Morehouse College hosts second annual Dream Makers Summit

Morehouse College hosted their second annual Dream Makers Summit, a showcase of student excellence at the school.

The Dream Makers Summit is a signature event at Morehouse College, which highlights and celebrates student excellence in scholarship, creativity, and innovation. It’s also an opportunity for select industry partners to introduce students to training and career opportunities at their organizations.

The purpose of the Dream Makers Summit is to support scholars as they showcase their potential to shape a better future through research, creativity, and innovation. During the summit, attendees engaged with students and learned about their scholarly productions, creativity, and innovations. The event was held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Shirley A. Massey Executive Conference Center.

Students in the humanities, social sciences, media, arts, business, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics studies delivered presentations and demonstrations along with supplemental presentations from industry partners and notable Morehouse alumni. Alongside the presentations, the program also included student entrepreneurial demonstrations, lightening talks, and an alumni panel discussion on the role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in innovation.

Panelists included Founder of Therapeutic GI and Gastroenterologist Dr. Kevin Woods (graduated in 1999), Director of Multimedia and Virtual Events Kennard Garrett (graduated in 2001), and Founder of MooreAG and Biochemist Dr. Desmond Moore (graduated in 2008).

Students also had a chance to eat lunch and learn with industry partners as well.

Some of the presentation’s topics included “County-Level Prevalence of Obesity Related Risk Factos”, “Social Determinants of Medication Use for Depression and Anxiety among individuals with a history of Cancer”, “Molecular Mechanism of Sleep Regulation at Serotonergic Synapses in Drosophila”, “Intersecting Inequalities: Race, Law, and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice in Black Communities”, and more.

Students spent most of the semester and even longer working on these presentations and collecting data.

Junior Joel Walker said he and his group had been working on the presentation for “two summers”.

“We have been working on the molecular mechanism of sleep regulation for two summers now and I’m glad we finally got it done,” he said.

Senior Marchellos Scott said his presentation on “Intersecting Inequalities” was very moving and very crucial in events like George Floyd and many others.

“This was a topic near and dear to my heart and I wanted to address it in my research,” he said.

Additionally, this year, the keynote speaker was Director for Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA) Dr. Manu Platt, who graduated in 2001.

Platt said to the students to be your most authentic self and do not change for anyone or any job/career.

“Be sure to reach back and hold someone else up and celebrate the thing itself. No one wants to do a job if they must change who they are to be a certain way. I like to say, you don’t have to change who you are, be a scientist, be a researcher, just come as you are,” Platt said.

Platt also quotes one of Maya Angelou’s speeches, “If you are always finding a normal, you will never know how amazing you can be”.

“What Morehouse has allowed it’s Black men to be is to not fit in a box,” he said. “Don’t be the Black guy that destroys the future because some are out here trying but be the Black guy who dreams of a better future and who builds up others to make those dreams real.”

For more information, visit https://morehouse.edu/life/signature-events/dream-makers-summit/ .

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