Joe Burbank | Orlando Sentinel | MCT

Former President Bill Clinton delivers remarks while appearing on behalf of President Barack Obama at a rally in Orlando, Fla., on Sept. 12, 2012. Clinton will visit campus from April 5-7 as part of the Clinton Global Initiative University Annual Meeting.

Former president to come to campus April 5-7 with Global Initiative conference

Bill Clinton plans to spend three days next semester at Washington University, his daughter Chelsea announced Tuesday in her closing remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting of world dignitaries and heads of state.

Clinton will be coming to campus with a number of other leading topic experts and celebrities aiming to empower 1,000 students from around the world to pursue personal projects addressing issues in education, the environment, human rights, poverty and public health.

The conference will take place from April 5-7. As a result of hosting the conference, 200 Washington University undergraduate and graduate students will have the chance to participate in the weekend of workshops. Community members not taking part in the workshops will be able to attend celebrity speeches that the University plans to host in the Field House.

At last year’s Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) meeting, Clinton was joined by celebrity speakers including Jon Stewart, Usher, Kristen Bell and Madeleine Albright. In previous years, Drew Barrymore, Sean Penn and the co-founder of YouTube also spoke.

Amanda McBride, director of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, said that the lineup of speakers might not be finalized until just before the conference, though the Gephardt Institute will be announcing additional information as it becomes available.

“The most exciting thing is that Washington University is actually being honored in being selected to host,” McBride said. “The research of our faculty is changing people’s lives and our students are the next generation of civic leaders.”

McBride said she believes CGI was attracted to the University by the strength of the entire student body, rather than any one particular school or graduate program.

“I actually think it’s Washington University overall,” she said. “Our undergraduate student population is about ten percentage points higher in their community engagement than our peer institutions. And I think that reputation precedes us.”

McBride said that the University’s proven capacity for organizing events of this scale was likely a factor in the choice as well.

“We have the ability as an institution to launch major events like this with our history having hosted the presidential and vice presidential debates,” McBride said. “We did not apply for this; they actually came to us.”

While the conference itself is free for students accepted, CGI does not fund transportation costs. McBride said that many schools help students pay to get to the conference, and the Gephardt Institute has helped fund students to travel to CGI U for the past three years.

Student Life’s front page from Oct. 13, 1992 shows President Bill Clinton’s last visit to the Washington University campus. Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, participated in a presidential debate with President George Bush and Ross Perot.

Teresa Ai, a second-year Ph. D. student researching immunology in Washington University’s Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, attended the CGI U meeting last year. She also worked with the initiative in the past.

At the time of the conference, she and another graduate student at the University were just starting a group called ProSPER (Promoting Science, Policy, Education and Research), which aims to relate science to the broader community.

She said that she was very impressed by the diversity and accomplishment of the other student attendees, not to mention the speakers.

“It was really incredible how much undergraduates can do,” Ai said. “CGI U brings together a lot of different people from a lot of different parts of the world.”

Ai hopes that bringing the event to Washington University will help the school take a more active role in the global community, as coastal schools are more known to do. She said she thinks it will also help the University’s recognition by expanding its global impact.

“I think it will be a really eye-opening experience for Wash. U. students who are able to attend,” Ai said. “You won’t be learning about the world through the lens of the news any more, you’ll be learning about experiences directly from the people who are taking action and who have gotten the opportunity to really observe these problems and are currently designing projects to attack these problems.”

McBride said that the conference will benefit both the students and their projects.

“What the skill sessions end up looking like is ‘How do you turn a social passion into a career?’ So there’s a little bit of ‘How do you pick what to do next in your life?’ There’s also heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurism, so as you have an idea, how do you actually raise money to execute it? So it’s really kind of a balance between developing you as an individual but then also helping you realize your ideas,” McBride said.

McBride said that the conference is being organized using much of the same infrastructure the University had in place for the vice presidential debates in 2008. Since finding out last week that the University would be hosting the conference, it has already formed 15 subcommittees in charge of different aspects of the event.

The Gephardt Institute will also be promoting the event by tailoring some of its “Issues and Ideas” panels to promote public service and offering additional lectures and programs in the spring to expand on the conference beyond the three days that Clinton will be on campus.

Ai said she hopes that students will take full advantage of the opportunities the conference will bring, whether or not they are accepted to attend the workshops.

“It would be a huge shame for students not to jump at this opportunity and really enjoy what they could glean from this summit,” Ai said. “For those people who don’t have fully formed projects yet, I think even if you are not able to attend the actual meeting, going through the exercise of thinking of these projects can still spark a lot of ideas for any future project that you may become really excited about downstream of this event.”