HDS Intercultural Certificate Program
Open to all Student Affairs staff
The Intercultural Certificate Program (ICP) was designed to acknowledge your commitment to acquiring the awareness, knowledge and skills associated with intercultural competence. ICP offers program guidance, training opportunities and resources for CU Boulder community members to earn one, two or all three certificate levels.
- Level I – Foundations: earn five credits through various trainings and reflections and by complete the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
- Level II – Specialist: earn five credits through a combination of trainings and reflections focused on a specific cultural group.
- Level III – Practitioner: earn five credits through trainings, a project and by completing the IDI a second time to assess intercultural development
You do not have to attend all of the trainings listed below, but all are designed to support the certificate. You pick and choose the intercultural learning opportunities that will benefit you the most. Anything you believe contributes to your understanding and appreciation for cultural differences can count, so you can come to any of the trainings from the schedule or you can attend other trainings on campus that focus on diversity, inclusion and equity (DI&E). The program is meant to recognize individual effort you commit to gaining intercultural competence.
For instance, to get the Foundations certificate, you need to attend four (4) DI&E trainings worth 1 credit each, as well as complete the Intercultural Development Inventory and receive your results (1 credit) for a total of five (5) credits. Complete a reflection and you get the certificate and lapel pin and are eligible to move onto the Specialist cert. Each certificate level has different requirements, but you must start with a Foundations certificate.
Interested participants may request an ICP notebook that outlines the requirements for each certificate by contacting the ICP Coordinator at icp@colorado.edu.
Registration for DI&E workshops will be done via Skillsoft. To sign up, click the hyperlink included in the monthly description. Please contact Gaylynne von der Nuell at 303-735-4944 or gvondern@colorado.edu with any registration questions.
HDS OED will be using QR codes to direct participants to online program evaluations. Both iOS and Android platforms will allow your mobile device’s camera to read a QR code and bring you to the evaluation automatically. Your feedback is vital to help us improve OED offerings so be sure to bring your mobile device to be able to provide real-time feedback.
Uprooting Racism Series
Throughout the spring semester, HDS-HR will be offering a series of dialogue sessions built around the text Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel. The series will give participants an opportunity to engage in meaningful discussion and dialog about systemic oppression through the lens of “RACE(+)”.
Systemic oppression targets individuals and communities along a number of social group identities including—but not limited to—race, color, national origin, pregnancy, sex, age, disability, creed or religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and its expression, veteran status, and political affiliation/philosophy. This series will examine the impact of systemic racism on people of color as well as Whites (RACE), while still acknowledging the interplay of multiple oppressed identities (+).
No familiarity with Kivel’s text is necessary to participate and each workshop is designed to stand alone and address a different component of recognizing (awareness), understanding (knowledge) and dismantling (skills) systemic racism. The series as a whole will provide participants with a comprehensive introduction to Uprooting Racism, and anyone who attends at least two sessions will receive a copy of the text (4th edition).
Spring 2019 sessions
Welcome to the Matrix: Systemic Racism
Friday, Feb. 8 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
Each of us are part of a system that benefits some but oppresses others based on racial identity. We did not create this system and many of us are able to move through our lives blissfully unaware the system exists. However, like the ‘free humans’ in the Wachowski’s film franchise The Matrix, some of us are acutely aware how we are all inexorably linked to this system and want desperately to break free. Join us as we explore the 21st century “Matrix” that is systemic racism.
Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: Conceptual Foundations (Hardiman, Jackson and Griffin; p26); Five Faces of Oppression (Young; p35); Uprooting Racism Text: Allies, Collaborators, and Agents (p168). Register for Welcome to the Matrix.
The Culture of Power
Friday, Feb. 15 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“Why don’t white people see white benefits?” (p52) Social Justice educator Frances Kendall describes asking whites to acknowledge their race privilege as akin to asking a “fish to notice water or birds to discuss air.” Additionally, Peggy McIntosh, author of The Invisible Knapsack, points out that, “According to those upon whom they have been bestowed, our privileges are believed to be a normal condition of daily experience, universally available to everyone. This session will allow participants to examine the function of privilege and power in creating racial oppression.
Text: The Culture of Power (p52); Entitlement (p57); Cultural Appropriation (p61); Retaining Benefits, Avoiding Responsibilities (p71). Register for The Culture of Power.
It’s Good to Talk about Racism
Friday, Mar. 1 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“Racism has great power partly because we don’t talk about it.” (p83) It seems like no other topic in US consciousness is both everywhere and spoken of so infrequently. At the end of the 20th century, higher education researcher Arthur Levine discovered that college students were more comfortable intimately discussing their sex lives than broaching the topic of race and racism in America. Almost 20 years later, is it any different. Where else in the world can a nation practically simultaneously elect the first black presidency and find the need to remind each other that “Black Lives Matter?” This session will attempt to throw open the doors to more deeply discussing the topic nearly as taboo as naming “He Who Shall Not be Named.”
Text: It’s Good to Talk about Racism (p83); The Costs of Racism to People of Color (p49); “Thank You for Being Angry” (p80). Register for It’s Good to Talk about Racism.
Fear and Danger
Friday, Mar. 8 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“Racism helps produce a fear-based society in which no one feels safe. However, being afraid is not the same as being in danger.” (p96) In diversity, inclusion and equity workshops, it’s common to challenge participants to step outside their comfort zone in order to maximize learning; however, more and more frequently, participants express concern that engaging in difficult conversations—especially those requiring us to hear and acknowledge other people’s pain—feels unsafe. When did uncomfortable become unsafe? The goal of this session will be to challenge ourselves to create not only safe spaces, but brave spaces in order to make real, meaningful change.
Text: Fear and Danger (p96); Geography of Fear (p103). Register for Fear and Danger.
The Costs of Racism to White People
Friday, Apr. 12 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“…[A}lthough racism produces material benefits for white people, there are significant costs we’ve been trained to ignore, deny, or rationalize away.” (p65) That’s right, racism hurts everyone, not just people of color (POC). But how exactly are white people negatively impacted by the systematic marginalization of non-whites, when that system supposedly privileges them at the same time? In this session, we will explore the universal harm caused by systemic oppression and confirm that it is in all our best interests to work toward dismantling the “Matrix.”
Text: The Costs of Racism to White People (p65); White Fragility and White Power (p78). Register for The Costs of Racism to White People.
An Ally Makes a Commitment
Friday, Apr. 19 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“Nobody needs fly-by-night allies. Being an ally takes commitment and perseverance.” (p147) What does it mean to be an effective ally and how can white people support people of color without slipping into inappropriate rescue? All too often, those who want to be allies seem to be more interested in getting credit than taking action to show support, operate with intentionality and use our privilege to help end oppression. In this session, we will take a candid look at the common mistakes made by those with privilege who want to act in solidarity but may fail to make a difference. Being an “ally” is not an identity, it is a practice; something that must be done over and over again in the largest and smallest ways, every day.
Text: Showing Up as a Strong White Ally (p135); Basic Tactics (p.137); An Ally Makes a Commitment (p147). Register for An Ally Makes a Commitment.
Fighting Institutional Racism, Part 1
Friday, May 10 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
”Racism is not just the sum total of all the individual acts in which white people discriminate, harass, or otherwise mistreat people of color. The accumulated effects of centuries of white racism have created institutional racism more entrenched than individual people’s racial prejudice.” (p245) Addressing and eliminating individual acts of racism only gets us so far. Social institutions such as family, government, business and industry, education, the legal system and religious organizations are major participants in systemic oppression. Recognizing how these social institutions codify racism into laws, policies, practices and norms is the first step to working toward change. In this session, participants will examine how public policy such as immigration policy and institutions such as the law enforcement engage differently across race.
Text: Public Policy (p253); Critical Analysis of Immigration Policy (Revised Edition 2002 p179); The Police (p289). Register for Fighting Institutional Racism, Part 1.
Fighting Institutional Racism, Part 2
Friday, May 17 from 1:30 - 3:30 p.m., C4C-S350
“Winning the broader struggle for economic democracy is crucial to truly ending racism, and a key to achieving economic justice is solidarity between white workers and workers of color…” (p273) Institutional racism at work can often be coded as “professionalism.” Upon closer inspection, expected behaviors and standards of professionalism often represent the dominant culture—usually conforming with white expectations. This is white supremacy, or the promotion of the belief that white ways [of working] are preferable or better than others ways of working. In this final session of the series, participants will reflect on dominant work culture and how institutionalized racism at work serves to divide workers and ultimately halt progress toward economic justice.
Text: Institutional Racism (p245); At Work (p271); White Supremacy Culture (Okun, www.dismantlingracism.org). Register for Fighting Institutional Racism, Part 2.