The third candidate for the LGBT Resource Center’s open assistant director position presented at Syracuse University on Friday, where he described plans to expand LGBTQ programming if selected for the position.

Carl Kalmick, who gave his 30-minute presentation to about 10 people, is a supervisor and coordinator at Binghamton University’s Q Center. He’s worked as an academic adviser to LGBTQ students, taught courses on LGBTQ and human rights and led a trip to Israel that engaged students on the intersection of religion and LGBTQ identity.

Kalmick said he’s open to big ideas in programming at SU.

“Instead of starting from a place of ‘it’s too big’ or ‘it’s unattainable,’ I think it’s really important to consider starting from a place of ‘let’s do it, let’s find a way,’” Kalmick said during the forum. “I really try to start from a large perspective, and then if someone tells me I need to tone it down I will, but I try to start from big ideas and run with it if I can.”

As with Kaelae Shaner and Jorge Castillo, the other two candidates who presented Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, Kalmick was asked to speak about his background. He was also asked to talk about the developmental needs of the community and discuss a plan for developing a year-long leadership program, according to a sheet given to the audience. Participants were asked to assess and rate the candidate.

Kalmick said he considered ways to build community, university support, identity development and awareness of intersectionality when developing his year-long plan. This took the form of a program he called SPARC.

SPARC stands for Syracuse’s Potash Agreement Remembering to Create, he said. The acronym pays tribute to former student Jordan Potash’s work to foster the university’s relationship with its LGBTQ community in the 1990s.

Kalmick broke SPARC down into three stages: goal-oriented conception, purposeful implementation and assessment of success. He outlined several components of SPARC and presented a tentative schedule for the kind of programming he’d try to implement during the course of a year.

The programming would include creating a SPARC club, he said. The club would host a variety of events, he added. Based on his own research and his work in Binghamton, Kalmick outlined the following:

• Starting a series of 10 seminars, each focused on a different aspect of leadership
• Sponsoring a trip to Rochester’s annual ImageOut festival in October 2018
• Establishing a partnership with Sage Upstate, which focuses on local elderly LGBTQ community members
• Starting LGBTQ faculty and alumni panels
• Launching an alternative spring break trip to New York City
• Beginning a Social Action Month in April 2019

Partnerships, seminars and panels all provide opportunities to see different representations of queer leadership, Kalmick added. He said his goal for the alternative spring break trip is to create a sense of community among participants while they learn about LGBTQ history and culture.

“Often times I feel like … the purpose is limited to filling a void, almost, as opposed to thinking about the deeper meaning of why they’re actually deciding to hold this particular event at this particular time,” he said, referring to LGBTQ-centric programming. He said that he wants his programming to have a clear purpose.

khristian kemp-delisser, the LGBT Resource Center’s current director, said after Friday’s forum that an offer will be made to one of the three assistant director candidates by the end of next week.

“I’ve been really happy to share the candidates with the campus community,” kemp-delisser said. “The part that I’m really excited about is now all the qualities and the skills that (the candidates) have, now they get an opportunity to showcase them to people other than me.”

Published on May 11, 2018 at 4:10 pm

Contact Colleen: cefergus@syr.edu | @ColleenEFergus2