Inclusive Practitioners Program

The program is founded on three overarching goals:

• To provide ongoing opportunities for faculty and staff to engage in critical conversations about campus learning environments and how to intentionally structure those environments in ways that increase equity, inclusion, access and full participation.
• To foster a community of engaged educators committed to creating and maintaining inclusive learning environments who embrace the opportunity to collectively explore ways to reduce barriers, to individually apply strategies for inclusion, and to process and debrief with colleagues the relative effectiveness and impact of varying approaches.
• To positively impact the experience of students on campus by applying strategies for inclusion in ways that improve the actual and perceived campus climate across living and learning environments.

Overview and Structure

The program is designed to promote individual and collective learning, collective support and problem solving, and relationship building across disciplines and institutional divisions.

• Faculty and staff who wish to participate in the Program agree to complete at least three workshops over the course of each academic year.
• Faculty and staff will also be invited to attend one or more Practitioner Conversations during the academic year to discuss ways they are applying inclusive practices in their respective campus learning environments and to explore ways to address any challenges they are experiencing.

Workshops for Spring 2023

Note: The Spring workshops will all be offered via zoom. You will be sent an Outlook calendar invitation for any workshop you register for. The zoom link and password will be included with the Outlook invitation.

Anti-Racism as Everyday Practice Series

Unpacking What’s Happening: Engaging with Call-Out Culture

This 90-minute workshop will explore the dynamics of call-out (or cancel) culture, including how those dynamics are influenced by who is calling out, who is being called out, and why. The workshop will also address ways to help students critically reflect on those dynamics and their impact and how to help students frame their engagement with others in ways that increase understanding while centering social justice.

Monday, April 3 from 10:00-11:30 AM (ET)

Who’s in the Room: Managing Power and Privilege Dynamics

This 90-minute workshop will explore the ways power and privilege manifest in interpersonal dynamics and how to increase students’ self-awareness of the way their behavior impacts others in order to promote greater equity, inclusion, access and full participation.

Monday, February 27 from 3:30-5:00 PM (ET)

Setting the Tone: Establishing Expectations for Learning Environments on Day 1

This 90-minute workshop will explore strategies for increasing clarity and transparency with respect to how students are expected to engage with each other in learning environments and the rationale behind those expectations with respect to student learning and campus climate.

Tuesday, February 7 from 1:30-3:00 PM (ET)

Framing Difficult Discussions: Acknowledging Impact, Using Trigger Warnings, and Fostering Engagement

This 90-minute workshop will explore strategies to foster engaged discussion related to difficult topics (such as systemic racism and violence) while being mindful of the impact those topics/discussions might have on students.

Monday, March 6 from 10:00-11:30 AM (ET)

Navigating Flash Points: Facilitating Difficult Dialogues in Response to Campus and Cultural Tensions

This 90-minute workshop will explore strategies for facilitating difficult dialogues when flash points arise due to campus events, cultural tensions, or critical national/international incidents.

Friday, March 10 from 9:00-10:30 AM (ET)

Practice Scenarios + Responses

These 90-minute skill-building sessions will each present a series of scenarios that faculty and staff will practice responding to in order to increase their capacity to recognize and respond to microaggressions. (Note: Each session will feature different scenarios, and the scenarios for these sessions will be different from the ones included in the previous sessions. Faculty and staff are welcome to sign up for as many practice scenarios sessions as they want.)

Tuesday, March 14 from 1:00-2:30 PM (ET)
Tuesday, April 4 from 12:30-2:00 PM (ET)

Engaging and Supporting Diverse Communities Series

Rethinking Our Relationship to Disability 

This 90-minute workshop will explore the medical and social models of disability, how each model impacts policies and practices, and ways faculty and staff can reconceptualize disability in order to reduce barriers and increase access, equity, inclusion and full participation.

Wednesday, March 1 from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM (ET)

Supporting Religious Observance: Understanding Religious Holidays and What they Mean for When and How Students and Employees Participate on Campus 

This 60-minute workshop will explore major religious holidays, how they are observed, and what faculty, staff, and supervisors should be mindful of in terms of participation in the classroom and workplace.

Friday, February 10 from 2:30-3:30 PM (ET)

Knowing and Respecting Who’s in the Room: A Guide to Using Gender Pronouns 

This 90-minute workshop will explore gender, gender identity, gender expression, and how and why to use gender pronouns to increase equity and inclusion.

Thursday, March 16 from 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (ET)

Engaging Harms We Might Be Hesitant to Name: Responding to Antisemitism 

This 90-minute workshop will explore common manifestations of antisemitism on college campuses, the discomfort and uncertainty faculty and staff often feel about naming and engaging with it, and strategies for responding to it when it happens.

Monday, April 10 from 3:30-5:00 PM (ET)

Disrupting Deficit Thinking

This 90-minute workshop will explore the ways our assumptions about students can impact how we perceive and interact with them and how they can experience our interactions. This workshop will also explore strategies for affirming students’ strengths and leveraging those strengths to facilitate engagement and learning.

Tuesday, April 11 from 1:00-2:30 PM (ET)

Recognizing and Responding to Signs of Trauma

This 90-minute workshop will explore the types of trauma students might be navigating, the ways trauma can impact learning and engagement, and strategies for providing trauma-informed support.

Friday, March 31 from 3:00-4:30 PM (ET)
Thursday, April 20 from 9:30-11:00 AM (ET)

Building and Restoring Communities Series

Leading with Humility: Taking Accountability for Harm

This 90-minute workshop will explore the dynamics typically associated with causing harm and attempting to apologize, the reasons most apologies cause additional harm, and how to take accountability and acknowledge impact in a way that is restorative.

Tuesday, May 9 from 3:00-4:30 PM (ET)

Inclusive Design for Learning Series

Transforming Group Work: Avoiding Ineffective and Exclusionary Dynamics in Collaborative Learning

This 90-minute workshop will explore ways to frame and implement group work in order to promote inclusive and collaborative dynamics.

Monday, March 27 from 3:30-5:00 PM (ET)

The Little Things are Never Really Little: Building More Access to Course Materials and Increasing Participation

Deirdre Kelly and Peter Ploegman of the Disability Resource Center join Tara Affolter, Faculty Director of Equity, Justice and Inclusion, to share practical resources for more inclusive classrooms.  Participants will learn how to create accessible documents, discuss barriers to full participation in classes, and apply collective wisdom to removing some of the more frequent access barriers students encounter. Note: This will be an in-person workshop held in the CTLR (Davis Library 225). Lunch will be provided. Please register by March 6th for catering.

Tuesday, March 14 from 12:30-1:30 PM (ET)

Registration

Click the button below to register for workshops. You will receive an Outlook invitation for the session(s) you register for. If you need to update your registration for a session at any point, you can do so by updating your Outlook calendar response.