Greater Mankato Diversity Council speaks with sociology students about community engagement
Greater Mankato Diversity Council executive director Mohammed Alsadig visited the Minnesota State University campus Tuesday as part of the Sociology Department’s Social Justice Lecture Series.
Alsadig spoke to an audience of largely sociology and first-year experience students about his career. He told the group that he moved to the United States from the United Arab Emirates roughly 26 years ago, and has since worked for the Mankato Department of Public Safety and served as a board member and chair of the Greater Mankato Diversity Council before being selected for executive director.
He performed Promote Respect Workshops along with the diversity council for schools and businesses. For schools, Alsadig tailors the topics of discussion to the grade level and chooses diversity issues, such as sexism, racism and cultural bias among others and educates them with books and videos to promote a broad understanding of differences.
“We try to make sure whatever we talk about in those classes can make sense to those students. It depends on the age, they might not get it all,” Alsadig said.
He also talked about his work with new Americans, and said one of the biggest issues they face in the Mankato area is housing. He said he works with investors and developers on finding ways to lower housing costs.
“A lot of families who come from overseas, usually, are bigger families. So mom and dad might have between four and six kids. So (figuring out) how we can accommodate them in this community has always been an issue. We’re talking about it, some people are listening, some are not. It’s a really difficult issue to try to figure out, especially when trying to get investors to give money,” he said.
This event was part of a seven-part series sponsored by Carol Glasser and the Department of Sociology. She first organized the speaker series in 2014, and this is the first year it has occurred since COVID-19. Glasser polled her colleagues and students for speaker suggestions and schedules the presentations during her sociology workshop course, Civic Engagement, which cosponsors the series.
“My main goal going into this was that I hoped that through a series of speakers, my students and anyone who came,would be inspired by one person to be more engaged, either in their community or in promoting social justice more broadly,” she said. “I had very specific learning outcomes for the class that have to do with understanding what civic engagement is, how to do it, and how to do it in a way that will promote social justice more broadly,” Glasser said.
Glasser’s students are currently working on a project related to transportation access and how it affects food insecurity in the community. Alsadig, after his speech, stayed to discuss it with her class.
“He gave us some ideas on how the Mankato community is experiencing transportation and food insecurity linkages to help shed light on our project,” Glasser said.
Ashley Hoehn, a student in Glasser’s Civic Engagement course, introduced Alsadig to the audience, sharing his work background in computer science and with Mankato Public Safety, and his responsibilities with the Greater Mankato Diversity Council of educating local businesses about Mankato’s growing population of new Americans.
Glasser said each year she has a student do background research on a speaker to introduce them. The students reach out to the speaker and ask them questions about their work. They also prepare questions for the question and answer period after the speech.
Hoehn said, “(Alsadig) was my favorite. I thought he was really good at explaining what he does and I felt comfortable asking questions. He was really, really friendly.”
The final speaker in this series will be Rachael Hanel Tuesday at 11 a.m. in CSU 201, who will give a workshop on writing letters to the editor of newspapers. Glasser plans to host another series of social justice speakers next semester.
“I really think meeting people can have an immeasurable impact on how people gravitate towards different stories and different individuals. So I was hoping through a series of speakers each student would find one person that sort of ignited either their vision of what they could do in their own lives, or their passion for a specific issue,” said Glasser.
Header Photo: Mohammed Alsadig stopped by MSU to discuss his career that started with working for the Mankato Department of Public Safety before becoming executive director of Great Director Diversity Council. (Dominic Bothe/The Reporter)
Write to Carly Bahr at caroline.bahr@mnsu.edu