POD Courses Align With Race & Equity Initiative
The charge of the Race & Equity Initiative to combat racism and inequities within the UW community gets right to the heart of POD’s mission to foster positive change in individuals and organizations. A number of POD’s offerings align with the Initiative’s goals and provide staff with tools to confront individual bias and racism, transform institutional policies and practices, and accelerate systemic change. This year, stalwart offerings like Supervising in a Diverse Workplace and Cultivating Cultural Competence are joined by Cultural Proficiency, introduced this spring, and Race, Bias, and Dissonance, which will debut this fall.
“It’s important at whatever level—faculty, staff, or student—that you grow in competence and are aware of where you and your organization are,” explains POD Director Ujima Donalson. Consequently, each of these POD courses is designed to meet participants where they are on a continuum of cultural understanding in order to build knowledge and skills to advance along that continuum.
Cultivating Cultural Competence, a course Donalson co-facilitates with her husband, Dr. Edward Donalson III, was developed to expose participants to a wide array of ideas and terminology with which to tackle the complexities of difference. The course defines terms such as bias, inclusion, allyship, microaggressions, equity vs. equality, privilege, and racism to establish a common language for discussion. Donalson says participants “get an opportunity to practice this new language in a safe place and to ask questions of their peers.”
Many organizations fall prey to what Donalson characterizes as cultural blindness, where differences are ignored or erased. “People may say things like, ‘I don’t see color,’ but it’s important for individuals to be able to bring their whole selves to work. There is nothing wrong in seeing and acknowledging difference. We need to de-couple noticing from judgment.”
Eric Davis, a sociology and ethnic studies professor at Bellevue College and longtime POD instructor, notes that millennials do this particularly well. After more than a decade of teaching Supervising in a Diverse Workplace, he reflects, “I haven’t seen a huge shift in participants’ understanding of race and equity over the years, except generationally. Millennials are very different. More socially aware, well-versed in how to talk about difference. They don’t accept any stigmas around difference. They can acknowledge difference without judgment. My undergraduate students are more willing to share their own differences openly.”
Davis’ new Cultural Proficiency course expands on Cultivating Cultural Competence. While cultural competence aids in the awareness and recognition of cultural differences, cultural proficiency is a paradigm shift in which diversity is the foundational mindset used to guide all endeavors. Cultural proficiency signals individual and organizational readiness to implement change to improve services based on cultural needs.
Both Davis and Donalson also take cues from the news. According to Donalson, “Each class takes on the tone and tenor of the events of the day. For example, past classes have had rich discussions about Rachel Dolezal and Ferguson. People need a place to engage and process what they’re seeing in the news.” She goes on to say that one of UW staff’s most pressing needs in developing cultural competence is to establish a comfort level in talking about race and equity in order to overcome the fear of offending others. As a facilitator, one of the most exciting things about teaching Cultivating Cultural Competence is seeing participants’ willingness to learn about themselves while engaging with others.
The self-examination participants do in Cultivating Cultural Competence provides a strong foundation for learning in Race, Bias, and Dissonance. Instructor Greg Taylor notes that an awareness of our implicit, unconscious associations/biases serves as the impetus for building authentic work environments along with personal and community networks of inclusion for all. The course outlines how racism, implicit bias, and cognitive dissonance intersect, operate, and support each other through decisions that we make in our day-to-day routines within the workplace, home, and community. Race and Gender-Science Implicit Association Tests, which are available for free online, are a strongly recommended prerequisite (see Links for Leaders in this issue).
Taylor, a facilitator with over 25 years of experience, says leaders need to “learn how to get comfortable in not only becoming aware and knowledgeable about race, but to look for opportunities to practice what has been learned daily; it is the absence of repetition that delays development within a discipline.”
Davis agrees. “In an institution the size of the UW with as many units and organizations as it has, I think what happens is that there’s a desire for change and a lot of talking, but the real change comes at the everyday level. A mandate may come from leadership, but if everybody assumes that somebody else will do the work, nothing happens.”
In Supervising in a Diverse Workplace, Davis gives supervisors at the UW a space to be vulnerable among a leadership peer group and address how differences in generation, national origin, ethnic background, personality, and varying physical and mental abilities intersect in daily interactions with and among staff. Cultural Proficiency explores campus ecology theory to get at the individual and environmental influences on behavior. Further, it uses marginality and mattering as frames for assessing workplace settings and developing practical tools to set daily actions into motion.
POD’s race and equity-related offerings are all full-day or two-day courses. That time lends itself particularly well to dynamic interactions between individuals that play a crucial role in overcoming fear of talking about race and equity and moving toward a healthier, more inclusive University environment.
About these offerings:
- Supervising in a Diverse Workplace: Typically offered winter and summer quarters; next offering is Thursday & Friday, July 21 & July 22.
- Cultivating Cultural Competence: Typically offered spring and autumn quarters.
- Cultural Proficiency: Next offering will be Autumn 2016; registration opens August 22.
- Race, Bias, and Dissonance: Debuts Autumn 2016; check our course catalog starting August 22 for autumn quarter registration.
