When campus closes for the Democratic National Convention next week, many faculty, staff and students will avoid the traffic and stay away. Some faculty members, however, will come downtown to serve different roles at and around the convention.

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology Allison Cotton is a convention delegate. She will be blogging for Metro State about her DNC experience; go to http://metrostate-dncdelegate.blogspot.com/ to read her blog.

Assistant Professor and Journalism Program Coordinator Kenn Bisio has coordinated with the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post and Associated Press for journalism students to have paid positions assisting reporters on the floor of the DNC. The students will be writing, taking photos and producing videos for the Web.

Assistant Professor of Management Whitney Traylor has been invited to serve as a panelist at a special DNC event. The panel, titled “A New Voice – A New Conversation,” will include actor Hill Harper, best known for his role on CSI: NY. It will be held at 11 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 25, at the Pavilion State, 2401 Washington Street.

Some of Traylor’s students havevolunteered to conduct research and gather background information on the topics being discussed in the panel presentation.

Visiting Instructors of History Kevin Rucker and Deborah Faulkner will coordinate DNC special historic walking tours of Lower Downtown (LoDo) from Saturday, Aug. 24, through Thursday, Aug. 28. A daily two-hour, family-oriented tour will run from 10 a.m. to noon. A second two-hour tour that is more audlt-oriented will run from 3 to 6 p.m. For more information, go to http://www.lodo.org/lodo-walk-tour.html. Rucker is the author of three local history books and is the official tour coordinator for the LoDo District, Inc.

Students participating in “Metro State gets Unconventional,” a series of social events and community service being held off-campus and around the city, will be blogging at http://metrostate-unconventional.blogspot.com/. Go to http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/unconventional_twv6070908.shtml to read more about the “Unconventional” program.

Theatre Production Manager Megan Euler has been asked by The Opera Shop (a division of Kroneke Sports Entertainment) to be the VIP event manager for Mayor John Hickenlooper's DNC opening night party. She will be taking at least four Metro State theatre students with her to assist in the event preparations.