Workplace Diversity Contest Offering $5,000 to Students

If you can imagine how a diverse and inclusive workplace can change the world, you can win cold, hard cash from Fordham.

The University’s Offices of Career Services and Multicultural Affairs have teamed up to sponsor a contest that encourages students to reflect upon positive outcomes of inclusion in the workplace, and how they themselves might help alter the world of work.

The contest, “Diversity Leadership in a Global Society,” is open to Fordham undergraduates and students enrolled at the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Graduate School of Education. It is part of a semester of programming dedicated to advancing diversity.

$5,000 in prize money will be awarded to 15 contestants who submit an entry in one of three categories: Audio/Video (i.e.: webisodes, interviews, dance), Visual Arts and Multimedia, (i.e.: photography, podcasts, video narratives), and Written (i.e.: poetry, screenplays, or essays).

Stefany Fattor, director of Career Services, said a similar contest held last year drew a good turnout. But this year she hopes the expanded categories will encourage greater turnout—including more students from the Lincoln Center campus.

The contest deadline is March 16. The entries will be judged by faculty, administrators, and alumni, as well as representatives from organizations that recruit at Fordham. The winners will be announced at a banquet on April 6. The contest is open to both individuals and teams.

The challenge for students will be to not only articulate things such how their personal history affects their views of diversity, inclusion and social justice, but to also present ideas for promoting practices and models for diversity, inclusion and social justice in the world of work, said Fattor. Students need this more than ever to succeed in today’s job market.

“In the economy that the students are entering today, they’re going to basically be paid to think for a living,” she said. “Personal awareness is tremendously important to navigate that, because it’s so collaborative.”

Guidelines for the contest can be found here.