Vice Provost for Student Success
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
After many intentional conversations about our needs and wants for a keynote speaker at our annual conference, we are thrilled to announce Dr. Amber Williams as our Keynote Speaker. As the Vice Provost for Student Success at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, her deep understanding of our field and hands-on experience makes her an incredible addition to our conference.
Shaun Holloway & Gracie Hood
In her hour-long fireside chat, Dr. Williams will share her authentic approach to her work, demonstrating how she genuinely engages with the challenges we face. We can’t wait to hear her insights and inspiration!
Co-Chairs, Speakers & Special initiatives
Note from our Sponsor
Advantage Design Group is thrilled to announce our role as the presenting sponsor for the Conversation with Dr. Williams! Her story, dedication, and authenticity are unparalleled. We hope you enjoy the session and leave feeling energized, excited, and ready to lean into your Authentic Approach. Since 2013, our unwavering support of NODA has been a cornerstone of our success and we are excited to be able to continue this support in a major way this year.
Through our shared mission to engage, welcome, and prepare new students and families for college success, we are grateful for the opportunity to provide the best online and virtual orientation solutions. It’s not just about solving the information gap; it’s about creating effective digital experiences bridging essential life transitions. Each partnership sparks innovation and empowerment to show authentic stories and foster genuine connections. Now more than ever, we remain committed to delivering transformative experiences that build communities and redefine the journey to college and beyond. Learn more about Advantage Design Group.
NODA Talks
NODA Talks applications have closed. Check back soon to see what stories will be shared this year!
Panel Discussion
More Information Coming Soon!
Author’s Luncheon
Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better
Psychologist Woo-kyoung Ahn devised a course at Yale called “Thinking” to help students examine the biases that cause so many problems in their daily lives. It quickly became one of the university’s most popular courses. Now, for the first time, Ahn presents key insights from her years of teaching and research in a book for everyone.
She shows how “thinking problems” stand behind a wide range of challenges, from common, self-inflicted daily aggravations to our most pressing societal issues and inequities. Throughout, Ahn draws on decades of research from other cognitive psychologists, as well as from her own groundbreaking studies. And she presents it all in a compellingly readable style that uses fun examples from pop culture, anecdotes from her own life, and illuminating stories from history and the headlines.
Thinking 101 is a book that goes far beyond other books on thinking, showing how we can improve not just our own daily lives through better awareness of our biases but also the lives of everyone around us. It is, quite simply, required reading for everyone who wants to think—and live—better.
Presented by:
Imagination: A Manifesto
In this revelatory work, Ruha Benjamin calls on us to take imagination seriously as a site of struggle and a place of possibility for reshaping the future.
A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. Work that doesn’t strangle the life out of people? Naive. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly. Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University professor, insists that imagination isn’t a luxury. It is a vital resource and powerful tool for collective liberation.
Imagination: A Manifesto is her proclamation that we have the power to use our imaginations to challenge systems of oppression and to create a world in which everyone can thrive. But obstacles abound. We have inherited destructive ideas that trap us inside a dominant imagination. Consider how racism, sexism, and classism make hierarchies, exploitation, and violence seem natural and inevitable—but all emerged from the human imagination.
The most effective way to disrupt these deadly systems is to do so collectively. Benjamin highlights the educators, artists, activists, and many others who are refuting powerful narratives that justify the status quo, crafting new stories that reflect our interconnection, and offering creative approaches to seemingly intractable problems.
Imagination: A Manifesto offers visionary examples and tactics to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is possible. This book is for anyone who is ready to take to heart Toni Morrison’s instruction: “Dream a little before you think.”
Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies and the founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton University. The author of the Stowe Prize–winning Viral Justice, as well as Race After Technology and People’s Science, Benjamin lives in Princeton, New Jersey
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About One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an empire that doesn’t consider you fully human.
On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed more than ten million times.
One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.
This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the West, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France, and Germany. It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called “rules-based order,” a generation that understands the West can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the Western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.
This book is El Akkad’s heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a breakup we are watching all over the United States, on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
Presented by:
