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; Interim Provost, 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
Carmen Suarez; Chief Diversity Officer
Carmen Suarez is the Director of Human Rights, Access and Inclusion at the University of Idaho and a member of the President’s cabinet. She develops and implements various diversity, bias prevention, sexual harassment and faculty/staff professional development training programs, initiates underrepresented faculty/staff strategic recruitment and retention plans, investigates and resolves complaints, monitors various dimensions of institutional equity, reviews and approves the hiring policies, practices and individual employment searches, and serves as Title IX and ADA Coordinator and Affirmative Action Officer for the institution.
Carmen has worked in AA/EEO compliance, university enrollment management, law school career services administration, private sector management and human resources and public services program implementation. She began her career in graduate admissions, worked for several years assisting migrant farm workers, directed a comprehensive university minority student recruitment and retention program, served as a university affirmative action officer, managed a private sector company’s human resources and developed and implemented the company’s minority-owned business certification, researched and submitted business proposals and pursued government procurement opportunities. She has conducted numerous training programs on topics such as minority student higher education access, various diversity and managing diversity topics, sexual harassment, Latino and African American relations, bias prevention, gender communications, career development and employment hiring
practices.
Wednesday, November 13
Paul Petrino; Head Football Coach
Paul Petrino was introduced on December 3, 2012 as the 33rd head football coach of the University of Idaho Vandals. This is not Petrino's first time at Idaho, he was an assistant from 1992-94. The return to Moscow is a return to his Northwest roots. A native of Butte, Montana, and raised in Helena, he is a graduate of Carroll College (MT) where he was a two-time All-American quarterback and NAIA Division II Player of the Year. Petrino's coaching career began at his alma mater before he was hired at Idaho in 1992. After his stint at Idaho, he coached at Utah Sate, Louisville, Illinois, Southern Mississippi and, most recently, Arkansas. He also spent one season with NFL Atlanta Falcons. Everywhere he has been, his offenses have produced record-setting numbers.