was able to change my name and you just like go in and you do it and then like everything. Now my name is changed and everything now and I didn't expect that and so sometimes I'm like. I think I'm surprised at how fluid and how the sort of comprehensive my name change was for sort of an every facet of the university. There you go, thank you, thank you Sam I appreciate that yes, all of that, all of that, all of that is really is really cool so we do have that. We also offer pronouns one on one, which is free to faculty and staff which I'll talk about in a second as well. So our programs we do a lot of programming like we do big scale programming small scale programming we get down we get down y'all. And I'll go over some of these signature programs and signature events that we have so. But before, before I do that I just want to share the three areas or three functions of our center and how our services and programs are broken down so we have education and training events and partnerships support services and wellness so for education and training. We offer the LGBT QIA to us plus web course. So this is like a self paste or you know self guided web course that you can go through that gives you a ton of information on the LGBT community. And it's just it's very, it's very informative right like if you're kind of, you know just kind of want to know some of the basics or like entry level kind of stuff. It's a great it's it's very comprehensive as well like we put a lot, a lot of work into it, a lot of tunnel resources and stuff. So you can sign up for that it's on campus. This is our pronouns one on one, which, if any department or organization on campus wants us to present to them our pronouns one on one it's a two hour workshop. We don't do anything less than two hours because we know that it takes that amount of time to go through everything but will come to any organization and put on like a whole two hour workshop for the staff if they think like hey like I think our staff kind of can benefit from you know something on pronouns then we'll do that so we have a whole team that does that. And then towards solidarity is another. This one is a six hour so it's like a you know full day training workshop that we also put on for our campus community members, and this one is very comprehensive it's more so like so we don't do safe zone training anymore. We're, you know, we've gotten away from that I think a lot of LGBTQ educators are now getting away from safe zone with the whole sticker and you know placard and all that kind of stuff but more into like a solidarity, more action based kind of support for the community so this one is very comprehensive. But anyway so we do that. That's our training and education and then events and partnerships which is under my area. This is where we do like all the queer events on campus program and things like that, and also collaboration so our LGBT history month which is coming up in October which I'm really excited about. We put together a LGBT history month committee, and partners across campus are helping to put together this full calendar of events across um to just basically create like a centralized place where people can get what's going on in October for LGBT history month, whether you're you know doing something in Rackham the graduate, you know organizations or undergrad or, you know, gender housing whoever is doing anything like, you know, you can find what's going on which is cool. So, that's kind of like my current thing right now which I'm pumped about. And we also have a programming board which I would definitely encourage any of you all to be a part of but our programming board is a student organization. It's through our office so we, we have a really called SSO student sponsored organization, and it's consists of undergrads graduate doctoral students, any students if you identify as a student, you could be a part of this. So it's student led and the fact that we give the students free reigns on what kind of programs they want to see on campus and we just support we fund, and they come up with the idea. So if this is something that you know you want to get involved in, you know, we just started our, you know, new cohort this this semester and we're always adding people to the mix, but some of the adventure events that the programming board puts on is pride prom, which is a whole lot of fun. It's at the end of the year in April, where, you know, a lot of students didn't get to do prom, maybe in their high school or just at another time in life. So we provide an opportunity for you to just come and be yourself and do your thing and just, you know, celebrate your accomplishments in that way so prior prom is a big one they do casual game nights trans transgender day of remembrance which is a big celebration gender affirming closet all the things like there's a ton of events like I can go forever. So that's program board and then we have lavender graduation which is our graduation ceremony for our LGBT QI to us plus community and this is also in April. And it's just a good time like it's just an opportunity for, you know, students to be recognized for their accomplishments and, you know, what they've done throughout their journey here in a more queer focused way so it's really cool. So that's events and partnerships there's a lot more but you know, I'm going to stop there. And then there's support services and wellness. So I really call this like the heart of our students. Like, I do all the programming and the fun kind of things you can come to build community but, you know, support services and wellness is like the heart of, you know, our queer community in the sense of like creating, you know, having mentors your programs where students can link up with a faculty or staff on campus that can just kind of guide them and you know help them through with whatever they need right. Fresh specters is a first year program specifically, but I'll still share about it but it's like a cohort based model where students come in just like commune together and build community around other students that are similar in the fact that they're first year and, you know, also queer. And then essential needs for this one. We have, we, we partner with Maison blue, which is the miss Maison blue cover but we partner with them to provide like to go bags with like groceries in them and like kind of pre package. You know, kind of survival kit kind of thing. So we have that in our space so basically you know we provide all that for like just the human the human right like the human. Like I call the heart but it's just it's just different it's just like it's beautiful to me. All the other kind of like services and like identity development. You know, gender farming care and all that kind of stuff is under our support services. That's a lot. I know event center and trans students so again, I just want to kind of highlight some of the stuff that we do. So gender farming clothing closet, which we like to have this like kind of like close to the prior prom so folks have something to wear. If they want you know they didn't have anything but we're making it into like a permanent we're hopefully making into an a permanent clothing closet that can happen year round which is cool so people can just come in and kind of get any kind of clothing items that they need so. But that usually happens in the winter semester. And then our name change clinic students who are looking to, you know, change their name or their gender markers or you know anything like that like we put on a whole clinic for for them and you know helping them through that process because it's it's a lengthy process and it's a sometimes complicated process but it could be done and it has been done and you know we're here for it. Remembrance is a big one trans day of visibility. Those are two big events that we, you know, hold, hold, you know, near to our heart. And then our transit non binary passport clinic, which we're in the process of planning that for this semester to so if you have a passport or you know look into again change your dinner marker or, you know, update your name or your last name or whatever it is like we help with that too. All right, and then welcome program so this year we had our pride outside which was a lot of fun. This was a part of the like welcome to Michigan events and we have drag show, Kona ice like the little shades ice cones. That was that was a hit Michigan pride t shirts like it was it was a full thing. It was a really good time we do that yearly. And then our cutie by park welcome. This was a couple weeks ago now. And you know we just like to center our black and brown queer students and so we, you know, provided this opportunity for students to come and you know it's it's open to all students on campus whether you're undergrad grad whatever the case is but you know that's a it's a good time like we just we ate good we listen to music we you know build community we play games all the things so you know those are always a good time. Our graduate student welcome, which I know we talked about a little bit in the beginning but that happened last week was a really cool event and so I did want to say that this year. Some of the graduate students actually mentioned having like a fourth for the next one on the list which is our cutie by park kickback, having like a graduate focus kickback which I think is great, you know, so we're trying to get more graduate students in our center and trying to, you know, plan and program for our graduate students because we know that, you know, not a lot of times like, you know, the mixing and mingling together like you know graduate students want to have space and their thing and do their thing and build community amongst each other which you know we support that so. So yeah so like again, we're always trying to improve and do better so this is one area that we are focusing on to try to bring in and support more of our graduate students. Fresh Spectives cohort I say I was going to talk a little bit about this but this is our like in our first year cohort group that we have just for first year and transfer students. And yeah it's just a really good time for students to get together and you know build community amongst each other, based on the fact that they're first year students and queer and things like that but they get together they play games they go ice skating and bowling and do all these things and you know, we, we funded and we support it and they tell us what they want to do so. It's a good deal in my, my opinion. And then our mentorship opportunities so we have GPS and maps guidance perspective support so lgbtq, lgbtq a to s plus and similarly identify students they utilize this just for navigating understanding their own identities and like what that means and you know like just it's a lot it's it's there's a lot that goes into that but we just want to make sure we provide that support. And then our maps mentorship and professional personal support so this is the one that is connected with faculty and staff so we the GPS is like peer to peer, and then maps is peer to like staff or faculty. They're in the process of kind of revamping these programs and kind of, you know, enhancing them or revising them so they'll be more a little bit more active in the future. Alright, what else do we do there's more. Yes, there's more. The other things that we do we provide students support mentorship and advising. So student organ. We call student organization advising. Like I said mentioned before we have the student programming board that is sponsored through our office. So we advise them on events that they want to plan and kind of help them with that. We also have mentorship and professional development so we have every year we go to memble tech, which is stands for the Midwest, bisexual, lesbian gay transgender asexual college conference. So a handful, but meble tech is just a student conference, queer based conference that we take some of our students to so again if this is something that you're interested in it's open to undergrads and graduate students, and it's an opportunity to even present like we help students kind of put together a proposal if they want to present, which is really cool. And it just helps them with their professional development while you in school and it's, it's paid for so that's like the best part. So we, you know, on our website, we have like a really comprehensive list and kind of navigation of like where's our gender inclusive bathrooms on campus and, you know, where can you go to, you know, find support and stuff like that so we have that connecting students with other offices of course, and in academic scholarships and project grants which I talked a little bit about but we, if you have an idea for an event. Come tell us fill out the application for it. We, you know, we have a certain amount put aside for students to run their own events. So that's the project grants and then advocacy culture change. So for advocating the needs of our queer individuals are graduate. Excuse me, our graduate research specialist recently conducted focus groups for our QT BIPOC student population in efforts to increase the support for our black and brown queer students so I think we got probably like 30 plus students or something like that involved in these focus groups but we got a lot of feedback with, you know, how our center can improve and like, you know, kind of what they feel in our spaces and, you know, how can we support them better right. And so this was specifically with undergrads and our next step is to do this with our QT BIPOC graduate students. So be on the lookout for that you know if you want to help us and be a, you know, a co researcher in that and provide us you know some information on like how you feel how you perceive the spectrum center and like what can we do and like what would make you come into the space and like I said, we're, we're, you know, we're not stagnant like we're always trying to try to improve so we need your help with that so. So yeah, so we advocate for students in that sense. A lot of our departments and organization. We reach out to us for best best practices and consultation guidance and you know event planning stuff like that so we do provide consultation, and then just, you know, serving as content experts on LGBTQI to us plus identities, you know, and I say this with like a sense of speaking from our own experiences and, and you know kind of our own identities like we don't speak for the entire community because one is too big is too, you know, yeah we can't speak on everybody but you know we're authentic and sharing that about ourselves so that's for advocacy and culture change and in other ways to just kind of engage with us. You can apply for academic scholarship. You can apply for the project based grant like which I said so come on with the ideas. We do have access to essential needs so like our food pantry like I said, partner with Mason Blues cover. We did, I think annually we do a cooking demonstration. So we do a cooking demo which is cool. We do it over and Mason Blues cover because they have this like full on like kitchen thing and you know you can see the, the chef going to town but like everything that they cook is in the oven and so, which is cool is like it's not we're not doing anything fancy or anything like that like it's all stuff you can get right here. And then we have the pre made pre made grocery bags as well. And programming board I talked a little bit about that so you can join that. You can also join our students staff team. We have graduate students that work with us we have graduate specialists for the education team that I talked about and then the support services and wellness which is cool. So, yeah, let's see, where we at, where we at. I think we write on kind of on time so this is right on time. I know right with no room for questions but yeah so this is our contact information. Our website y'all we just saw our communication specialist just revamped our whole website it is beautiful and I'm not just like I'm a little biased but it's really it's we made it in a sense that it's improved for like navigation, it's easy it's like user friendly, we tried to make as less clicks as possible like okay if you're looking for this, just give it to me right there and that's it so check out our website is what I'm trying to say it's beautiful. Or you can stay in contact with us on social media if that should if that should get to. So, yeah. Does anyone have any quick questions I know that will be putting Angie's contact information in the chat so that you can reach out directly. No. Okay y'all so I want to thank you for your time here today, Angie for your time, your expertise and your knowledge that you share and to our audience for being here with us with your cameras off or on your cameras on with us today I am I know that in the zoom land that that's a big ask and so I'm grateful for y'all to be present with us here today. Thank you.