University College

The University Forum Committee (UFC) is responsible for bringing external speakers to the campus of Appalachian State University.

The University Forum Lecture series is one of the longest-running such series at Appalachian State University and it provides opportunities for the students, faculty, and staff at the university and for people in the surrounding region to hear some of the most stimulating speakers in the country.

Congress to Campus Community Talk

This event has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.

We are working on rescheduling this event for Spring 2026.

A Lifelong Calling: Educating Women and Girls in Afghanistan

Tuesday, September 30 2025 at 11:00 AM
Plemmons Student Union, Grandfather C (Room 137C)
263 Locust Street
Boone, North Carolina 28608

Tuesday, September 30 2025 at 6:00 PM
Appstate Hickory, Atrium
800 17th St. NW
Hickory, NC 28601

Speaker: Dr. Abdul Habib Khalid
Faculty member: Lillian Nave

Dr. Abdul Habib Khalid is a Fulbright Scholar formerly of Kabul Education University whose lifelong calling has been to educate women and girls in Afghanistan. Over the past decade he has worked to connect students in Kabul with students in Boone with Professor Nave's First Year Seminar classes at Appalachian State University and has co-written a book chapter with Professor Nave on their project with students at both universities. After the fall of Kabul in 2021, Dr. Khlaid fled Afghanistan after several years as a refugee and is currently in the United States at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Khalid's talk will elucidate the long and difficult pathway he and his family have walked to educate half of Afghanistan's population while struggling against governmental, physical, and technological difficulties.

The Cigarette Surfboard- Film Screening w/ Discussion and Q and A to follow

Tuesday, October 28 2025 at 5:30 PM
Greenbriar Theater
Plemmons Student Union
263 Locust Street
Boone, North Carolina 28608

Speaker: Ben Judkins
Faculty member: Jennifer Maxwell

This documentary focuses on creative solutions to environmental issues and climate change, while offering hope and student empowerment through individual action toward global protection. After a young designer realizes that a surfboard – which he crafted from thousands of littered cigarette butts picked up off California beaches – could captivate the eyes of millions across the globe, he decides to use it as the impetus to do something more. The Cigarette Surfboards become a platform to spark ocean stewardship and the symbol of a campaign to hold Big Tobacco accountable for their toxic, plastic waste. Surfing is the medium, but the message is universal. The surfboards are used to start conversations and explore tangible solutions to better understand how to protect and restore the health of the ocean. The Ciggy Boards are the vessel, platform, and connective thread between all the ocean activists featured in the film. To be followed by an audience Q&A.

Listening for the Path: How Nervous Systems Shape the Way We Lead, Learn, & Live

Thursday, October 30 2025 at 4:00 PM
Plemmons Student Union, Parkway Ballroom (Room 420)
263 Locust Street
Boone, North Carolina 28608

Speaker: Christy Shi Day
Faculty member: Shaquana Suggs

Join us for an inspiring talk with Christy Shi Day, trauma-informed disaster response advocate and strategic facilitator, on how nervous system awareness shapes leadership, resilience, and meaningful change. This event is FREE and open to all faculty, staff, students, & the WNC community. 

Christy Shi Day is a trauma-informed disaster response advocate, strategic facilitator, and systems thinker whose work lives at the intersection of leadership, resilience, and collective healing. With roots in higher education, civic life, and community-based food systems, she helps organizations, governments, and networks navigate complexity with clarity, care, and connection.

For more than 15 years, Christy has worked across North Carolina, often in the wake of crisis, to support transformational leadership grounded in relationships and lived experience. From supporting recovery efforts after major disasters to weaving statewide food policy networks, she brings a deeply human approach to change, grounded in nervous system awareness, deep listening, and attention to the dynamics we don't always notice but are always there.

Christy is the founder of Shi Day Consulting and a network weaver with Together WNC, where she supports public sector leaders in building trauma-informed, community-rooted systems. She creates spaces where people can slow down, listen well, and begin to shift the patterns that hold them back.
Her work is guided by a simple but powerful belief: leadership isn’t about having the answers. It’s about learning to notice, attune, and move with integrity through uncertainty.

The Only Doctor: documentary screening and discussion with producer Anjanette Leveret

Thursday, November 13 2025 at 4:00 PM
Leon Levine Hall of Health Sciences (LLHS) Room 103
1179 State Farm Rd
Boone, North Carolina 28607

Speaker: Anjanette Levert
Faculty member: Tom Hansell

Anjanette Levert is a Peabody award winning documentary filmmaker, producer, curator, coach and professor.  She won the Peabody for “The Only Doctor” directed by Matthew Hashiguchi.  The film was aired on PBS’s Reel South documentary series after having premiered at Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. She is an alumnus of the Southern Producers Lab (New Orleans Film Society), the Arts Emerging Leaders Program (New York Foundation for the Arts), and the Sundance Producers Intensive. She is the 2025 recipient for the Spelman Presidential Excellence in Mentorship Award after having been the 2022 award winner for Excellence in Teaching.

Additional information about the film can be foud here.