Category: Updates

Kathrine Long

The University of Washington will welcome its largest number of in-state freshmen to campus this fall, a group that is also more diverse than any previous class.
The largest class of in-state freshmen will start at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus this fall — a group that will include fewer white students, more Latino students and a slight increase in African-American and Asian-American students.

The new freshman class is more ethnically diverse than ever and reflects steady shifts in state and national demographics.

Read full article on the Seattle Times website.

At a time of intense national attention on law enforcement and race, a new University of Washington study suggests that racially based fear plays a role in public support for policing reforms.

The research, conducted by UW postdoctoral researcher Allison Skinner and published onlineJuly 12 in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, used a series of experiments to gauge participants’ level of support for policing reforms in relation to whether they felt threatened by police officers or black men.

Read the full article at UW Today

Americans often pay for their crimes twice — first with a prison sentence, then with a lifetime of debt many will never be able to escape.

Last year’s scathing Department of Justice report on Ferguson, drew national attention to shameful practices to extract revenue from our poorest citizens through inordinate fines for minor offenses such as traffic violations. But much less attention has been paid to fines and fees forced on those who are convicted of felonies, which plays a similarly destructive role in our society and erodes confidence in our justice system.

Read the full USA Today column

Sourced from OMA&D Website:

OMA&D and the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center will join campus partners to celebrate the Class of 2015 by hosting its annual community graduation ceremonies, June 4-12. These events recognize the success of students and their families as they begin a new chapter in their lives.

Other event partners include the ASUW Commissions, the Q Center and the UW Alumni Association Multicultural Alumni Partnership. Visit the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity website for the full schedule of events.

The Washington State Academic RedShirt (STARS) program is making waves college-wide by setting students up for boundless opportunities in engineering. And it’s only in its third year. What’s next?

Read more…

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

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce and Interim Provost Jerry Baldasty announced today the selection of Rickey L. Hall as the new vice president for the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity and chief diversity officer, effective Aug. 1, 2016. To learn more, check out the full release on the UW Today web site.

Starting in the 2016-17 academic year, funding allocated to build and retain a diverse and inclusive faculty across the three UW campuses will be increased to $1 million. The funds will enable the Office for Faculty Advancement to work collaboratively with deans, chancellors and department chairs or directors, with half going toward faculty recruitment and half going toward retention.

More than 90 elementary school students from three tribal schools spent a day at the University of Washington late last month, part of an unusual collaboration between college students and the tribes to inspire younger students to think about going to college.

The program, Native @ UW, was sponsored by the UW’s student government, Associated Students of UW (ASUW). Fifth- and sixth-graders from Wa He Lut Indian School in Olympia, Yakama Nation Tribal School in Yakima and Lummi Tribal Schools in Bellingham came to Seattle for the program.

http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/uw-students-host-tribal-school-students-in-seattle/

Read the full article by Katherine Long at the Seattle Times