You are invited to attend the Freedom Scholars Symposium, a celebration of the learning and service completed by the Scholars each year. During the scholarship program, Freedom Scholars have identified a challenge(s) facing their local communities. The service project(s) is i implemented with the assistance of community partners and civic-leader mentors. The Freedom Scholars Symposium offers peers, family members, community members, teachers and mentors an opportunity to share in the success and growth of knowledge the Freedom Scholars have experienced throughout the academic year. Following a plenary speaker, attendees will hear from the Scholars as they present their work.

2025 Symposium: Cherished Freedoms

Friday, June 27, 2025, Moseley Center, 100 Campus Drive, Elon, N.C.

Keynote Speaker: Hilton Kelly, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Sociology at Elon University

Hilton Kelly is Dean of Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Sociology at Elon University. In 2021-2022, he was an American Council on Education Higher Education Leadership Fellow. He received his B.A. in history from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and both his M.S. in labor studies and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His research and teaching interests are sociology of education, critical race theory, the Age of Jim Crow, the lives, work, and careers of African-American educators, and social memory studies. He is the author of Race, Remembering, and Jim Crow’s Teachers (2010) in the Routledge Studies in African-American History and Culture Series and Thinking about Black Education (2023) a pioneering reader on the African-American educational experience. His articles have appeared in Urban Education, Educational Studies, The Urban Review, The Journal of Negro Education, The American Sociologist, and Vitae Scholasticae: The Journal of Educational Biography. He has served on the Educational Studies and Educational Theory editorial boards for two consecutive terms, and on the editorial board of The Urban Review and the Western Journal of Black Studies.

Please note: The event is free and open to the public, but registration is highly encouraged.

Program at a glance

Time Event & Location
2:00 – 2:30 p.m. Registration & Reception
(Location: McKinnon Hall)
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Welcome & Keynote Address
Hilton Kelly, Ph.D., Elon University
3:30 – 4:15 p.m. Session 1
(Location: Lakeside Meeting Rooms)
4:15 – 5:00 p.m. Session 2
(Location: Lakeside Meeting Rooms)
5:00 – 5:15 p.m. Break
5:15 – 6:00 p.m. Session 3
(Location: Lakeside Meeting Rooms)
6:05 – 7:00 p.m. Awards Ceremony & Closing Address
(Location: McKinnon Hall)