 Thank you for coming today. My name is Rachel. I am presenting on my research I did with at University of Oregon on diversity equity inclusion in the graduate level education. Originally this was called cultural competency in graduate programming. However, cultural competency I pretty much understand that to be your competent something but cultural competent like to understand cultural differences in academia is something that's continuous. So my presentation, oops, it's a basic outline about the methodology, the qualitative findings which led us to the qualitative how to form the questions, recommendations, and reflection on this project. So the methodology that we use I worked with another person, another my co-lead on this project. The program was at the University of Oregon. It is a program that prepares students for community regional planning, working with policy and general social services, and how this project started. There was students commented on how they felt unprepared to address inequities with marginalized underrepresented communities and they wanted to build those skills. And this was a project that we were commissioned to investigate this issue. And so we had implemented a Qualtrics Survey with 41 participants, quantitative interviews with 16, and then research and we provide a recommendations. So the qualitative findings was based around basically people wanting to learn about DEI or diversity equity inclusion in the program and through curriculum. They felt not as prepared and also the way to understand issues that impact and how to work with marginalized underrepresented communities. So based on our Qualtrics Survey, this is what we found about why is this important to your field, how well the curriculum is dealt with in the classroom, so facilitations, actual readings, examples, so forth, our case studies. If feeling prepared, I'm just going through this quickly because the limited time have an interest in taking these courses to better serve the communities. And if it should be a professional part of professional development or a standalone course. And so meaning professional development in this department, they have professional development class which teaches you how to do presentations, use like computer programs like Excel, Word, what else, and also like developing your resume and cover letter and this would be part of that curriculum for personal professional development and also or if it should be required course. So based on the comments that was given to the survey, a lot of the comments reflected that understanding like the lack of students feeling that the faculty is not as prepared to have these discussions because it's either their personal research or lived experience that this is something very important to talk about DEI issues in curriculum to help better prepare and also other the students own personal attitude if some people felt this was something that was valuable to them or not. So based on the qualitative data, the quantitative data, the Qualtrics Survey, we formed four questions about student buy-in like why does students support this DEI education to be implemented and how their positive experiences in the classroom, how they overall dealt with their experience and within the department and also input from students who took other classes and other departments or other like outside learning experiences and how that impacted them and how they felt about those experiences. So with classroom environment that the main issue that stood out from reading through analyzing the data and also noting what issues came up often was not all students were heard and especially students from marginalized underrepresented communities such as students of color, LBTGQ students and others were haven't was not put as equal weight or not equally respected as cisgendered white males that spoke up in the classroom and they were seen as more valid in talking about issues that pertain to the subject in this department that how equity and diversity is discussed within the classroom that it's either something very taboo and very people are nervous to talk about and also the importance of learning about history and critical race theory gender theory and so forth to help students become more effective agents of change or to participate within their future careers that students did not feel the conversations were well facilitated that often this is going to be brought up often in this presentation that white privilege is something a taboo subject to be talked about that students feel culturally emotionally taxed to bring up these discussions and explain those the experience of the marginalized community from their own personal perspective or personal lived experience and also how conversations are facilitated if faculty or staff is able to facilitate these conversations they'll have the knowledge to facilitate so based on these themes brought up in the Qualtrics survey and the qualitative interviews we're able to identify five main points that were brought up so students don't take courses to improve their skills even though they are important that this department that the department I was doing this research with that they do offer classes such as policy making that impacts immigrant communities gender issues so forth but they're not required and they're extracurricular they're not part of the curriculum and it's up to the students to take these classes that the student they have assumption from faculty to that students know everything that even concepts of diversity equity inclusion cultural competency that it's already assumed that the students already know about these subjects instead of students not being familiar and like reinforcing these concepts to them and also how these skills are taught outside the curriculum outside the department not within this department and also understanding from that students really feel passionate about learning about diversity equity inclusion how to advocate for marginalized underrepresented communities how to better understand or reach out to these communities so based on our findings we did research on these issues and how to better address them what what what research what resources are available at on the campus and also what other department other universities with similar programs are implementing currently so based on our research is we the four points that were brought up is bring building a culture of respect and equity that building that culture would look like through curriculum services that the department would provide increased diversity in the department meeting either staff graduate students graduate graduate teaching fellows and representation and cultural competency not only in the curriculum but also in the services that provide and also the importance of faculty action that faculty is leading this call and it's not all depending upon students so as I mentioned before faculty leading this charge that that's the top down approach to have it visit to have equity includes equity diversity inclusion to be physically shown through the department's vision statement mission so forth and so either on their website and advertisements for their programming so forth and also that the University of Oregon does have many programs to help faculty with being more inclusive in their curriculum or teaching style such as teaching efficiency program which helps faculty build on their skills to facilitate and educate within within issues on diversity equity inclusion so also increased department diversity either through hiring staff who faculty staff who has research dealing with issues that impact diverse communities underrepresented communities also representation of student workers when you talk about economic inequalities that does impact marginalized underrepresented communities and giving them the availability to help support and retain them as hired by the department and also showing that other schools within Oregon also has they provide scholarship for supporting research on DEI issues that there needs to be a professional development skill set for supporting faculty and develop and to help build these skills of teaching DEI also building the usage of theory within the classroom I'm sorry I'm just going through so I have enough time for questions and the faculty action is like to promote chemical thinking that many different theories like gent like critical race theory gender theory so forth will help students be able to be more efficient in DEI issues or working with marginalized communities and the recommendations based on our findings and I think I talked touched on it so before that there's resources on campus that help with teaching more efficiently and other schools also what what program they're implementing and also follow follow that lead and continue and start to implement those practices in their own program. So my own personal reflection in doing this project is the number of responses that from our Qualtrics survey to in person interviews had dropped more than half and how I would go about addressing that in future projects that reflect this project the demographics that we didn't take consideration of demographics based on race gender sex so forth because that could have better weighed out the information that we gathered and also the issue is like having everyone on board and understanding having a common understanding of what these terms are that every people everyone has different understanding what DEI what diversity equity inclusion and cultural competency is and stating like this is the definition that we're using in this project and having so we have that commonality understanding and also making sure the staff is receptive to this report or project because it might lead up to well it led up to defensiveness and like feeling like defensive because like this comes out as critical but it's not but the intention of like to make a more equitable program and department is coming from a place of what I consider love and concern instead of like a place a bad place and pretty much that was the gist of it and if there's any questions go ahead and ask.