Lunches with Leaders

Lunches with Leaders | Meet, Eat, Listen & Engage

This monthly lunch series provides an opportunity for students to meet with campus and community leaders in a small conversational setting.  Learn from our speakers’ stories and the journey they have taken to get where they are.

Join us one Wednesday a month at 12:30 pm in the Clearwater Room on the first floor of the Idaho Commons. Free lunch is provided.

Wednesday, September 18
Katherine Aiken; Dean, College of Letters Arts and Social Sciences

Katherine Aiken, Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences is a 20th century U. S. historian with an emphasis in social and cultural history, women and labor. As an historian, she is the author of three books and is an active speaker who is well known and often invited to speak throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

As the Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, Aiken oversees the largest academic division of the University of Idaho, with nearly 4,100 students in eleven departments, and also has administrative responsibility of the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival, the McClure Center for Public Policy Research and the Martin Institute. Aiken was selected by Idaho Business Review as one of the 2012 Women of the Year

Wednesday, October 23
Steve Martin; Director, Native American Student Center

Steve Martin, Muscogee Creek, is the director of the University of Idaho Native American Student Center.  Before coming to Idaho, Martin served as the Native American student adviser with South Dakota State University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and was a Native American Studies instructor at St. Joseph’s Indian School. He also was a Native American student adviser at Dakota State University. In 2005, his research took him to Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation to work with Native American male students enrolled at the tribal college.  Steven has previously been invited by the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be a reader for the Gates Millennium Scholarship, which he performed for three years and still considers being one of his greatest honors. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of Oklahoma and his Masters in Higher Education from South Dakota State University. He hopes to pursue a PhD in the near future at the University of Idaho, where he is responsible for enhancing opportunities for Native American students of all ages.

Wednesday, November 13
Paul Petrino; Head Football Coach