A culturally competent community member will understand and be intrinsically motivated to translate diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts into their daily behaviors and decision making. This includes bridging the theoretical to the practical and interacting with the immediate happening of our community and all its members in a manner that is congruent with our highest ideals. Individuals have responsibility to hold themselves responsible for this congruence, and also explore how they can shape organizations to enable the congruence of others with institutional values.
Anthony, Lane and Rashawn are close friends and roommates who all identify as men. Increasingly, discussions amongst themselves engage issues of sex and gender in the context of sexism, and they are sharing more vulnerably with one another about their thoughts and questions related to the epidemic of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the community.
Rajit has been contemplating for some time how he wants to become more congruent in his commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Rajit believes deeply in his commitments and wants to ensure that his behaviors align with his values. Rajit decides his next step is to communicate his commitments more openly to the people around him so he can receive more feedback on the congruence of his behaviors.
In preparation for end-of-year reporting to the Division of Student Affairs, the coordinators of Student Health Services bystander intervention programs to confront sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other forms of gender-based discrimination, are asked to run a report on the proportion of faculty and staff at the institution who have completed trainings and report on the ratios of trained faculty and staff for each unit. The coordinators realize that their own unit, Student Health Services, has among the lowest number of faculty and staff who have completed trainings.
A group of career services staff members asks for time on the next staff meeting agenda to discuss the team’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. During the discussion, several team members share that they are not familiar with what diversity, equity and inclusion work looks like in career services and would benefit from more concrete examples of how their peers have translated the concepts into practice. The team generally agrees that more can be done to raise the collective consciousness to good work and sustain team efforts.
Wiliama was recently hired as the Dean of Students and overseas all operations in the office of Student Life, which includes multiple functions related to student care, crisis response, leadership development, as well as campus programming and events. One of Wiliama’s first projects is to convene departmental leaders to proactively manage the unit’s climate related to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.
A committee of assessment administrators and institutional diversity leaders presents the findings of the annual faculty, staff and student climate surveys to the Provost and dean of each college. In addition to presenting on trends revealed in the quantitative measures of the instrument, the committee presents the synthesized findings of the qualitative portion of the survey. Evident in the qualitative data is a growing lack of confidence that the campus climate survey will be actualized into any tangible institutional change.
Todd is research faculty in the school of public policy. Todd is actively engaged in equity research with a particular focus on the fair, just and equitable management of public serving institutions and the fair and equitable distribution of public services.
Angela is an associate professor in industrial engineering. Her research agenda focuses on human interactions with the built environment. In the past year, Angela has been reading articles that discuss the incorporation of critical and multicultural inquiry frameworks in engineering research. Motivated by these concepts, she begins attending presentations at regional and national conferences that discuss similar ideas in an effort to make connections and find community.
Charlene is an assistant professor in Geography about to start her second year as teaching faculty. During her first year, Charlene was inspired by the work of the colleagues she encountered through professional development opportunities at the Center for Teaching and Learning. In particular, she was impressed and inspired by colleagues who declared their social justice teaching philosophy through syllabi.
A team of communications studies faculty has been inspired by conversations in the past year initiated by both campus trainers and through professional development sessions facilitated by their dean and department chair. Team members want to learn more, but feel that they have exhausted the campus resources available to them.
