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 Fall 2023

Note: The Fall 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.

Thursday, October 12 from 12:30-2:00 PM (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.

Wednesday, October 4 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.

Friday, December 1 from 12:30-2:00 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.

Friday, October 27 from 9:30-11:00 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.

Tuesday, October 31 from 12:30-2:00 PM (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.)

Wednesday, October 18 from 12:30-2:00 PM (ET)

Thursday, November 30 from 3:30-5:00 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, September 27 from 9:30-11:00 AM (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.

Tuesday, September 26 from 1:00-2:00 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.

Wednesday, November 8 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, November 13 from 2:00-3:30 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.

Monday, October 30 from 2:00-3:30 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.

Monday, October 9 from 2:00-3:30 PM (ET)

Supporting Students Holistically: Affirmative Listening and Response

Students come to and navigate campus with many factors impacting their daily lives, from academics and co-curriculars to family pressures, mental and physical well being, and social dynamics. Increasingly, students are seeking support and resources, often approaching faculty and staff they feel comfortable with or trust. This 90-minute workshop will explore ways to offer empathy and affirmation and to refer students to the offices/colleagues who specialize in the types of support students are seeking.

Thursday, November 9 from 3:30-5:00 PM (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, October 24 from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM (ET)

Reframing Grace and Shame: Accountability and Mutual Liberation

We all say and do things that impact people in ways we don’t intend. We also recognize the value of grace as the space given to us to unlearn behaviors that have the capacity to cause harm. However, desiring—or expecting—grace without being willing to acknowledge the impact of our actions on those around us perpetuates rather than disrupts the dynamics of harm. This 90-minute workshop will unpack how we think about grace, the implications of shame, and how we can lean into accountability to foster a culture of mutual liberation.

Tuesday, November 14 from 12:30-2:00 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.

Friday, October 6 from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM (ET)

Accessibility as a Practice, Not a Response: Reducing the Need for Academic Accommodations

The way disability services are structured in higher education is responsive: students request accommodations to address access barriers they commonly encounter in learning environments, and faculty work with students individually to provide accommodations designed to mitigate the impact of those access barriers. The result of this structure can feel overwhelming for both students and faculty. This 90-minute workshop will explore ways to focus on accessibility as a proactive practice that works to reduce access barriers in the way courses are designed, which makes courses more accessible for all learners, reduces the number of accommodations disabled students need to utilize, and reduces the number of accommodations faculty need to provide.

Thursday, October 19 from 3:30-5:00 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.