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NIU to host March 27 welcome luncheon for ABCC

March 19, 2015

ews-abcc Association of Black Culture CentersNorthern Illinois University will officially welcome the Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC) to campus during a March 27 welcome luncheon at Altgeld Auditorium. The event begins at 12:30 p.m.

The ABCC—which serves African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American campus culture centers across the country—will relocate its headquarters from Knox College to the NIU DeKalb main campus, effective July 1, 2015.

The campus community is invited to meet the three members of the ABCC leadership team who will join the faculty and staff of NIU in DeKalb:

  • Fred Hord, whose faculty appointment will be in the Department of Counseling Adult and Higher Education, and he will also have a position in the provost’s office;
  • Terry Duffy, executive assistant to the ABCC for the last 15 years, who will be critical during the ABCC’s transition to NIU, particularly with respect to building linkages and facilitating collaborations between NIU and the resources available from the ABCC member institutions; and
  • Donald Forti, who serves as ABCC webmaster and will be a joint appointment shared between ABCC and NIU’s Division of Marketing and Communications.

The ABCC is a growing organization with more than 700 centers that are members or affiliates in all 50 states, and soon in the Caribbean and West Africa, increasingly involving historically and predominantly black colleges and universities, museums, community centers, as well as multicultural centers and offices.  ABCC benefits to members have expanded from networking, the newsletter and national conference discounts to include its own speakers’ bureau and traveling art exhibits, as well as discount arrangements with book and journal publishers, film/video/CD Rom companies, and online agencies.  In addition, centers have the option of applying for formal accreditation from the organization.

Hosting the ABCC initiatives related to mentoring, maximizing student leadership, and supporting curricular and co-curricular cultural resonance is expected to promote student career success and to prepare NIU graduates for leadership roles in a diverse, global marketplace.