Students Launch First Salve TEDx Event

Stephanie Menders | Managing Editor
Photos by Kitty Williams | Secretary

Salve Regina hosted its first ever TEDx program Saturday, March 25^th to a sold-out crowd in Distefano Lecture Hall. The program, attended by students, faculty, administration, and community members, included 11 guest speakers.

TEDx programs use the format of classic TED conferences but are locally organized. Topics covered in Salve’s event ranged from mental health in Yoga to international laws and African conflict. The theme of the event was, “Growing Ideas.”

Araz Khajarian, a Junior Global Studies major with minors in Business Administration and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, led the event planning committee. Khajarian helped organize the first TEDx talk in Syria, her home country, but left before she could see it come to fruition.

Khajarian began planning this event in the summer of 2016 and formed a student committee in the fall semester. “This last week was the most stressful,” she says, “but the most fruitful.”

Khajarian says that it was important to her that she include a diverse array of speakers. Two speakers from the U.N. and a Salve faculty member were invited to speak, and the remaining speakers were selected through an application process.

Junior Alexis Jankowski, who majors in Psychology with minors in Neuroscience and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies, agrees that diversity in ideas was a crucial component in planning the event. “We often feel that we are in our own little Salve bubble, but really we need to reach out of that,” she says, “this is a great way to do that.”

Jankowski, who worked on the marketing committee and co-hosted the event, says she and the team spent a great amount of time doing community outreach. “Having events like this helps us to build a relationship with the Newport community, and when people come together to build relationships really only good things can happen,” she says.

Garrett Rupe, a senior Business Administration major, co-hosted the event with Jankowski and assisted in obtaining sponsorships and donations from Newport based companies and restaurants. Rupe says working with the TEDx team has been “a great honor.”

“It was really awesome to see everything come together in these last 12 hours,” Rupe says. “Just to be able to look out into the lobby and see people excited in response to the speakers is amazing.”

Rupe says that it’s important for the university to host events like this that are open to the public.  He

and the rest of the team are already looking ahead to next year’s event. “We hope to be part of a bigger picture of sharing and spreading worthy ideas,” he says.

The rest of the team also did not hold back in giving credit to their leader, Khajarian. “I really give all of the credit to Araz,” says Rupe.  “She has been so huge throughout all of this,” says Jankowski.

But Khajarian says she realizes that she could not have done it alone. “I really wouldn’t have been able to do anything without the team and Dr. Ducha Hang… and the offices on campus that helped,” she says,

Khajarian says that she is ultimately surprised by the community’s warm reception of the event. “I really didn’t see this coming,” she says of the crowd size. “This is more than anyone had seen coming.”