Summit recruited numerous students to speak at this year’s conference.
Brady Bryce, director of ministry events and Summit, said Summit leadership listened to students, faculty and other individuals across campus to unearth student speakers.
“We tried to be widely diverse in the disciplines that are represented and just find out who people want to hear from,” he said.
Bryce said the student speakers are one of his favorite parts of Summit.
“It’s exciting for the people who come to Summit to see what students are doing, and they are always quite impressed with students’ friendliness and their insights from classes,” he said.
Mitchell East, biblical text major from Austin, is one of the student speakers. His session is titled “Let There Be Verse” and will allow the audience to explore the creation story through poetry.
He said when you hear Genesis read out loud, you get the feeling that Genesis was meant to be heard as a poem.
East recruited Dr. Steven Moore, associate professor of language and literature, Erin Daugherty, area coordinator of Sikes and A.B. Morris Hall, and Zach Carstens, junior Bible ministry major from College Station, to read the creation story and compose their own poems to share with the class. The session will conclude with a Q&A panel to further enlighten the audience.
On Tuesday morning, Amy McLaughlin-Sheasby, masters of divinity major from Atlanta, will lead a class called “The Colorful Portrait.”
“The idea stems from a theological conviction of mine,” she said, “that when God created all of humanity in God’s image, that it implies I alone cannot reflect the image of God, that I was intended to do that in the context of community.”
McLaughlin-Sheasby said anyone interested in race relations and reconciliation will enjoy her class.
Students involved in the Justice and Urban Studies Team at CitySquare will be presenting their work in Dallas.
Courtney Tee, sophomore communications major from Clear Lake, didn’t know until a few days ago she’d be presenting on Wednesday. Tee and several other JUST students will present their work with Design For Change, a program that operates within schools in the Dallas school district.
Several JUST team members are taking a group of inner-city Dallas students on a trip to India, and Tee was asked to fill in last-minute as a presenter.
“I think it will be almost cool that on Wednesday, we’ll get to say, ‘Hey, the original JUST team couldn’t be here because they are in India taking low-income Design For Change students on a trip for a project they won with in a national competition,'” she said.
In addition to sharing about the work with Design For Change, Tee wants to tie in Summit’s overall theme of Genesis to the presentation.
“We’ve just finished talking about Genesis in our Bible class, and we’ve talked a lot about bringing order out of chaos,” Tee said. “That is what we’ve seen happen in design for change. Order out of chaos is the work of the JUST team and, I would argue, that is the work of God.”
There are more than 15 other students speaking at Summit this year. Their names and classes can be found on page five of the Summit handbook and on the Summit 2015 app, which can be downloaded from the iTunes Store.
