KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 21, 2025 – Community colleges are often celebrated as engines of access and mobility. But behind the institutional curtains lie a more complicated story.

In his talk at the University of Rhode Island’s 2025 Honors Colloquium, Eric Felix will share insights from a three-year research-practice partnership with equity leaders across 20 community colleges in his home state of California. An associate professor at San Diego State University, Felix studies higher education reform and racial equity, with a focus on community colleges and critical policy implementation.

Felix will explore “In These Times: Racial Justice, Resistance, and Reimagination in Community Colleges” on Tuesday, Oct. 28 at 5:30 p.m. at Edwards Hall at 64 Upper College Road on the Kingston Campus.

Felix’s lecture will discuss racial battle fatigue, performative equity, and ways practitioners can push institutions toward transformation. Felix will present acts of resistance and imagination, such as roles invented, resources redirected, and cultures challenged from within, all asking: What does it take to stay in the fight? How do we move from one-off initiatives to sustained, structural change?

Hosted by the Honors Program, URI’s premier lecture series is examining the public education landscape this fall. Felix will speak as part of the fall colloquium series, “Education, Behind the Curtains,” which is also livestreamed (link available on the colloquium website).

Felix is the product and beneficiary of public education from kindergarten to graduate school and the first in his family to attend college. He credits Upward Bound with making a difference in his academic trajectory.

His lecture will be followed on Nov. 18 by Terrell Strayhorn of Virginia Union University, the last presenting speaker before the colloquium’s concluding “State of Education in Rhode Island” panel on Dec. 2. Recorded lectures by this fall’s prior speakers can be found on the Honors Colloquium site.

This year’s URI Honors Colloquium has been led by URI’s College of Education.

Hosted by the University’s Honors Program, the annual URI Honors Colloquium is free and open to the public. To see recordings of last year’s speakers, or past colloquiums, visit the Honors Colloquium Archives. Sign up here for more information and reminders for colloquium events or by emailing urihonors@etal.uri.edu.