2024 Track C: Equity & Belonging
Just like for students, equity and belonging are essential for faculty, staff, and administrators to flourish. This track delves into how feeling valued and respected fosters a sense of agency and self-confidence. When everyone feels empowered to contribute their unique perspectives and ideas, it creates a more positive and productive work environment for the entire institution.
Join us for sessions that explore:
- Land Acknowledgements: Understanding the history of the land your institution occupies.
- Disrupting Bias: Dismantling Anti-Black Racism and White Supremacy Culture.
- Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Creating an inclusive environment for all, including those with Autism.
- Supporting Re-entry: Empowering justice-involved individuals to reintegrate successfully.
This session explores the challenges of creating a true sense of belonging for all students, faculty, and staff. Participants will brainstorm solutions and share practical approaches to fostering inclusive excellence.
By the end of this 90-minute workshop, participants will be able to connect individual positionality with the purpose of a Land Acknowledgement. By identifying components of authentic Land Acknowledgments, participants will honor relationships through connecting with areas of Indigenous excellence. Finally, participants will understand the structure of Land Acknowledgements by comparing and contrasting contemporary examples in groups.
Outcomes:
- Connect individual positionality with purpose of a Land Acknowledgement
- Identify components of authentic Land Acknowledgments
- Honor relationships by identifying and choosing areas of Indigenous excellence to connect with
- Understand structure of Land Acknowledgements by comparing and contrasting contemporary examples
Session Materials
This regional focused workshop aims to highlight performativity and subtle (yet significant) discourses of whiteness beyond the overtly bigoted white supremacy on national display often marked and seen, and how these discourses show up in societal cultural practice, with particular focus on spaces within higher education. More specifically, we seek to make visible the crafted yet unmarked varieties of whiteness as a plurality of communicative discourses, be it verbal, written, or behavioral, often invisible, or veiled through normalized cultural and [dis]racialized day-to-day practices in the pacific northwest, and broader nation. Such cultural practices allow ongoing manifestations and representations of whiteness to fester within sub structures that enable epistemic whiteness to be present as a source of violence, spirit impact and cultural appropriation. Participants should expect to walk away with a deeper understanding of ways in which whiteness operates in and permeates other regions and especially higher education, and how such cultural practices/discourses enable and sustain, unbalanced and toxic climates that continue to have disparate impact/outcomes on racially/ethnically minoritized groups in dominant ‘nice’ white spaces.
Participants in this 90-minute interactive workshop will have the opportunity to share experiences, ask questions, and learn to better understand and communicate with autistic people. We will identify current practices you are already using and answer questions you have coming into the workshop, as well as those that arise throughout. We will examine the roots of ableism and othering U.S. culture and will explore autism as a culture, including communication tools for interacting in a culturally responsive manner. Participants will be better able to recognize and respond to communication patterns and needs of people with autism and will come away with tools to apply best practices in their daily lives. Resources for future learning will be shared as well. Faculty, administrators, and staff will benefit from attending.
Outcomes:
- Identify current practices and discuss personal experiences.
- Examine how the roots of ableism affect present day attitudes and actions.
- Describe cultural differences, as well as the disabling features of autism, and frequently co-occurring disabilities.
- Recognize communication patterns and needs of autistic people and practice responding to those needs.
- Identify resources for future questions and continued learning.
Session Materials
This presentation will provide session participants a chance to hear from college professionals with experience building relationships to benefit all students, including those impacted by the justice system, and aid them in the completion of their degrees. With a focus on the importance of building community session participants will have a chance to participate in a group activity and begin to cultivate actions that can be implemented on their own campuses.
Outcomes:
Session participants will receive guidance on how best to implement relationship building strategies on a college campus that support justice impacted students.
- Best practices in serving people. Relationship building customer service.
- Building Community both on and off the campus
- Becoming a “Dream-Builder”: Cultivation an Inviting Culture on Your Campus for Justice Impacted Students.
