 and Heather Pelzel, Associate Professor, Biology at UW-Whitewater. Thank you. Each take our turns. The goal is for you to see us, hear us, and hopefully eventually respond to us, right? So again, my name is Suzanne Treiber. I'm here from this locale, from Madison College, and what I'm sharing with you today is what I'm calling the L2 Initiative that's been happening on our campus officially since 2017. We have a group of cross-disciplinary faculty, staff, and students and administrators who felt that language, kind of going a little bit beyond race and ethnicity, looking at language and how language impacts our students and impacts our practices in connecting with our students. So what I'm going to be sharing with you is some of the work that we did in the last year and a half, and also what we learned from those, from that action. But what I do also want to acknowledge is that our committee, we have an L2 advisory committee, like I said, and I did, I think some folks are still in here, Luz is still here. Mike has been part of our committee as well. So anyways, what I want to encourage everyone who's listening is that you can do this on your campus too, because it was basically a grassroots effort that did originate in the Writing Center, but is definitely beyond the Writing Center at this point. So our vision is that Madison College is a learning community that embraces and values linguistic diversity in higher education and beyond. So that's what we envision for our college, and that our mission is actually recognizing and supporting language identities on campus by providing resources that fosters students' social and academic success. So we have a mission that will last far beyond me, but that's okay. So our first effort is what I'm going to be sharing with you, and that first effort was to build awareness and better understand linguistically diverse students. One of the things that we started discovering at the ground level, particularly in writing centers, is that we had more and more students coming to us who are multilingual, whose first language is not English, a raise of hands of others who are experiencing more students with culturally linguistically diverse backgrounds. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So we, our Writing Center is structured for that includes English faculty, and so a lot of what was happening among English faculty is they were particularly making those kinds of comments and observations. So we put some professional development and some training within the Writing Center to support our English faculty, and we said, well, why aren't we doing this on a broader scale? So one of the reasons we weren't doing it on a broader scale is there isn't really any conversation happening around linguistic diversity on our campus. So that was really something we needed to do was to build that awareness. So what we decided to do was to study students from a linguistic lens, okay, studying our own students. And you can do this too. I would be happy to share the survey that we spent about eight months working on, and happily have you use that or tweak that to be more informed about your own students on your own campus. What we looked at are a lot of things. We looked at students' education background. We looked at, of course, their language background, their aspirations, and we particularly looked at their confidence in their, in literacy skills and abilities. That includes what we call literacy domains, and those literacy domains are reading, writing, speaking, and listening. So that's where we ended up. We had a wealth of data, and again, reach out to me if you want more detailed information I'd love to share, but we focused our efforts on that confidence level. What are students actually feeling when they're in the classroom, when they're engaging in reading activities, speaking activities, reading activities, and writing, okay? So who we studied? We studied all students who were in, enrolled in an English course. All students had access to the survey if they were enrolled in an English course in three different semesters. And based on some of the questions that we asked students, we started looking at different multilingual groups, okay? So we started realizing that there were students who identified as speaking a language other than English. They acknowledged, yes, I do. I speak, I'm fluent or I'm native to another language than English. We also had students who said, yeah, I speak another language at home. So some of our students do, especially our students who are living independently with roommates, maybe not. They're still living at home. Maybe they are, right? And then we also had this interesting group of students who identified saying, we asked them how fluent they were in English, and we had a group of students about 16% in all three semesters. I think one semester was 15, another was 17, 16%, who actually identified as being, they said, I'm less than fluent in English. And these are all students taking academic program level, college level courses, and they identify themselves as feeling less than fluent in English, okay? And then, of course, we also had students who took the survey who said, I only speak English. So we thought, well, let's look at comparing the confidence in students who are monolingual, that's our only speak English group, to all these three other groups. The reason I have that little fun thing on the left is the next slide is going to show you one piece of data that I'd like for you to see that's some pretty consistent with additional data. So there, I told you, pretty colors on the right side. So what we noticed or what we learned, and you see I said learned so far, because this is a long-term effort, is that no matter what questions we asked students about their reading, writing, speaking, or listening skills, so we broke this down. So in this particular question, we asked them how confident are you in speaking? Just a general question and on down the line. Then we asked them additional questions about speaking activities or abilities, right? How comfortable or how confident are you speaking in front of your classmates? How comfortable are you speaking with your instructor? So those data points are not included, but what we realized is that no matter what question we asked in terms of literacy skills, the multilingual student groups, all three were always lower in confidence compared to our monolingual students, always lower. And our group that identified as less than fluent in English, greatest gap. The good news was that despite this gap, we asked a question about well what do you want to, how far do you want to go in your educational career? And that's when the data flipped. We had multilingual students more consistently saying they wanted to get a JD, an MD, a master's, right, than our monolingual group. So we know our students are motivated. That's cool. Motivated, not so much in the area of confidence compared to monolingual students. So this is also what we've learned. Again this is, I feel like this is more like a spaceship view versus a bird's eye view, but some of the main things that we've learned also is very similar to what Fronting Horse shared. We have diversity among our linguistically diverse students. So when you have one student who might be from the Gambia and you have another student who's from Korean or from Korea, you know that they're not necessarily the same. They have some similarities because they're not originally maybe from here, but we also know that these are the three primary elements that impact student engagement and development. What can we do with what we've learned? I'm not going to read all of these. I'm just going to highlight them if you want to take a picture of what we've learned and what you can possibly incorporate into your classrooms. What I do want to share is the one thing to consider is learning about your student's linguistic backgrounds using a student profile questionnaire. And what I mean by that is I actually even just talked with a nursing instructor earlier in the week and she said, oh, I already do that. I'll just modify and ask some language questions in that profile. I said, awesome, I'll send you mine. You can use some of those questions. So if you want, I have access or I've created a student profile questionnaire that you are welcome to look at. But when you think about doing a profile questionnaire, think about the literacy demands in your classroom. What are you expecting in terms of participation for speaking? What are you expecting when it comes to writing and reading? Okay. And ask questions to inform you of where they are and where they are not in terms of their confidence or their experience, to be perfectly honest. The other one that I wanted to highlight is more towards the bottom, is at the bottom here about creating assignments or classroom experiences that reveal students' language and cultural backgrounds. When we are informed about our students' language backgrounds, we can incorporate more experiences in our classrooms. It doesn't have to be a lot. When students realize that they're part of the classroom, there will be more engagement and there will be more participation. And an acknowledgement of culture and acknowledgement of language reinforces the fact that they feel they can be there. Hello again, everyone. So I introduced myself a little bit already. There we go. Shorter. But kind of like Gloria did earlier, I wanted to give you just a little bit of my own background so you could understand how I got to where I am now and why I do what I do the way I do it. And so my teaching background started as a grad student. I was part of the Wisconsin Scientific Teaching Program at Madison, which gave me the opportunity in a STEM field, I should say that part. I'm a biologist. So any of you STEM folks in the audience know, as a grad student, you get like this much training in how to be a good teacher, right? Unless you actively go out and find it. And so that was me. I actively went out and found it because I knew that I wanted to end up at a primary teaching institution. So I did that program and introduced me to all kinds of great things like how to design your course, how to use active learning and good things like that. And then I got into the classroom, right? And I actually got to practice it. And I actually nod to Catherine, right? I started at Beloit College also. I was there for a year and a half before I moved to Whitewater. And I've been at Whitewater now for nine years. Apart from that kind of on-the-job training, right? I really like being a student is what I figured out. And so I am always going to different workshops and things, trying to learn more. And some of them, you know, at the bottom there, there's lots of Whitewater programs and system programs. And I mean, the National Association of Biology teachers, but those two at the top are two initiatives that really had a big impact on how I teach my classes. Sensor is an acronym. It stands for Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities, which is a big long thing, right? It's about using real-world issues and getting your students involved and civically engaged with their content. So getting them to the content through the context and create is also an acronym that I'm not going to run through. It's even bigger. But what it involves is using primary literature to teach students how to think critically and creatively about science, which is not something they always put science and creative together in the same sentence. So that's kind of a little bit of my background. And oh, I almost forgot my title at the top, right? Where I'm going with this is to tell you about my own experience in the classroom and how I've used relationship building and creating a sense of community within my classroom to try to increase our sense of belonging, which I found also maybe decreases our equity gap in my classes just a little bit. And I do most of it through the use of a couple different high-impact practices. So I have three key takeaways, right? A slide for each. My first one is start by trusting students, right? And this sounds easy. It's simple, right? Except in practice, sometimes it's a little bit harder to do. But when I try, I do trust my students, but I have to convince the students that I trust them. Sometimes they think I'm just tricking them. But so when I start the semester, it all starts at the beginning a lot, right? I try to convey this to students by talking a lot and being very explicit and transparent about why I've designed the class the way I have or why we're using different formats. Doing a lot of, with some background in educational research, I'll try new things and I'll ask them to do assessments and surveys. And so I'm always trying to really be clear about why I'm doing that. Along with trusting students, something that has been mentioned a couple times today, right, is that our students are people, right? They're not just a number or a face in our classroom. And so I try to remember that and incorporate as much flexibility as I can on things like attendance and deadlines, right? I don't know if she's still here, but the person earlier who talked about students getting class 10 minutes late and not being able to get in because the door's locked, right? And we know that there's lots of reasons students get to class late and some of them might just be because they decided to hit snooze on their alarm too many times, but some of them might be because they were dropping their kids off or they couldn't find a parking spot or a whole host of other things, right? So trying to make sure that I'm removing as many of those roadblocks as I can. I use one of the high impact practices that I use in my classes, collaborative learning. One of my classes is an entirely team-based learning. And so we talk a lot about group dynamics and responsibilities and what that means in our classroom. And I think that shows them that I'm trusting them to make decisions within their group, but it also starts to get them to trust each other. And I actually use the word trust with them a lot. You have to trust your teammates and show them your vulnerability to say, I don't understand this. And if you understand it, you also have to trust your classmates to not pick on you for being like, oh, you're so smart, right? Because we know there's vulnerability on both sides. And when possible, I give them some place to decide on content or assignments coming back to that. Using real-world issues, right? And we can pick the issues we think are cool or interesting or whatever, but that doesn't always hit the mark with our students, right? They might think something different is really great. And so trying to give them the options to make those choices when I can, which actually to refer to one of my pictures, that one on the end there where there's a bunch of bananas, right? The other things you can't see around that table are piles and piles of condoms. So my students chose one semester their focus in microbiology was going to be sexually transmitted diseases. And I said, okay, let's do this, right? And so we had our college health assessment data and they worked through it and they were looking. I gave them the charge to find where we have issues on our campus with sexual health. And so they did. And one of the groups, well, a couple of them, but one of them in particular really focused in on condom usage. They're like, do you know that not everybody uses a condom every time? And I said, yes. And so they decided, and I like to try to get my students out of the classroom as much as possible when I can. And so this group actually developed a whole independent study where they built this survey and they decided to do an intervention because they found data from elsewhere, right? Not white water, although I'm sure it's relevant, that not only do college students not use a condom every time, but they don't even know how to use a condom appropriately. And so that's what they decided to tackle. Hence a table full of bananas and condoms in the atrium of the science building, right? And our building manager, who's one of my colleagues in the biology department, came to me and he's like, do you know about this? And I said, yep, yeah, they're good. So trust your students that they're going to get there. Get to know each other, right? This is so simple. Like these are the basics, right? But sometimes we kind of forget about some of them. And so learn names, right? How many times have you been told that? Learn your students' names. It makes a difference. And I understand that that's a lot easier in a class of 15 or 30 than it is in a class of two or 300, right? But doing the best you can, whether you need name tags or table tents or whatever it is. Another way I get to learn my, or get to know my students right away is with this I am list. So I started using this a couple of years ago. This is one of my first day of class slides, right? I am, and this is, this is my list from this year. I switched it up a little bit. But so it tells them a whole bunch of things about myself. And I read through it. And I kind of elaborate on a few points as I go to try to build some connections. And then I asked them to create their own I am list, right? And to tell me 10 things about themselves. And I don't make them read it out loud. They don't have to share with anybody except for me. They have to give it to me. And then I read through them so that I can learn a little bit more about them. But then it's not just that, right? If we go on the fourth point, it's to talk with them about what they tell you. And that doesn't necessarily mean I schedule like a one-on-one meeting with each of them. But I might notice that one of them told me they're a big Blackhawks fan, right? And so when hockey season starts, or if I happen to notice there's a game, I can be like, Hey, did you watch that Blackhawks game last night? I know zip about hockey, right? But just remembering some of that, they'll tell me they're in sports. They'll tell me about their families. They'll tell me about their jobs. They'll tell me about why they think this semester is going to suck so bad and they wish they didn't have to take my class, right? They tell me all kinds of things. But it helps me get to know them a little bit. One way I try to encourage them to get to know me and for me to get to know them a little better is also to encourage more office visits and to incentivize them. So for some of my classes, I give a take-home exam and it's a group exam actually. It could be easier, right? But I tell them if they come to my office before it's due with their group or at least part of their group, right? I'll go through the answers with them and when they do this, they found that they get like almost perfect scores on the take-home exam. It's an amazing thing. What they don't realize is that oftentimes, you know, a couple of them will get there and we'll be waiting for one group member or another and they'll be like, how's it going? What you got going on this week? Lots of exams and they start talking, right? And then I can get to know a little bit more about them and if they come into my office, they know more about me because I have things in my office, right? Things about me. I have family pictures in my bucky badger head stuck on the wall and all kinds of stuff around so that they can start to get more clues about who I am to. And interacting outside of the classroom. So this time, the picture on the far right there with that cheery looking group in the snow, right? I took my class out on a soil collection trip in February in Wisconsin. That was them. They looked pretty happy for it at the moment, right? They didn't, I told them to dress appropriately and I think some of them didn't really believe me that we were going to go on a hike but we did and it was good. And you get to know a lot about them when you take them on a hike in February. This is another idea that has come up a few times today so I'm not giving you anything new, right? But maybe sharing a few ways that I do this. So we talk about giving everyone a voice in class, right? Whether it's not calling on the first hand raised, right? Or allowing written responses. Those are both things that I do too. Alternating the roles, right? Running horse talked about that. Assigning the roles and asking them to stick to them and changing that role in different class periods, right? Allowing some time for thinking and maybe writing, right? One idea that came up one time because I had in my lab class, they work in groups, right? Whitewater is, we have, whitewater is white, right? We already acknowledged that that Wisconsin is predominantly white students and whitewater is no different. And in this one particular class I had one student of color, one, right? And she came to me after a class and in her group before she told me that she was feeling ignored, right? They were working on a group project and she said she was trying to share her ideas and she didn't feel like her group was listening to her. And she said, she's like, I don't know what you can do about it but that's how I'm feeling. I said, okay, let me think on that and see what we can do. So the next week when we came back to class we did one of these round-ropping rites, right? I said, I had everybody get out a piece of paper and I said, all right, we've talked about all different kinds of ideas for these group projects, right? I want each of you to write down your favorite idea, right? What's your favorite topic for this project? And they did it and I said, okay, pass it to the person on your right in your group, right? I said, okay, now read what the person before you wrote and then add something to it, right? Comment, respond to that person's suggestion. And we went around the whole group like that, right? So it was just four turns and only took about 10 minutes so that everybody in the group got to get their idea out there and everybody in the group read everybody else's idea and then they had a conversation about what their group was going to work on. And did they choose her idea? I don't know, I don't know if they chose her idea, but I talked to her again after it and I said, what do you think? Do you think it helped at all? She's like, it was great. She's like, they all responded to my idea and I got to respond to theirs before we started our discussion, like perfect, right? So doing anything you can to give everyone a voice. Encouraging contributions, again, right? It comes back to trust and broadening their audience anytime you can. And so that's a bunch of the pictures are up here, right? In trying to give them a broader audience. Those are some of my research students. The ones at the bottom are at a regional honor society meeting. They had done a research project and they got to go give their presentation, right? The ones on the far right and the one up above, those were the same meeting if anybody's familiar with tiny earth. It's an antibiotic search. But the national symposium is in Madison. It's really affordable. And I actually do the project in my micro class. So these weren't students that had to do anything beyond their classwork to be able to go to this national meeting and present their work, right? So they created their posters, posters, right? I'm with Gloria there, an underutilized resource. They created the research posters as the end product of their class lab and then they took those posters to this national symposium if they wanted to. They didn't have to. It was optional, right? And I keep joking that everybody's going to start thinking white water is like an all-female school because that's who I took with me. But there were guys in the class they just didn't go. So giving everyone a voice in the class. Now, coming back to it, I mentioned that I use a lot of high impact practices to do some of these things. And so I mentioned the collaborative learning, the undergrad research, that hike that we went on the hoods in. That was actually a community-based learning project that we still do with the Ice Age Trail Alliance around white water, where we work with them. One or two of the alliance members goes out with us and gives us some background about the Ice Age Trail and leads us on the hike. This fall, when we went out, it was actually a working hike. And so we did brush clearing and sign painting and stuff while we were out there. So we try to do it on both sides. So a couple of different high impact practices that I use. And when we think about high impact practices, one of the conversations we've been having within the UW system is how do we make these equitable, right? Because we know that oftentimes some students get a lot of access to them and some get none. And so for my own classes, when I've added these experiences to my classes or to my independent research stuff, the things I'm trying to consider are, does it require extra time, right? And so I mentioned that being able to go to that symposium, of course, the symposium itself was extra time, but the work they had to do to get there was just part of their work they were doing in the class for credit, right? So it wasn't an extra thing they had to add on to their already busy schedules. Does it require extra money, right? And this could be money in terms of credits, right? So if they want to do like summer undergraduate research, that's money for credits. It could be travel. So for that, the tiny earth one that's right here in Madison, it's really cheap, but I got our biology department to pay for all of them so that they didn't have to pay anything. I even gave them an option to all carpool with me or with each other to get up here. So really, it cost them a couple of days out of their lives and that was it. The rest was covered. Same with some other community-based learning projects I've tried to find is, can we bring the project to them on campus so that they also don't have to travel somewhere? Can we build it into class time so they're not working on it, you know, and they also have to be taking care of their kids or working at their job because they're all doing those things also. And the last bit on the equitable access that I always try to keep in mind is, do they need to know how to navigate the system? And this is something our table talked about earlier because there are those students that know how to find those opportunities and how to take advantage of them and they know who they're supposed to talk to in the forms they have to fill out. And there are other students like me when I got to college as a first-generation student who has no idea what's going on. You know you have to take your classes and you go through it and you get the end and other students are talking about these amazing things they did and you're like, I didn't even know that was an option. And so I've been trying to build in opportunities with my classes as much as I can that are just required parts of our curriculum so that they don't have to know how to navigate the system to get those opportunities, they're just there. So that is, that's it for me. Hi everyone, thank you. It's an honor to be here today, so thank you so much to the organizers for inviting me and thanks for staying. So following Heather's lead here, I am. I work at Beloit College, Catherine Orr. I was hired 21 years ago as a women's studies professor. Full FTE in women's studies as a small liberal arts college was kind of like a unicorn at the time. And since then my program and then department has become women's and gender studies but then in 2013 we became critical identity studies and the reason for that is because race was nowhere else in the curriculum. We did not have ethnic studies, no black studies at Beloit College despite perennial calls from students since 1969. So I decided it was going to be my program and so one of the things that critical identity studies is and does and by the way I think I'm still the only critical identity studies department in the nation although I'm lobbying for more is we use women of color feminisms and we make intersectionality the floor not the ceiling of every single class we teach and that means not just a single axis of identity but we're always thinking about gender, race, class, sexuality, disability and post-colonial takes on identities. So I also when I was invited here talked I kind of didn't know why I was invited here because there's another part of my volunteer life. I live in Manona and in Madison I run and co-facilitate a witnessing whiteness workshop for K-12 teachers, staff and parents and that's kind of like my sort of the life I have in Beloit where sorry in Madison where I sort of do my thing on identity but just kind of in a different context. But for today I thought what might be most appropriate to think about for this audience was a project that I'm a co-PI on and it's called the Melon Decolonizing Pedagogies Project. Now Melon gave us some money about $600,000 over the course of three years to think hard about how to build equity into the culture, operations, curriculum and pedagogy of Beloit College writ large. And these were our questions that we asked right how do we create inclusive classroom spaces? What does equity look like at a primarily white institution? How does one enact institutional transformation so that underserved and underrepresented students, faculty and staff feel like they belong at these predominantly historically white colleges? We wanted to do more than tips and tricks and so we went big and aspirational thus the decolonizing in the name right decolonizing is huge. I mean one might say that institutions themselves cannot be decolonized right just on the basis of them being institutions in this United States but we wanted to go beyond tips tricks content right because how would content like read this article or something like that work in a chem classroom or our physics classroom. We wanted to be more foundational and ask faculty and staff about who they are in the room and how their disciplinary training makes space or not for marginalized bodies that might enter those spaces. We wanted to think hard with our colleagues about the colonizing legacies of colleges and universities more broadly and we wanted to imagine how any space on campus would look or feel if black feminist indigenous queer perspectives were centered and whiteness was de-centered right so we were asking a lot of our folks so just want to tell you a little bit about the structure the structure of this program we basically had this foundational reading series that everyone went through who wanted to join not everyone took it but we did have a pretty significant numbers it's kind of this developmental arc so this foundational reading series a semester long six 90 minute meetings readings every time reflection every time right in terms of a written reflection we were really looking at origin stories of our disciplines and ways in which academia universities knowledge production the west goes back to these subject object relations built in colonizing legacies right so no one's innocent right so we're trying to sort of think hard about what does it mean to do what we do in terms of you know a country built by stolen people on stolen land right I mean get to those questions that were super hard for some folks in the room every session had two facilitators we were multiracial one white one a person of color and basically we asked fact faculty and staff to see both their discipline in terms of the way it centers whiteness and how might they think about decentering whiteness so that was the foundational reading series so folks went through that and if they went through that then they could go on to the curriculum workshop and pure coaching and that was like a three-day summer thing two days that right after graduation and then reconvening back in august after they did a bunch of work that was time support and expertise to overhaul some basic structure of what they do right obviously for faculty that would be a course or part of a course but there were offices and programs that came in and thought about what it was they did that was basically you know sort of not in line with the equity that they claim to believe in so this was their chance to think about how to do something foundational um participants could create some concrete and measurable action um action plans excuse me that culminate in some substantive change in the how they approached their work and then there what we were called rats research action teams and this is where students came in so melan is really big on faculty development and some staff development not so big on students but we wanted to be involved students somehow so the research action teams where someone a staff person or a faculty person gathered a group of students and for eight months across the span of two semesters right tried to work on some research um uh in research based intervention into the college culture um some campus practice something that you know had something to do with how it is that marginalized bodies encountered campus in ways that white bodies didn't necessarily so outcomes um by the numbers i'll say 120 college faculty and staff have completed it over the course of three years um and we're we're a campus small campus right 1200 students so we only have about 280 employees right so 120 people can create some critical mass when you all go through the same program right um so uh so the numbers are you know you see the numbers there in terms of how many people went through the curriculum workshop and research action teams and some examples of projects right um in terms of what heather was just talking about um we had a group of scientists because we recruited scientists first when we started these started our reading groups um some a couple of people just ran with it and one of our a couple of our folks did rethinking the leaky pipeline and really trying to think about um group work in science classes right you're in science class you know it's a lot of group work we just heard about some methods right but one of the things our our folks were finding is that in those groups in science classes is where microaggressions occurred right and that was where you know this is how the science center you know stays so white right um is because the pipe you know the leaky pipeline we know that metaphor um so that was a project right another project was in our career development office you know it's kind of like one of those moments when you see someone's eyes just sort of get it right our career development director was in one of our regroups and basically said I'm teaching our you know students of color our trans students our queer students um basically how to uh adapt themselves to white middle class heteronormative culture when they go out for job interviews right I mean it is that is that the mission that I should be I should be all about right and it's not like we don't want our students to go out and succeed in those job interviews but can we approach it in a way that's accounting for the differences that that you know come through the door um another one another research action team that we did and that was the first year was actually cultures of whiteness at beloy where students went out and and sort of surveyed all kinds of ways in which buildings and statues and archives and all kinds of things sort of um were sort of centered on whiteness and what it might look like if whiteness was de-centered in some kind of way so they researched all kinds of things that might name buildings differently and things like that so um so that's just gives you a sense of of what it is now um what we were telling melin is that the curriculum operations pedagogy and culture right uh we wanted to shift it we wanted sort of some institutional transformation and at the start of our program I'd say that many of our participants expressed that they can't or don't lead right I mean a lot of folks was like great idea wow this is amazing what we're talking about in here but I have no power right I can't change things the way we do things around here and I'm saying this even in a semester where we had administration in the room right we don't have the we can't change we the way we do things around here people will revolt people will resist right and I think one of the things that we really walked away with and it's not like we knew it at the beginning but we kind of came to it afterwards is that we really challenged them to understand that leadership and power are not the same and that every interaction with the student every meeting every anytime you're sitting at the back of the meeting or you're leading a meeting is an opportunity to lead on equity it's a chance to intervene it's a chance to ask a question that tries to get folks to rethink the business as usual that might be perpetuating the culture of our college right so change is hard right and conflict anxieties right when you ask people to change right I mean people love change they want change but say change yourself oh wait a minute right I've got my attachments I've got my things I've got I've got things that I've invested myself in and that becomes super hard right and so there's been backlash and there has been anxiety and you know people pitting people feeling pitted against each other especially when we didn't make our class and you know the budget shortfall hit and there was a lot of finger pointing right and one of the a lot of fingers came at us right for creating a conflict right that was making people feel uncomfortable so equity work is not comfortable work right and it's especially not comfortable for white people so where we are now we are now in the fourth year of our three-year grant because we did have some money left over right and so we're actually embracing that conflict and we're trying to think hard about what it means to transform conflict into catalysts right there's all kinds of literature out here out there right about this and it's not literature that I know this is not my field of expertise it's like we're you know seated the pants like building the plane as we fly it kind of thing but in year four we've done what we've called a community transformation workshop and this work comes out of David Anderson Hooker who is at um uh the the the irish college indiana no name thank you sorry it's that middle age thing right I know everything about it but the name um an amazing educator right um phd jd m div thinks a lot about conflict and has been a mediator in conflicts all over the world anyways he's written this little book as you see of transformative community conferencing we had him come in just this semester and conflict in a lot of ways and this is you know one of his ideas conflict is about hunkering down in our attachments like what it is we're attached to and turning you know turning um those who we disagree with into the them you know there's the us there's the them and we are on the side of the right and the righteous and those folks are making it hard and we're just trying to you know follow through on the mission of the college and he's like oh no that ain't gonna work right I mean one of the things that he sort of left us with was this question about what are each of us willing to give up about who we think we are right in order to get the community that we want because he kind of looked around the room in all of us and said you know who you are now right that's not going to work in the future that you want so what are you going to give up right and for a lot of us that's an attachment to righteousness for a lot of us that's anger right for a lot of us that's like not humanizing the people that we're disagreeing with right it doesn't mean that we give up our beliefs but it does mean something about trying to come together as a community after right we've demanded change and done some real change critical mass kind of change inequity so that's where we are now and I'll leave it there my gosh I don't feel like I can say anything else after that very inspiring thank you so much to the three of you for being here with us today and sharing your expertise and some of the challenges some of the struggles but also some of the successes right if you have questions for these three wonderful folks come on up after and ask them we do want to get you out on time so just a couple summary statements and reminders for the end of our day today first of all thank you for all being here what a great day great discussion conversation and and really embracing that and digging into some of those hard conversations so thank you all so much for that it's time to go back and continue the work back at your college and we do have some sub grants that can help you to do that so we did send out an email to everyone who registered with information about those sub grants we're looking at continuation of this work and we're calling those implementation sub grants email went out on this past Tuesday on the third so if you missed that you can go back and take a look at that the application deadline is December 16th so that's coming up pretty quick we're trying to get this money out the door and out to do some type of project at your college in your classroom a takeaway from today so the applicants will be notified end of December and we'll have six different sub grants $500 each so take a look at that email with those details and consider whether that might be something helpful also we'd encourage you to connect with other folks at your college who are participating in some of this work or engaging in some of this work to see how you might be able to partner so go for that um of course you really want you to complete the evaluation that's coming out it's came out in an email today also the evaluation link so please do that and we definitely want you to take a look at the resources that'll be out on that 60 forward site so you will get a couple follow-up emails the resources will be on that 60 forward site the recordings will be out on the 60 forward site after those are completed so that's going to take a little bit more time we'll get all the presentations out there as well so we hope from this day that you've had a chance to reflect and consider how you want to move forward in your own in your own work in your own development and thinking about your own biases and how you can help to move the needle so that all of us together are continuing to move the needle towards more equitable experiences for all of our students so looking forward to everybody having some of our joint experiences today moving some of that collaboration forward and safe travels home so thank you so much for being here