 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to LEAD, Leading Equity and Diversity. I am Dr. Debbie Willis, pronouns she, her, hers, and I lead the DEI certificate program here at the University of Michigan's Rackham Graduate School. We started this series because scholars wanted to hear from real people, their experiences, leading, equity, diversity, and social justice efforts. Thank you all for joining us today. Given all that's going on in the world right now, we genuinely appreciate your presence. Before we get started, please note that you can enable the live closed captioning by clicking the CC button on your screen. Although your audio and video have been muted, we encourage you to engage in the conversation through the question and answer portal. We'd love to bring your voices into the conversation. If you see a question that interests you, please like or upvote that question as we will ask the questions with the broadest interest first. Before submitting your question, we ask that you consider how your words might impact others. We also ask that you remain patient with us as hundreds of you have registered for this webinar and we receive many questions from registration. We will not get to them all in an hour. However, we have committed to continue these conversations and have dedicated this lead webinar series to address racial equity for an entire year. We invite you to join us each month. Today's conversation will address how higher education institutions can impact its surrounding communities and how to respectfully and responsibly engage with those communities and their leaders. We have two phenomenal guests to lead this conversation who are prime exemplary examples of this and they are Dr. Daphne Watkins and Dr. John Wallace. Let's get started with brief introductions. Daphne, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey as a leader and advocate in the space of equity, inclusion and social justice? Okay, so I'll try to keep it short. Hi everybody, good afternoon. I'm Daphne Watkins. I am a university diversity and social transformation and professor, a professor of social work and also the director of the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis Center for Health Equity Research and Training all here at the University of Michigan. So how did I get started? Well, I won't start from, it was a warm July afternoon when I was born, I won't start there but instead I'll say that my doctoral training was at Texas A&M University and my PhD is actually in Public Health. And it was there that I really learned about health disparities and I learned about equity, diversity and inclusion and knew even as a doctoral student that I wanted to do something to not just fill the bookshelves of scholars but also impact the communities in which I live and grow and care deeply about. I imagine that a lot of the answer to your question, Debbie will come out over the course of the next hour so I won't say too much after that but I will say that I was very intentional about getting a degree in public health but having my academic home be social work because I do care deeply about having one foot in the academy and the other foot in the community. So I'll stop there for now. Thank you. Dr. Wallace. Hey, dear. I'll forget. Is it just us talking to the other people? It's a lot of people. A lot of people. I'll be able to. Hey, John. All right, I'll try. First of all, of course I have to thank my Pittsburgh family for the support folks are on and of course my Michigan family. So this is of course homecoming in some ways really wish that we were face to face but thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with you. So again, I'm John Wallace, a Head Start graduate from Homewood. My great grandfather was enslaved and so that's the background that frames my work but as it relates to this particular topic it has to be the University of Michigan as a graduate student at the Detroit area study. So anybody who's affiliated with Michigan and has a little bit of age attached to them, you did the AS and so that meant as a black 22, three year old knocking on doors in Detroit, Michigan 45 minutes away from Ann Arbor, but a world away and realizing that even as an African-American male when people found out that I was from the University of Michigan, unfortunately that was not to my advantage and being someone who again, coming from urban communities and looking at my education as an opportunity to advance the wellbeing of the community was actually surprised by the kind of cold reception that we received but being aware of the history of the Detroit area study which has trained probably thousands of folks at this point, many dissertations, books, articles and understanding the advantage of DAS to the community and to the academic world but the general lack of reinvestment of our learning into the community and the hostility unfortunately that that met with, with where I was met even as an African-American was quite surprising and somewhat disturbing. And then as an assistant professor actually then doing research or attempting to do research and continuing that kind of chilly reception in the inability to do the work that I really wanted to be able to do both in the community in addition to my kind of standard quantitative research so shout out to my monitoring the future family if they're watching by the way and just again, the amazing training and opportunities that I received but still wrestling with and the challenges of being an African-American scholar trying to do research in the city. That was, it was rough, frankly and particularly as an assistant professor and spending the time, effort and energy running up and down 94, 96 depending on the traffic and not being able to do work was a challenge and in fact, we had a commitment of $750,000 from a foundation to do work on youth violence prevention and was working with a not-for-profit prominent not-for-profit in the city of Detroit and the guy that I was working with left they had a new executive director and ultimately he wouldn't submit the proposal because it was not under his regime and so spending that kind of time and energy as an assistant professor and not being able to do the work just infuriated me and so eventually that was part of the challenge and part of the reason why I left Michigan to come to Pitt because the ability to do the kind of work for which I really felt called and responsible to do with someone who's been given tremendous opportunity so I'll stop there and I'm sure in the course of the conversation we'll talk about the other issues. Yeah, thank you, John. I remember those Detroit area study days for sure. How do you approach building trust and relationships with the communities you serve and how do you explicitly address racial equity? You wanna start, Daphne? Sure, so I'll start with starting where they are. So I don't let the blazer and the necklace fool you today. I am a jeans and sneakers kind of girl and so when I do community work, I really stripped down- All right, Kamala. That's true. I am very, very much casual when I'm engaging with communities and frankly, I treat the opportunity as a way just to get to know people. So I'm all about coffee dates and lunches and going to the gym and playing basketball with folks and I'm really about just engaging in a way that feels most comfortable for them and also bringing with me students and the people who work with me and who are able to kind of learn from that exchange as well. I have been known to go to middle schools and high schools and talk to kids as well. So for me, it's about figuring out what the community values and really meeting them where they are. Also, given the fact that a lot of communities don't have the best relationships with university professors and university staff, I think it's really about bringing down those barriers and changing the narrative and not really looking at it as an opportunity to go into this space and do research but instead, how can we work together to make the situation better? How can we make both of our lives better? I don't go in there with degrees in hand talking about doctor this or professor this. It's Daphne in that space and it's all about you being the expert, you community people are really the expert in what you all are doing here in your space. I'm not the expert. So I wanna learn from you as much as you think you could learn from me. I think I can absolutely learn from you in this space as well. And so, yeah, the blazers are for, when I'm walking around the Ann Arbor campus but when it's time for me to really feel like I'm at home and be my true self, that's when I love to kind of get back into the community and do those kinds of things. So I'll stop there and let John chime in. Yeah, John, would you like to? Yeah, so I'm sitting in Homewood, the Homewood Community Engagement Center. So the University of Pittsburgh is invested about six and a half million dollars in the middle of the hood. And so I'm sitting in my office with my fake background in the hood. So this is the day, because this is today and the reality for me is in terms of this kind of work, first of all is being present, right? So my office these days, particularly during COVID-19, is at a coffee shop, every day cafe. Y'all can't see it because of my fake background. So my thing is, listen, it's all about relationships, right? All about relationships. So the first thing is, tune in to everybody's favorite radio station is what, Deb? Everybody's favorite radio station, come on, W-I-I-F-M. Listen to it for me. Listen to it for me. W-I-I-F-M. So you tune in to people's radio station, you ask them, listen, what do you need? Be honest, in this same way I approach any relationship is being honest about what do you need to be successful? So if I invited you guys over and I say, hey, we're gonna have a feast. If Daphne's a vegetarian and Debbie's a carnivore, you have two different pictures in your mind when you hear the word feast. And so because we use different definitions and we're not clear in our definition of success. So if you come over to house, Daphne, and there's all of this meat on the table, right? We got the pig feet, the hog balls, that stuff that Debbie still eats. Listen, you as a vegetarian would be like, what in the world is going on here? And so this is not a feast, right? And so because we're not often coming from the same point of reference, it's critical to be honest about like, what do you need? And then I don't come pretending like I don't bring value that I don't have stuff. I do. Listen, there is nobody walking down Homewood Avenue right now who knows how to do literal or structure equation modeling. They just don't. So let's not pretend that we don't bring stuff to the table because we do. But when we ask, what do you need to be successful? And then the other thing is, well, I got a bunch of answers. I'm working on my 10 Commandments of Community Engage work, but I'm only on number seven. But the time we finish, I'll have 10. But I start with relationship stuff and being honest with people because oftentimes we come with this, you're the only one that knows everything and I don't know anything. That's nonsense. I know stuff, you know stuff, but let's talk about what do you need to make this relationship successful and try to do that in advance of the grant proposal being due because we get in desperation mode. We got to write the proposal, we make up some stories, we'll get the money and then we'll talk about it later. Nah. Yeah. Yeah. So I really liked that. You both talked about meeting them where they are being authentic, being yourselves. The next question aligns with that. It is, what do you think meaningful and authentic mutual benefit looks like in terms of the university and community partnerships? John, you want to start? Yeah, absolutely. It's first of all, it's explaining overhead. So the community does not over, understand over here. I don't know what it is in Michigan these days, probably 52 and a half percent, right? So when you say to people, we're going to apply for a grant, let's call it 50% to make the math easy. We'll apply for a grant, it's $100,000. People believe that Michigan or Pitt or whoever's going to take $50,000 off of the top of that money. So when it comes, the $100,000 comes, they're like, man, so Pitt or Michigan they're going to take all the money. No, when you explain to people, no, no, no, check this out. Check this out, don't tell nobody. You get the $100,000, especially if it's federal money, they send you a check for 150. And people are like, what? They're like, oh, the university got a hustle. How do I get me some overhead? And so when they realize it's like, no, no, no, no. And so related to that, the corollary to that is share the money. Share the money. The truth of the matter is, so the most recent piece that I did, NIH funded, the bulk of the grant actually went to the community. And it's like giving them actual money. So building the capacity of the organization such that they're able to be the lead the next time or that their capacity is such as strengthened such that they can bring ideas to you. And they have access to resources that you don't, whether it's government resources or foundations and so forth. And so these mutual resources, and so these mutually beneficial relationships where you've built the capacity of the organization is critical and just as, again, like with marriage. So I've been married for, this is what, 34 years. If you're going to start these relationships, go in it to win it. Good times up, down, for richer or poorer, right? We got some over here. We don't have any over here. And sicknesses and health. It's like, you need some copies made. I'm going to get those copies made. Whatever it is we need to do to make this thing work, commit to the longterm or leave it alone. Because what happens is you're often trying to make up for the previous bright ad promise making professor from Ann Arbor or Pitt or wherever. Like, well, no, really, we're going to do this and you forget or you don't know about that professor three years ago, five years ago, it could be 20 years ago. The community has a long memory. And so that person came in making all these promises. We're just here to help you. We want to work with you. And then when we don't get refunded, people run back to Ann Arbor. And the grant is over. The project is over. And so if you're going to build these relationships, it's a long-term commitment for richer or for poorer, sickness and in health. And you just got to make the thing work until it's over. And people understand that when you're honest with people and clear about what you need, explain to them, tend your promotion. Explain to them why you need peer review, journal articles, and you don't have to hide that. Like, this is what I need. And so in mutually beneficial relationships, we clarify what you want. We clarify what you need, right? If you need dinner cooked every night, just say that. Don't lie to the person. Like, I don't need nothing, but I just got love. No, I need dinner every night. Cool, what do you need? A check comes in the house. Fantastic. As long as we're honest and clear with each other upfront, it's a beautiful thing. So mutuality, mutual beneficial, share the money is critically important because everybody needs money to keep the bills paid and keep the thing running, right? So I'll stop. So the only thing that I'll add to that because I agree about the financial resources. The only thing I would add to that is it can be something as simple as starting a relationship before the grant proposal was due, right? Which John mentioned. And working through that grant proposal together, right? Making sure your community partner has a seat at the table. After the grant goes in, still remaining in contact with that group and initiating the work long before the money comes in or does not come in. And I think that's where a lot of academicians drop the ball is when it's clustered around grant deadlines. It's all about, okay, everybody, let's come together, let's work, let's hustle, let's get this proposal done. When the grant submission is in, it's like, okay, woo, our hard work is done. But I think to John's point about the longevity and thinking about the long-term impact of what this community partnership can look like, it's about not just coming together when there's a deadline, but thinking about how can we work together whether the money is here or not to improve the communities that we care the most about. That's the draw, right? That's the hard part sometimes. It's easy as academics for us to work towards a deadline. Sometimes it's harder to put a note in your calendar that every other month you're gonna email that community partner and check in. Or you're gonna have a presentation on campus and invite that community partner or get a brand new publication and send it to the community partner, right? Or get on Twitter or social media and link a community partner to someone else. So sometimes it's about the small things that need to happen in between those deadlines that really keep those relationships strong in the long-term. Yeah, I love it. You both have said so many things. The relationship I think is so important beforehand and afterwards. And I love Daphne that you said, it can be a Google calendar invite. Like we just have to do it. Like you don't, you know, if you have to find ways to remind yourself then do. And John, one of the things you said that I think is super helpful is to know the history. And I think we go into relationships without necessarily knowing the history and you don't know the landmines. So the next question says, what role do you think co-creation with community partners can play in working toward better aligning the university with this public mission? Can you share examples of how this has been done well? And you both have examples of how this is done well. You want to start Daphne? Oh, wow. I was gonna defer to John because I know he's right there at Homewood right now. So I was gonna get him started with that co-creation because I think he's done it in ways that have just been unbelievably impressive. So let's go, John. And I'll just fill in where he doesn't. You know? You up, right there. Co-creation, okay, great question. I mean, so you ask people, what's your problem? Right, what is the issue that you, and again, this is when, unfortunately when we're just grant driven, it's often what does NIH pay for right now as opposed to what is the dominant need in the community right now? And so helping and allowing people to define the issue and their priority, becoming your priority, and then you find the resources. That's at least in my experience, that's been a huge thing. And so the areas in which the most recent work I've done are asthma and now I'm doing work on mental health. I may have a mental health challenge, but that's not my area of research, right, at a personal level and asthma as well, right? I'm a little off, but that's a need in the community, right? So the project I'm working on right now is called the church project, congregations as healers united to restore community health. And so working with my colleagues that pit a psychiatrist, social workers and a group of pastors. And the issue of mental health in the African-American church is a huge challenge. But we know that there's stigma and the ways in which we go about that work. We know that people will turn to their pastors before they will turn to a social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, and so forth. And unfortunately, for the most part, pastors are not equipped to do that work or to do that work well. And so by bringing together this team of experts and pastors explaining, like listen, this is what we're dealing with in our congregations. It may even be what they're dealing with personally, right? But to bring the resources together, so the psychiatrist, and so we have an African-American psychiatrist, African-American psychologist, and then we have a Korean woman, a professor, who's an expert at the intervention work. And so assembling a team, but she also is a worship leader in her church, right? And so you bring the sets of expertise from different directions. One of the pastors actually has an MSW, licensed clinical social worker. And the other pastor does biblical counseling, has a whole center on biblical counseling, right? So you have this expertise from all of the different directions focused on this issue. So as far as mental health goes, I'm probably the least capable or competent person at the table on the whole team, frankly. But the ability to bring people together and say, what is the problem? What is the topic? What is the issue? And so then adding, you know, we'll be adding a piece around sacred music and the role of music and mental health, right? So you think about all of these things, peace be still, you know, oh my gosh. And so it's just the co-creation is what's something that we're all interested in and taking the time to build that out as a learner, first and foremost. But acknowledging again, that I saw what is, some of you know, I'm also a pastor. So I bring the lens of the pastor with the understanding of the research. I just don't have that specific topical area. But I too feel the pain, right? And so being able to bring and assemble a team of folks together. And again, these are churches right here in the neighborhood. So I don't have to make a special appointment. I'm walking up and down the street and see people, hey, rare, what's up? Or hey, Dr. Wallace, right? Depending on who's talking to me. And so the relationship peace, even with people in the community, is critically important. So the co-creation happens when you are actually experiencing the challenge, not just reading about it or what our kids, you know, our asthma work. Our kids, asthma is not fundamentally just a lung problem. It's knowing that these children are houses with mold and vermin, right? And these known risk factors and the stressors that go with violence. And we even, wow, stop on that piece, but just spilling the tea. But there's a lot of stuff that you just, by walking the street, you realize and you understand just being in it, right? So it's not something that you come at primarily by just what you read, but it's seeing it, it's walking in it, it's experiencing it. And so if you're interested in this kind of work, being in it, there's nothing like it because you see opportunities and you see need just in talking to people. You know, my mama's waiting to get her COVID-19 vaccine. So this is not theoretical stuff, this is real, man. So what I'll add is the part Debbie, where you mentioned aligning it with the mission of the university, right? Because I think John really hit on all the important pieces about co-creating with community partners. But one of the things I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is as a public university, it's our job to engage the community, both domestically and globally. And I think sometimes those of us affiliated with the university feel like we have to secretly go and work with the community because it's not valued or it's not celebrated, right? Like because publications is the currency, they want us to collect data, analyze data, publish and keep it moving. But at the core of so many universities, including Michigan and places like Pitt, it is about engagement with the community and that is a part of the university's mission. And so I think it has a lot to do with changing the narrative, even as we kind of see ourselves, especially the up-and-coming scholars who've been trained in a certain way with a certain cadence to think about making their work impactful at the community level. That's not just giving lip service, right? That's actually doing it because that's a part of your job as a university employee. And so I'll just tackle into what John said. Everything he said, plus realizing that that is a part of the mission of our universities to be fully engaging with the community. It's not a secret, but we need to change the way we think about our scholarship in that way. And I would add on to that for young academics. And I got a piece of advice from Mark Chesler. Some of you may know him in sociology. And Daphne pointed out that she's trained as a public health person, but she's in public in social work. And so Mark said to me, he said, listen, you wanna be at the right place for the work you want to do. And so the reason that I'm a sociologist is trained in Michigan, but I looked only at schools of public health and schools of social work when I was looking for a job because I wanna do stuff, right? And so being at the university and being in a school and department where you can do what you want to do. So you don't need to change the university. You need to position yourself properly to be able to do what you wanna do. And so for me, the University of Pittsburgh is sitting in Pittsburgh, right? I'm sitting, I'm ending in Pitt and Homewood. So these community engagement centers, we have one in the whole district, one here in Homewood, another will be in Hazelwood and these are three historically predominantly African-American low-income communities. And so being in a space in place where the institution takes community engagement seriously and we're actually working on policy around community engagement, not being service, but being research. It's slower, certainly. Perhaps more difficult to fund, that's true too. But in terms of community impact, and I don't know, can I share my screen? Am I allowed to share my screen? No, let's give them, okay, share my screen. You said that, like, that never came up. That's all right, fine. You ever came home? I haven't. You're like, huh? Never mind. I'm gonna admit it now. This isn't a job follow show, now wait a minute. I just want to share my screen. I'm trying to answer your question. I'm just trying to answer your question, see? That competition, man, that competition's waiting. You're ready, apparently. You gotta always be ready, you know? Hey, if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. I have a picture, this is one of my favorite pictures. The Dean of the School of Education, Valerie Kenlock, sitting on the floor in the Community Engaging Center in Homewood, two blocks from where I was born. Oh wait, this is, I should be able to share my screen. Yeah, absolutely. You're like, this is Michigan, of course you can share your screen. I still can't just share my screen, that's all right. I'll just grab it. If I can share my screen, it'd be amazing. Yeah. All right, let me know when I can share my screen. But anyway, I'll get to that. But anyway, the point is, I think I can do it now. Yeah. This, let me see what that, let me see. Yeah, we can see Valerie. Can you see this? We can see Valerie. Listen, this is the Dean of the School of Education, it says she reached to local children in the 2019 Black History Month event at the Community Engagement Center at home. This is two blocks from where I was born and raised. The Dean of the School of Education is sitting on the floor reading, don't touch my hair to four little Black children. I did not know what a Dean was. I set foot in the Cathedral of Learning for the first time, less than three miles from my house when I was 39 years old. And to see this, and to see, you see the looks on those babies' faces. This work is, truthfully, it's just about myself, and it's about me, when I was five, six, four years old, being able to see the vision of being able to see a future in a bigger world than the one to which I was exposed. I mean, we got kids at our high school on campus. I don't know if you guys ever heard of John Edgar Wyman, but he wrote the, it's called The Homewood Trilogy. And John Edgar Wyman was in Pittsburgh, and our babies were at the Cathedral, read his books with Pitt students about their neighborhood, unbelievable. And so to be able to do for poor Black children, what I wish had been done for me, and the university's resources to support that work, and the opportunity that enhances, of course, the image of the institution, but it also helps the individual scholars and the faculty. And so as we do this work, and we're launching a cluster hire here at Pitt to bring in a whole bunch of folk to do some work, man. Are you kidding me? To get to do this and get paid to do it? Right, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, you're kidding me. This is a dream for, listen, I'm a headstart kid from Homewood, man. My grandfather's father was a slave. Marshall Gross was a slave. And to get to do this stuff two generations ago, you know, this is just unbelievable. And so the university, University of Michigan, of which, you know, I blew, amazing blew, but to leverage the resources of these institutions to benefit communities like the one that I'm sitting in, it's just unbelievable. And so it's a dream for me, and I think for so many scholars of color. But we also, you know, the challenge is when we do this work in our communities, we have to check our colleagues. I'm gonna add another one of my rules, right? So if you have somebody who's like off the farm, you have to pull the person aside and say, listen, we don't know, you can't do that. You know, and explain to our colleagues, when you run in and just wanna grab the grant, the grant didn't come through. So now we're not doing the work. You're creating problems for generations of scholars who want to do this work. And so it's thinking about these things much more clearly and understanding that we can be complicit in the continued, the generation of our communities if we're not thoughtful about our work. This stuff is too important to play with. I'm done. Now the word you haven't said yet, John, that I wanna just insert here is care. And that's what I see when I see the Dean of the School of Education at Pittsburgh reading to the children is showing that they care. And I was just sitting here while you were talking, thinking about, you know, how many interventions, how many programs have I done with young black men and I'm sitting across from them interviewing them or talking through mental health, masculinity and social support. And they say to me, no one has acted like they cared about what I thought. No one has showed that they care. And I would ask them, why are you talking to me? Why are you participating in this program? And they said, because you care, because you care. And so I think sometimes we overlook how important just that basic human need of showing someone you care about them and what that can do, how that can completely revolutionize someone's trajectory just to say, I care about you, I see you. And that's what I see when I see that photo of the Dean reading to kids is she's showing them that she cares and that can go such a long way. Absolutely. And we can be bridges from the campus to the community. Absolutely. Right? Yeah, that's right. And I think that's the other huge opportunity that we have to be able, because you also think about it, we're trying to move young people into higher education. And as we all know, and you know, I know Deb, I know your story a little bit better, you know, mine, education was the game changer for us. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And so for the work that we do in our community or you think about the health related stuff, right? If you can help somebody diabetes or high blood pressure or you're on doing cutting edge work on sickle cell or whatever these diseases that we know disproportionately impact our community to be able to connect folks to people who they otherwise would never have access to. What a tremendous opportunity. Yeah. It's powerful. It's powerful. Yes. So I'm gonna bring in one of the questions from the community, the participants that are here with us. It says, if you both agree that the current narrative is not the one that values working in the community, what role, if any, does race play in perpetuating said narrative and what who must change to reverse? Yeah, I'm not sure that I agree with the fundamental premise. I think that at least here at Pitt working in the community is very valued and important and central to our mission. And again, because we're nested in the city as the city goes, so we go, right? So there's absolutely a vested interest in seeing the city do well because it has huge implications for us as an institution. So generally I understand what you're saying and I agree but I think what role do you think race plays at all? Like do you think, like you were saying going into Detroit being who you are, et cetera, et cetera did race play a role in that? Did class play, like what role does race or these identities play as you going into working with communities in Europe? Yeah, I'm gonna pass the ball to sister Wacken. Yeah, yeah, so, okay, I'm just gonna talk like we're at my house on my sofa with me and my 199 other friends. You know, to be honest, I have worked with a lot of black people over the course of my 20 year career and just because I was black does not mean I was accepted. You know, when I opened my mouth and sounded like this, people immediately knew sometimes that I was not from their community or I came from someplace else. And so I don't want people to assume that race is the only factor, right? I think it goes beyond race. Race can be helpful, it can be useful. There are certain experiences I think that cut across different races and I think that can be valuable but I think we would be fools to assume that just because we look like someone that we share the same experience. And I think that can go both ways, you know? What race has allowed me to do is it's allowed me to walk through some doors that I may not have had an opportunity to walk through otherwise, but I still have to prove myself. I still have to show that I cared. I still had to show that I wasn't like that other professor or that other university person who came here and literally did helicopter research, came, dropped in and dropped back out. And so I think it could be both a gift and a curse to share the race of some of the communities that we work with. But I don't want people to assume and I know there are a lot of social work students on the line too. And a lot of students come to this work with passion and say, I wanna help out my community and I wanna help out people of color but it has to be more than that. You have to think about implications around class and education and experience and everything else. So it's a little more complicated, I think. Race, yes, but it's even more complicated than that, I think. There's nothing else to be said. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So I'll bring in another question from the participants. How do you incorporate critical reflection in your engagement practice? And how do you support the students you take with you into the communities to develop their own critical lens? Okay, so can I jump into that? Absolutely. John looks like he's hanging out, he's chilling. So I'm gonna jump into that. Right, I want the next question. Yeah, yeah, so my anthropology background comes into play whenever I think about being reflective on experiences. And I always encourage my students and trainees to journal about their experiences, to situate themselves in the space, right? And to think deeply about what their relationships look like, right? What is it about working with a certain type of community or group and really thinking about your position in that space? How do they see you and how do you see them? And some of the entries that I've encouraged some of my students to write over the years are things like given the population that we're working with, given this community that we're working with, what kinds of things do you have in common? What kind of things do you not have in common? And why might it be challenging or easier to work with these communities? So I actually pose questions to them and encourage them to journal about it. That reflexivity can be so important as you're thinking about how you approach your work with these communities. And I think that has been helpful for me, particularly as what we just talked about with race going in and saying, well, I'm black and I'm working with black people. But let me sit for a second and think about the fact that my research area is with black men. And I'm not a black man. So I sit and think about my own relationship with black men, my father, my brother, my husband. What about my relationships with them are going to influence my relationship with these community members when I walk through the door? And I really think deeply about that because I realize if I have a chance to really critically assess my approach to my relationships with black men outside of my work, it absolutely influences the tenor that I use to do the work with the black men in my community or at a school, for example. So that to me, it sounds simple, but journaling can be so insightful as you begin to unpack your own experiences and life journey and why you even care enough to want to engage with this particular group of people. Yeah. Did you want to add John or no? No, that question was too hard for me. Okay, next question. How can we better coordinate on campus to limit overburdening community-based organizations, many of which are working with several units on any particular campus? Yeah, how can we better coordinate? Do you want to take that one, John, or? Sure. You want me to start? Okay. You can start if you want. I had some thoughts, but go ahead. No, you start. You start. I've dominated the last couple of questions. So I'll let you start and I'll fill in. Yeah, I think communication is critical, right? So we can't have, and what happens is sometimes some organizations will become the go-to. And so it is important that we communicate and that we encourage the not-for-profit of the organization to communicate as well and to clarify who's doing what because otherwise you end up looking crazy. And often the community just hears the university of. They don't make distinction between all these schools and departments and units and all of that. And so, and this is the risk, right? So if you have one colleague that comes in and does something reckless, that has implications often for the whole institution. So I think it's important to, again, as you're working with community partners to explain to them, oh, there are different schools, there are different departments, so those distinctions need to be clear. And you have to build your own relationships because institutions don't have relationships. People do. Yep. And so it's about those relationships. And so I see one of the questions, even in the chat related to this issue, as well, how do you, as a white professor or whatever, how do you build these relationships, it still comes down to finding somebody who does stuff you're interested in. And it may mean that you volunteer for a year. And the university may not pay you for that volunteer work, but if there's something that you're passionate about, as Daphne said, it's showing that you care. This is a human thing. And so the competitive advantage is about being a human being who cares about something, some topic, some person, and giving people the opportunity to correct you, guide you, lead you. It's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay to be awkward, but just be honest about who you are. And like I said, don't act like you don't have skills, talent, abilities, because you do, but talk about what you need and what the other person needs, but build the relationship again before the grant. If you're interested in pediatrics, come into the community and find out who works with babies and come and volunteer. And don't be the expert. Just come and listen and learn if there are places for you to bring resources, do that. And respect people's time too, right? So pay people. When you and I go to a meeting in the community that we set in the middle of the day when normal people are working, we're at work. But then we get crazy when we talk about paying our community partners. So what do we don't value their work? Or when IRB tells you you can only pay people $10 because $15 is going to be coercive. Are you kidding me? You know, when we look at our value and what we charge, what makes you think that we shouldn't remunerate our community partners for their participation in the work? Yeah, I completely agree with that. And on the topic of just better coordinating on campus, I think we have to break down these walls, these disciplinary, these discipline walls, right? I sort of jokingly say to people that I'm the queen of interdisciplinary work because I have a degree in anthropology, public health. My postdoc was in social psychology. I spent some time over in obstetrics and gynecology, and I landed in a school of social work. So I feel like if there's ever someone who's all over the place and has landed someplace else, it's me. And I say that we need to break down these walls within our campus, within our university, it's because it's about addressing some of these wicked problems that are affecting these communities that we care the most about. It's not about what can social work do to help. In my case, black men's mental health, what can public health do? What can sociology do? What can political science do? It's, hey folks, black men have these challenges that we're trying to help. Why do we have to have lunch tables with public health professionals and a separate lunch table with sociologists? I think we need to push all these lunch tables together and figure out how are we going to address this problem? And so I think what the university can do is better centralize these efforts, right? Big shout out to my colleague in social work, Trina Shanks, who has the center where she's trying to do that. She's trying to help us centralize our connections to these communities and trying to see how can we better coordinate at the University of Michigan the work that we're doing, for example, in Detroit and in these other spaces so that they're not getting 10 calls from 10 different faculty members across campus saying, hey, I wanna work with you. And instead, we can come together as a United Front and say, we are researchers and scholars at the University of Michigan who care about the people in this space, right? We come from different units. We bring different strengths and gifts and talents but all in all, we're in it for the long run. And so I think the short answer is we have to do a better job of centralizing these efforts as opposed to just having a ton of people reaching out to these communities and overburdening them with contact. Yeah, and in our case, as I mentioned, we're in a physical location. So there's essentially this micro campus if you will, of Pitt, that people then come through the front door and there are people who their job is to connect people to this work. My colleague, Darren Ellerby, that's her job here at the center is to connect community partners, community residents to the resources of the university. So we treat this as the front door and when you come in to this front door, then you can get connected to people who are doing the things that you're interested in, who have been trained and so forth to do community-engaged work. So yeah, having these kind of pubs, if you will, that are located in the community is also a very effective and efficient way to get people connected in and so that they know what's going on with university partners in the community so that it's easier to prevent having kind of this overlap of folks kind of running in each other in the community. So you're muted Debbie, or for some reason I can't hear you. Sorry, at the University of Michigan, we have the Ginsburg Center who is similar also doing great things to be a centralized hub and connector to the community. I think that is important. I'll bring in another question and also you both mentioned the School of Social Work is being very well represented and Trina has sent shout outs to both of you. You both mentioned her as well. So yeah, we have lots of people that are doing those things in the community. One other question, how do you break the ice when you first approach a new community to build trust? Great question. Show up and hang out. Yeah, it's just that simple. Right, like you were talking about the care thing, show that you care, so go there. Tell people what you're doing. Yes, and the most valuable asset you can get people is your time. And now, get people your time. Yeah. Everything else can be replaced, time cannot be replaced. And that's the most valuable thing that they can give you too. So don't be disrespectful. For example, every year is the students come or either faculty, well, we're doing this project and the same people get interviewed and they told me to come talk to you. You're like, oh my goodness, right? So stop that. Have everybody in the room and bring Miss Jenkins in to tell her story about the neighborhood, right? Or if you go and interview Miss Jenkins every year for a class, then you need to set resources aside to remunerate Miss Jenkins. So any time she tells that story, if Ben Franklin or Big Face is attached to it, she don't mind telling that story every time. So I'll talk to you. She's like, oh, it's time for me to go do my talk, girl. I got to go. As opposed to, here we go again with the free conversation with these kids and I'm answering the same questions over and over and over again. Yeah. I like food personally. I mean, I'm a huge fan of food. So anytime I'm able to just share a meal with someone, it's always nice. Yeah. So another question, do you believe that racial and social equity can be achieved? So this is the big question. And if not, what do you think is the top three levelers that can get us closer given the embedded racialized, interconnected, established systems? So this is the broader like, Ism's question. Can we achieve this racial and social equity, particularly as we're working with these communities of, you know, in a lot of cases, marginalized populations? That's a big question. It is. I mean, the short answer for me is if I didn't believe it was possible, I wouldn't be here. Exactly. No, I mean, that's a short answer. I hope it's not a cop out. But to me... The short answer for me, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, but if we don't have hope, what do we have? And like, hope is like one of my X-Men powers. So I have so much hope, right? I have so much hope that we can make conditions better than they were. And so, yeah, I'll stop there, John. I don't want to take up too much time, but yeah, for me, we got to work towards something. But you answered a slightly different question. You, as was equity possible, and I said, no. So for 246 years, like Africans in America could not be remunerated, could not be paid, they could not own real estate largely. They could not form families, often weren't allowed to be able to read. And so because of the Eighth Wonder of the World, and we all know what that is, right? Enlighten us. Yeah. Compound interest, compound interest. And so when wealth is turning over generation after generation and you cannot be paid for your labor, the wealth gap, that's a silly, you cannot close the wealth gap in America. The math won't work, right? It just, the math doesn't work for that. What we as institutions, those universities can do, there's three things, education, employment, and entrepreneurship, right? The three rings on the ladder to economic success, education, employment, entrepreneurship. We can facilitate the education of young people through work with their public schools, through scholarships to our institutions, through providing opportunity for our employees to leverage the resources of our institution to get an education. Employment, universities are huge employers. They are, yes. We can employ people in our communities and those same benefits that we get that you put in five, they get 10, the university puts in 10. Listen, the secret to being a millionaire is doing that for 30 years. And the math is really, good old, what is it? TIA, Cref has made more millionaires out of educators than anybody else in the plant. And so doing that work. And then of course our universities spend the tremendous, just think about if you had the toilet paper contract for the University of Michigan, just the toilet paper. Just the toilet paper, right? Amazing. And so the university spend millions of dollars. And so spending money with businesses in our communities and building their capacity. If they're not able to handle the full contract, you may have to break the contract and print a little pieces, right? Education, employment, entrepreneurship. Those are things that we can do to increase equity. But in terms of eliminating the gap, I don't think that the math just won't work to do that. Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah, because they asked, if not, then what? So we have the three E's. Thank you so much, sir. So now one question is that academics are expected to write articles, but it's rare for anyone other than academics to read those articles. What other ways would you suggest academics share their work and results like videos, policy briefs, et cetera? I'm also asking this question so that we can avoid repeating the same work and oftentimes the same mistakes while sharing positive results across institutions and communities. So this is a great question. And I think both of you have done a good job at this as well. How do you reach with your work the general population? Yeah. So I can speak specifically about one of my projects, the YB Men Project, the Young Black Men Masculinities and Mental Health Project, but we call it YB Men for short. So one of the things I try to do with that project is for every academic paper we write for our sites, we produce a community report. Okay. And so we produce a report for laypersons to read. It's something that my grandmother can pick up and understand. There's not a lot of academic language in it. And that's just one way we like to translate our findings into a more general space. I'm also a big fan of social media. I think social media is definitely reaching people in ways that it probably didn't even 10 years ago. And so I have been so impressed by scholars who are taking their academic papers and creating infographics and images and one pagers and just different ways to translate the work in a space that's just able to be digested by, or digested in a different way by a different audience. And so even though I think there is value to academic papers, absolutely. I think if you're really truly committed to this work and really trying to translate your work to more community spaces, you have to have other things that you do, whether it's create a website, record a 30-second video of you summarizing the findings from your paper and what the implications are and opening up a YouTube channel for yourself, doing podcasts to create. I mean, there's so many. First of all, this is like my favorite question to talk about whenever I'm talking with the up-and-coming scholars is you cannot just limit your dissemination to academic papers. Not if you are really committed to this work. There are so many different ways you can just enhance the translation of your work beyond papers now more than ever before. And so those are just a few of the ways that I've been able to do this in the past. John may have some other ways as well. No, I would just say to your point is strategically repurposing the work, right? Because we're not going to get away from peer-reviewed journal articles. And arguably we shouldn't. But the ability to translate, again, repurpose. So you start with an article to your point. Then it's the infographic, the report, the podcast, the social media posts. It's repurposing the work. And so think, and again, it gets the work out more broadly, frankly, it makes it more useful. So I think, again, strategically repurposing the work that we have to do anyway so that it doesn't just have a single use and that it is able to reach the literally millions of people all over the globe on social media, not just the other 12 people who write letters for us when it's time for promotion. And one tactical strategy is it may need to happen by someone who's not you. Oh, it definitely needs to happen. Because those of us who are trained as academics, as researchers, as scientists, we're not the best people to translate our work sometimes. So this is where you employ people who are from the community. This is a great opportunity to put some money in their pocket to say, this is what I found. This is the science of what I found. Help me translate this so that other people can reach it. So some of us as academics, we think we can do everything. And this may not be your thing. So be open to the idea of having other people involved in a broader dissemination of your findings. Which goes back to John's three points, education, employment, and entrepreneurship. Because we can create some entrepreneurs in the community when they have those skills. You're correct about that. So there's one other question. And you spoke about this a little bit, John, but I don't know if you want to touch base on it in like a one minute or so. What advice do you have for white doctors and pediatricians working in communities of color? And this could be white professors, white students, white doctors, et cetera. What advice would you have for them? Yeah, again, I say find the person of peace, right? So find that person who works with babies and kids and parents and ask to meet with them and to have a meal and to explain who you are and what you're trying to do. And if it works, cool. And if not, try again, you know? Yeah, so. And the, can I just throw something in really quickly? I tend to say. Yeah, absolutely. Because again, we're all sitting on my sofa at my house and we're relaxed the Friday afternoon. Is can I just encourage people to not, oh, and if we're talking about white doctors and white students and such, just don't always assume that a person of color is an equity expert or is a diversity, equity and inclusion expert because that can be incredibly stressful on people of color. Certainly there are experiences that can be valuable but just over the past 12 months, it has been absolutely exhausting to be called on as an expert in diversity, equity and inclusion where in my space and in my mind, we're all learning. And just because I'm a brown person doesn't mean I'm an expert. It means I have experiences absolutely hands down but sometimes going to people of color and just like nighting them as an expert can actually do more harm than good. Absolutely, absolutely. So we can't dismiss the folks that gotta go and hang out for another few minutes. This is getting good. I'm learning a lot of stuff here. I guess I can't hijack your show. Go on, do your thing. Everybody that wants to remain and hang out with them afterwards, please feel free to do so. I do want to read just one of the comments which I think it's heartfelt from a student who says, as a first year PhD student in the School of Education who was looking to spend time conducting research in the classrooms next year, I have found this to be incredibly helpful. This webinar should be required viewing. Thank you so much for the event and the wisdom. I agree that we've learned so many tips, so many things today. And I think the underlying theme has basically been, have relationships, care about people in the community, make this a long-term thing. Like you don't just go in and go out. And so I really appreciate both of you coming here today and all the things you do in the community and all the things you do at the university. I know you're both extremely busy and you both know I love you both dearly. So I'm so happy that you were able to join us today. I also like to thank our Dean, the Dean of Rackham Graduate School, Mike Solomon, who allows me to do this work and all of my team at Rackham who are very committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and communities and the university. So I wanna give a shout out to them. And finally, I also really wanna give a shout out to the Ginsburg Center at the University of Michigan because they, I've learned so much from them in doing this work. And they have how you enter, engage and exit communities which I think should be required for all students and staff and faculty as well. So I appreciate them. And the Detroit Urban Center does a lot in Michigan. And I know you also John Gay people who at Pitt does all of these things. So thank you all for coming. The last thing I will say is that we next month will be discussing on April 23rd. So it's a little bit later, but we will be discussing how partnering with HBCUs towards racial equity. And so we would love to have you to join us then. All our past webinars are on our lead playlist on the Rackham YouTube channel and our future webinars will be as well. After this, we will send you all the recording. And we got that question numerous times. And so you will be able to access this. Once again, it's one o'clock. John's gonna stay forever, but we think everyone else will join in us today. And we appreciate you being here. Bye everyone. Goodbye. No, you stay. Okay, I got to 130. I just didn't make some time to say that. I said, if Deb needs me, I'm gonna hang out. I have a few minutes before my next meeting. I appreciate you. I appreciate. Oh, this was wonderful though. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to my favorite women from the University of Michigan. Always a pleasure to hear from both of you. And this is exciting. I mean, I love the concept. Thank you. Looks like a nice turnout too. It was nice to see so many people join. Yeah, that's interesting in this topic and really trying to get it right for the community. So, I mean, what are any other questions for real? That I mean, you think it's worth kicking it around for a minute? There was a question about funding. How funding, yeah. Funding sources be upfront, pointed in the direction of underserved communities and the needs articulated by community members. Yeah, man, I think about it, especially foundations when a university involved it adds an additional level of credibility to community-based organizations, right? And vice versa. Now, of course, from the university side, you don't have the overhead, which is a challenge. But in terms of the community when you bring, typically we bring evaluation strength or program design strength or those sorts of things. So I think that that can add a huge value to the community-based not-for-profit and particularly when they're the lead organization in the submission. So actually, I think it can enhance the capacity and the credibility, frankly, of the organization in the community. So I think that that's actually a win-win. Again, and it's one of those things that you, as a university, can add value to your community-based not-for-profit partner. Thank you. Yeah, so, anyway.