Challenging the status quo of traditional teaching methods, Bettina Love uses hip-hop music to channel her students’ social, creative and academic abilities in the classroom.

As part of the Green and Gold Speaker Series, hosted by the Centers for Diversity and Inclusion department at Sacramento State, Love is scheduled to speak Monday in the University Union’s Redwood Room. The event will be held at 3 p.m. and will run for roughly an hour and a half.

Following the event, there will be a Q&A as well as a short reception in the Multi-Cultural Center for students to meet Love.

She will also be providing the keynote at the UC Davis Equity Summit the following day.

Love, an award-winning author and associate professor of educational theory and practice at the University of Georgia, is known for her unique and innovative teaching style combining hip-hop culture with practical teaching methods, according to her website.

“Her research focuses on the ways in which urban youth negotiate Hip-Hop music and culture to forms social, cultural, and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and intersectional social justice,” Love’s website reads.

According to her website, she was named the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University where she developed her hip-hop civics curriculum GET FREE, which is available online and aims to “push and extend the ideas of democracy, citizenship, freedom, community, civic engagement, and intersectional justice.”

She is a highly coveted public speaker who discusses a wide-range of topics including hip-hop education, anti-blackness in schools, black girlhood, queer youth and issues of diversity and inclusion, Love’s website also reads.

John Johnson, director of the Centers for Diversity and Inclusion at Sac State, said that the goal of Love’s visit is to provide students with a perspective that they may have not been exposed to before.

“The goal is really to recognize that there is content that may not be available to students through the particular instructional staff or faculty that we have on campus,” Johnson said. “There [are] people who are doing work that I think not only can inspire our students, but is affirming and validating for them as well.”

Johnson said he understands the enormous impact her unique perspective and teaching style have had not only on students, but also idealistic teachers as well.

“Her work really speaks to sort of the need for us to recognize the multiple intelligences and the strength and the value that is embedded in hip hop culture,” Johnson said. “And to recognize that as kind of a pathway to engage with urban youth and how that space can help students do more than survive in an educational system that often sort of leaves them as marginalized and alienated participants.”

Johnson said that the Green and Gold Speaker Series is a manifestation of the campus’ statement for diversity and inclusion and that the goals, perspectives and values that Love holds  fall in line with those of Sac State.

Former Green and Gold speakers include Alicia Garza, social activist behind the Black Lives Matter movement, and A.D. Carson, professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia.

The event is free, but a ticket is required for entry and seating capacity is limited. For additional ticket information visit the eventbrite page.