Over 400 UW staff and faculty are taking part in anti-bias workshops this spring. Since the pilot program launched in April 2016, most of the sessions have maxed out enrollment! Workshops are being added and there are plans to expand the program next year. Learn more in this article featuring Jeanette James, R&EI project manager.
Race & Equity Initiative Spring Workshops
Interview with Jeanette James, Manager of Strategic Initiatives and Projects, Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity
What can you tell UW leaders about the Race & Equity Initiative workshops that are being piloted this spring?
The Race & Equity Initiative has been activefor more than a year now. We’ve engaged a lot of folks in dialogue and have been engaged by various groups, such as Black Lives Matter, all of which has helped inform the work of the Initiative. Up until this point, much of the attention has been focused on students, but now training is being piloted that will lead to the development of an anti-bias leadership program for staff and faculty.
From May through July, we’re presenting multiple sessions of three different, three-hourworkshops at all three campuses, for a total of nearly 20 offerings. Our aim has been to have at least 450 staff and faculty attend, and based on how registrations have been going, I believe we’ll exceed that. In fact, many offerings are already full, but people from any campus are welcome to attend sessions at any location as space is available.
What are the workshops being offered and who is presenting them?
We have Cultural Competence: Addressing Race Relations in the 21st Century with Caprice Hollins,What I Said and What I Meant: Cross-Cultural Communication with Rosetta Lee, and Race, Bias, & Dissonance: The Intersection With Leadership, Equity, & Inclusion with Greg Taylor.
For the pilot we looked to folks who are known and well-regarded in the broader community, including people who have presented at the Seattle Race Conference and worked with local school districts or other public institutions. I’m really excited about the three facilitators we identified because they’re very closely knitted in terms of the kind of work we want to get done but also offer distinct perspectives.
Caprice Hollins thinks about cultural competence from a 21st century lens; she moves the discourse forward and elevates awareness by challenging the notion that we’re post-racial. Rosetta Lee focuses on cross-cultural communication and microaggressions. What are the things we say that come out wrong, that come out in ways that can be destructive and damaging to the culture and climate of an organization? Greg Taylor focuses on cognitive bias and dissonance; he really works with the unconscious bias framework and how that impacts decision making in hiring and how we interact and engage with people. [See Links for Leaders in this issue for upcoming workshops with space available.]
Tell me about your role and the planning process for this part of the Initiative.
Since returning to the UW and the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) in 2013, I’ve worn a variety of hats, including supporting faculty and staff affinity groups and partnering with UW Human Resources and hiring managers on staff and faculty outreach. Recently, my role transitioned to supporting strategic initiatives within OMA&D and I’ve also been really immersed in the work of the Initiative.
Within the umbrella of the Initiative we have a few different subcommittees and one is specifically around workshops and training. Gabriel Gallardo, who sits on the Race & Equity Initiative Steering Committee, serves as the lead and has really shepherded us through the process. Other members include Ujima Donalson, Kelly Edwards, Marisa Herrera, Chiara Iacoviello, Ralina Joseph, Jonathan Kanter, Jaye Sablan, Margaret Spearmon, and myself. My role on the training and workshops team has been keeping things on track as the project manager, so of course I’m excited to see our work come to fruition with the pilot.
A key thing that’s driven our work is what we’ve been hearing from folks here at the UW. Along with their regular roles at the UW, a number of team members have been involved in the various roundtable discussions and lectures hosted over the past year, and Ed Taylor, Leilani Lewis, and I have been meeting with deans across campus to hear what the needs at the school and college level are with regards race, equity, and social justice.
Through all of that work, we’ve been getting a sense of where people are and how we might be able to offer strategies and support for moving forward. For instance, we consistently hear that UW community members need to be better informed about microaggressions and need to really understand how their hidden biases impact people’s daily work, their classroom experience, and so on. Those kinds of concerns coupled with the overarching objectives of the Initiative gave us direction for how to focus the workshops. Ujima, Jonathan, and Margaret then took the lead on how to move people through that content and proposed a learning model around that.
See full article:
Professional & Organizational Development (POD): Leadership Edge Newsletter, Jamie Wilson
http://tinyurl.com/h4786eb