February 17, 2014- Albany, GA- Albany Technical College will host a teach-in seminar with guest speaker, N.Y. Nathiri, on Monday evening, February 17, 2014, beginning at 6pm in the Kirkland Conference Center. The event is part of a month-long series of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture.
Dr. Anthony O. Parker, President of Albany Tech, will open the ceremony with a welcome and overview, followed by an acknowledgment of Dougherty County School System administrators and educators given by Tomekia Cooper, Chairperson of General Core/Learning Support Division at Albany Tech. The guest speaker will be introduced by Frederia Sampson, English/Humanities instructor at Albany Tech.
Nathiri will speak on "Approaches and Strategies for Teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God." Serving as the Director of Multidisciplinary Programs for the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc. (P.E.C.), Nathiri is also the General Manager of the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. In her capacity at P.E.C., Nathiri is responsible for those programs, which focus on historic preservation, education, and the cultural arts.
Under Nathiri's leadership, the festival has been named "One of 25 Cultural Tourism Success Stories" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, receiving the "Regional Destination Award in the Humanities" from the Cultural Olympiad and was named "One of the Top 100 Events in North America" by the American Bus Association. The Town of Eatonville secured a listing on the National Register of Historic Places under her leadership as well.
Prior to joining P.E.C. in 1990, Nathiri spent 10 years as a communications instructor at Valencia Community College in Orlando. This was preceded by her service as Honors Program coordinator for the University of Central Florida's McKnight Center for Excellence. She was also a librarian in the African Studies and Research Center Library at Cornell University.
Nathiri holds an undergraduate degree in history from Ithaca College (New York) and a master's degree in library science from Syracuse University. She is the compiler and editor of the award-winning volume, ZORA! Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman and Her Community (Sentinel Communications, 1991) and is active in the preservation and art communities at local, state, and national levels. She holds such honors as being named "Hero of Preservation" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Rollins College; Women of Distinction Award from the Citrus Council of Girl Scouts; Humanitarian of the Year Award (non-profit category) from The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) and the Mary Call Darby Collins Award presented by the Florida Secretary of State, by whom she was noted as "a volunteer who has forever changed the course of historic preservation."
Guest speaker, N.Y. Nathiri, General Manager of the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of Arts and Humanities.
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