2019 Fall Diversity & Inclusion Summit Day 1

Every day, in a variety of contexts, you encounter situations in which attitudes, beliefs, and feelings are challenged, reinforced, and sublimated - particularly around race, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, religion, and so on. The characteristics which inwardly and outwardly define and categorize us in the eyes of others have a direct impact on the way in which we treat other people and, in turn, the way other people treat us.  Where do your attitudes, beliefs, and feelings come from? How are they formed? Media have a profound impact on the way you see the world, for better or worse. It is not a question of conservative or liberal, black or brown or white, gay or straight, Christian or Jewish or Muslim, male or female. It is a question of representation: who put those attitudes in your head, what societal processes and structures are reinforced in doing so, and how savvy are you in determining what it is the media around you trying to get you to think about?

Didn't get a chance to read Sabrina & Corina? Come listen and experience the One Read as campus faculty, staff and students read passages aloud.

You are student-centered and equity-minded, yet higher education is increasingly data-driven and compliance-oriented. We know that "what gets measured, gets done," so how do we ensure that our assessment work is as inclusive as our teaching, mentoring, research, and service? Join us for a seriously playful workshop on inclusive assessment practices that help us measure what we value.

Join us in a discussion and resource sharing session in support of challenging situations that may arise while participating in the work of activism on campus. You will learn de-escalation strategies for yourself and for use in working with folks who may be upset and experiencing a traumatic response related to stressful events. In this session we will learn and practice strategies for remaining aware, awake and safe and cultivate the ability to do this with others through a social justice lens.

Engage in staff based hiring scenarios to determine approaches for reducing unconscious bias in the search process and identify strategies for enhancing inclusive excellence when hiring. Appropriate for all audiences (even those new to the hiring process) and particularly those who have hiring responsibilities. Participants will be able to leave with tools/resources provided and begin integrating practices and strategies within their search processes in order to work toward reducing bias and developing practices for making excellence inclusive within the hiring/search process.

This highly interactive session will explore CU Boulder education abroad programs and the impact travel can have on a person’s understanding of social identities in cross-cultural contexts. In this session, we will unpack our own social identities and gain tools for engaging the CU community in this conversation. Students who are curious about traveling abroad and those who have already committed to an experience may appreciate this session. 

Do you know the four pillars of cultural intelligence? Attendees will learn the importance of cultural intelligence in facilitating positive connections and collaborations across cultures.

The Eco-Social Justice team at the Environmental Center is a team of students working to raise awareness on issues of environmental, climate, and social justice on campus. This session will serve as an introduction to eco-social justice as part of environmental justice and make sense of the connections between sustainability and social justice—locally and globally. We can't have one without the other, so how do we widen our lenses and work together across seemingly different movements?

Would you like to be connected to something greater than yourself? Come learn how to create and build community. This interactive workshop will empower you in harnessing your innate strengths to foster an inclusive campus environment.  We'll explore the impact of everyone's contirbution in building the "Web of Mutality" to exemplify a culture of care and civic engagement in action. Participants will discuss, reflect, and strategize ideas for deepening community at CU Boulder over lunch.

Join us for small group facilitated book discussions of the Diversity Summit One Read, Sabrina & Corina: Stories, by Colorado author Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Set across Colorado, these stories explore gender, race, class and language. We'll discuss the intersectionality in the stories using the author’s Reader's Guide and relate these themes to the conference theme, 'Intent and Impact: What Now?' Readers will consider how societal systems and individual actions impact characters in the stories and make connections with our own lives and impact.

Join members of the new CTL to discuss the role of faculty, staff, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in driving the Center’s mission to be a leader in Inclusive Excellence on the our campus. With participants input, we will address existing resources as well as new workshops, courses, how we can make our classrooms more accessible and inclusive as well as the high impact practices each of us can engage with inside and outside the classroom.

How do your students know that they are on track to meet the learning goals for your course? In this session we will discuss why it is important to give students feedback during the learning process, when to time this feedback for the most student impact, and how to give effective feedback while attending to possible issues of equity and inclusion. This work session is targeted for anyone who gives feedback to students, or who wants to learn and practice research-validated strategies for giving feedback within the workplace.

This session will feature active discussion of the intent and impact of the campus’s ongoing strategic initiatives as they relate to diversity and inclusion. In September the campus announced four overarching priority themes and projects, under the banner of Academic Futures, for the campus to focus this year: making excellence inclusive; creating a common student-centered approach to teaching and learning; teaching and technology, online and distance education; and interdisciplinary teaching, research and creative works. This session will guide discussions on the connections between the other priority themes and making excellence inclusive, encourage participants to generate individual goals related to inclusion, and to raise the collective voices of the session through a concluding “reverse panel” in which initiatives leaders will share out what they heard from the group. This session will also allow participants to make connections to the newly released Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics (IDEA) Plan, CU Boulder’s campuswide diversity plan.

We're exploring what is thought to be “normal” and who or what that “normal” leaves out within an organizational context. Our interactive session allows attendees to consider diversity, equity and inclusion by identifying how norms shape their personal experiences and viewpoints, understanding how norms operate in spaces like department offices and classrooms, and deviating from norms in order to build inclusive spaces and belonging.

Religious diversity is a fact of American life. In this workshop we will examine the five different responses to religious diversity ranging from negative to indifferent to positive. Through case studies we will explore how the intent of each approach shapes the impact in promoting the common good. Participants will leave the workshop with empowered to positively engage religious diversity in their settings.

Do you know the importance of your behavior on the rest of your team? It's been proven that weak team behavior can lead to project failure, increased project cost and sometimes the lives and careers of the people involved. However, cross-cultural awareness can help prevent these risks. During this workshop you'll learn how to leverage project team diversity. Presenters will explore SuperProjects, a cross-cultural awareness method that can transform knowledge capital in cost, time, quality, risk and communication to achieve excellent project results in any discipline.

Learn more about faculty search committee hiring processes that you can practice and use in your department. Engage in situation-based scenarios and get answers about your faculty search process! Bring your diversity-specific recruiting questions and documents. You will get tools, resources and information and will be able to integrate practices and strategies into your own search process in order to work toward reducing bias and develop practices for making excellence inclusive in your hiring process.

Balancing school and personal/social life can be hard. Let’s work through it together. This participatory workshop aims to encourage self-advocacy and empowerment through healing. Our workshop will include skits and activities that will provide information and resources on ways to relieve/cope with the stresses life and school throw at us. This workshop is created and led by students in the Performance & Community Engagement class taught by Nii Armah Sowah and Beth Osnes, Theater and Dance Department.

Want to be gender woke? This interactive workshop is designed for teachers, facilitators, students or community members interested in creating and maintaining brave spaces for LGBTQ+ inclusivity. This workshop is created and led by students in the Performance & Community Engagement class taught by Nii Armah Sowah and Beth Osnes, Theater and Dance Department.

This workshop utilizes performance and interactive activities to explore the socioeconomic barriers that prevent student and faculty success. Participants will be asked to engage in personal reflection as well as brainstorming possibilities for future solutions. This workshop is created and led by students in the Performance & Community Engagement class taught by Nii Armah Sowah and Beth Osnes, Theater and Dance Department.

This workshop will engage participants in movement and discussion regarding racial representation in CU’s marketing and communications. Using performance-based methods, students and faculty will move past discomfort, maintain and advance diversity and inclusion goals, and celebrate the preexisting communities that foster belonging at CU. This workshop is created and led by students in the Performance & Community Engagement class taught by Nii Armah Sowah and Beth Osnes, Theater and Dance Department.

Is dialogue important in the 21st century? In a divisive time when people struggle to build community, dialogue can be a powerful tool for facilitating connection. During this session participants will engage in a simulation called BARNGA, a dialogue-based debrief intended to unmask hidden assumptions and embedded power dynamics. Later, faculty and staff from Colorado State University, University of Colorado Denver and CU Boulder will join an interactive panel discussions focused on dialogue in the context of residential life; academic and curricular integration; and an intersectional center serving underrepresented students.

Building on the resiliency work in Brené Brown’s Rising Strong, participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to develop skills to keep doing our best and triumph over our fears. We'll learn about how holding brave space requires us to embrace vulnerability knowing we have no control over how others will react. We need to address our anxieties of saying the wrong thing or offending others in order to fully commit to the work of changing the world for the better. Danger is real, but fear is a choice. Everyone falls. What is important is how we pick ourselves up again. Choose courage.

Co-facilitated by CISC staff and the peer education team, this interactive 90-minute training is designed for staff, faculty, and students on the CU Boulder campus. Working from the “4 I’s of Oppression” framework to look at both intent as well as impact, participants will engage in small and large group discussions to help identify examples of racism in their lives or in an institution they participate in. They will also work through scenarios to customize personal strategies for interrupting racism. 

Hear about the outline for the city of Boulder's first Racial Equity Plan. Let us know YOUR thoughts on what’s on the right track, what’s missing, and how YOU may support advancing racial equity in our community.

Nearly 3,000 students at CU Boulder are registered with Disability Services. Disability Services works to ensure access for all of these students in an academic setting. But how can we continue to educate and spread awareness of our student population? Open to faculty, staff and students, this session will help our campus community learn about best practices and how to carry out these practices when working with students with disabilities.

Faculty want to help students do well in their courses, but sometimes the help we provide isn’t matched with success. This workshop will present current research happening at CU and introduce metacognitive strategies that help students become aware of their learning processes. Students have been taught that putting in time and effort yields high grades rather than mastery of the material. So, how can faculty give help that has a greater impact on students’ performance?