Sacramento State’s bilingual and multicultural education department will be hosting its 17th annual multicultural education conference Saturday, which will explore the impacts of Arizona’s immigration policy on education and other issues facing students from other cultural background.

The conference, which is open to all Sac State students, faculty and staff, will be from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the University Union.

“Primarily we are trying to highlight issues about multicultural education that impacts the students here in our local region. Sacramento is one of our most diverse cities in the United States,” said Maggie Beddow, assistant professor and coordinator for the bilingual and multicultural education department.

The conference will start with a speech from keynote speaker Eugene Garcia, vice president for education partnerships at Arizona State University. The speech will be held in the University Union Ballroom.

Garcia will be speaking about Arizona’s policy toward Mexican immigrants, and how it affects these immigrants and their education.

“Arizona is taking a set of steps to mitigate what they perceive to be the negative effects of immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants. There’s a very ambiguous and negative climate towards Latinos in Arizona,” Garcia said. “The idea here is to present a set of commentaries and analysis, research that we’ve done.”

The conference aims to allow current students to network with former students, as well as to provide a free conference to educators, Beddow said.

“Particularly in these budget times a lot of educators are not able to attend professional conferences due to high costs,” she said.

Throughout the rest of the day, students will participate in 30 breakout sessions, which will consist of presentations on topics on multicultural education and how to teach students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

“Anybody who is interested can present, we have Sac State students, sometimes we have professors, teachers who are out in the field, community members, anybody can submit a proposals about whatever their topic is and then we review that and then we make the decision if they can present at the conference,” Beddow said.

Garcia, who promotes bilingualism with his kids and his grandkids, said he views multiculturalism as an important key to personal development.

“Multiculturalism is defined as a way to understanding yourself in relationship to others. The better you understand the difference, the better you are able to operate in a social world that is quite complex,” Garcia said.

Students in the educational doctorate program will present research they have conducted in their field, Beddow said.

A final presentation will be an Aztec dance number, which is something the department has not done in previous years.

“This does promote the mission of Sac State which is to focus on diversity issues. We have a diverse campus,” Beddow said. “It’s important to the students because they get to participate in a professional development program they get to not only present but they get to learn about topics that are of interest to them that are related to education.”

Garcia said he believes this conference will educate people about multiculturalism and its effects in the future.

“The most successful workforce in the future will be one that’s got a college education, one that can probably speak two or three languages, one that can understand and operate during very diverse circumstances and adapt to cultural differences,” Garcia said. “That’s why I would say this is a good thing for everyone, not just Sac State.”

For information about individual locations of workshops and sessions, please contact Maggie Beddow at [email protected].

Cayla Gales can be reached at [email protected].