2025 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired the world to reimagine the true meaning of humanity and equality. Join the Washburn and Topeka communities as we reflect on the progress we've made and the journey ahead to fully embrace the vision of shared humanity.

Come enjoy a sweet time of conversation and connection as we listen to our keynote speaker, Dr. Beryl New. This event is part of Washburn University’s WUmester 2025 series.

Dr. Beryl A. New, Ed.D.

Beryl A. New, Ed.D., received the majority of her public education in Topeka Public Schools. She and her family moved to the community in 1961 from Lake Elsinore, California. However, the entire family ended up settling in Topeka, where she has lived ever since.

As a young child, she loved organizing activities that involved teaching others. This desire grew to become her passionate profession later in her life. After high school, she enrolled in secretarial college, but then married and began a family. When she had six children, Beryl enrolled in Washburn University where she graduated with high honors, earning her bachelor’s degree in 1988. She then began her career doing what she had always felt a calling to do – teaching English at her alma mater, Topeka High School! She went on to later earn her master’s in educational administration from Washburn in 2001. Following that, she earned a doctor of education degree from the University of Kansas in 2007. During her administrative career, she also served for five years at Lawrence High School as an assistant principal and then the associate principal.

Nearly 30 years after beginning her education career, she is still passionate about making sure all of her students do well. She instilled in her own eight children a love for learning and many were early readers – reading before they entered preschool. She has supported an inspiring turnaround at the high school where she first served as an assistant principal from 2001 to 2005, then returned to serve as head principal in 2010, Highland Park High School in Topeka. The staff and students make her day, and she is energized by doing what she loves most: helping young people prepare for a successful and productive life!

The spring 2025 WUmester will examine the essence of our humanity, engaging academic disciplines from across campus and a diverse range of co-curricular programming. We will tackle pivotal questions about the human condition amidst environmental shifts, genetic engineering, expanding knowledge of nonhuman animals and our connections to them, the ascent of artificial intelligence, the ongoing search for life beyond earth, changing demographics in the United States and beyond, and intense national and global debates surrounding citizenship and basic human rights.

WUmester 2025 invites us to reflect on our shared human qualities—empathy, creativity, morality—while we celebrate our diversity, contemplate our place in a more-than-human world, and craft more inclusive and sustainable ways of being human. Join the conversation during the Spring 2025 semester as we confront the centuries-old question: What does it mean to be human?

Host or Publisher Washburn University