Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resources

EXPERT ADVICE - AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

1. Learn About Yourself - explore your own historical roots, beliefs, and values. Self-assessment makes participants realize the pervasive role culture plays in their lives.

2. Learn About Different Cultures - seek cultural insight through many different means (journal articles, academic books, documentaries, etc.). One of the best ways is to learn a second language.

3. Interact with Diverse Groups - make it a point to include people from unfamiliar cultures in different capacities (research, social gatherings, etc.) and then discuss with peers how this may have changed views.

4. Attend Diversity-Focused Conferences - get formal training on diversity-related research and practice issues. 

5. Lobby Your Department - push yourself and colleagues to do better. Include students and how it is important to their higher education journeys. 

"Cultural competence is a lifelong project," Rebecca Clay says, adding that competence with one group doesn't mean you're competent with another. "You have to keep finding ways to expand your learning." 

Clay, R. (n.d.). How do I become culturally competent? American Psychological Association. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2010/09/culturally-competent 

ACTIVITIES

• 

  Cultural Awareness and Expression Exercises 

• Intercultural Learning Activities 

• Cultural Detective Blog: UBUNTU, Nietzsche and a Learning Activity

LEARNING INSTITUTES - WEBSITES

Cultural Competency Learning Institute

Cultural Competence CQ Learn 

Culture Wizards: Global Inclusion Experts 

Commisceo Global

Cultural Awareness eLearning Online Training Course 

TED TALKS

"Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable" - Luvvie Ajayi Jones, TED Talk

• College Assistance Migrant Program

• Disabilities Services 

• Diversity Education

• Haenicke Institute for Global Education - Dr. Michelle Metro-Rolland, International Student Advocate

• LBGT Student Services

• Multicultural Affairs for Students

• Office of Diversity and Inclusion

• The Ombudsman Office 

• Title IX Office

• WMU Writing Style Guide: Avoiding Gender Bias, A-Z Rules of Style, and Me, Myself, and I

Know your audience. Those things that might motivate a group of alumni probably won't motivate a group of prospective students. The two have very different values, different

All communication is persuasion, and it is important that you think of it as persuasion. Otherwise, you have no idea what you are trying to achieve. You are writing to a person or to a group with the goal of altering behavior or attitudes. You want readers to attend an event, or to make a contribution, or to be more favorably disposed toward a particular action. Try to understand where your readers are now and guide them from where they are to where you want them to be. levels of interest, and different experiences and knowledge. Successful communication begins with a clear understanding of the audience and an equally clear understanding of the attitude or behavior modification you hope to effect through that communication.

WMU Marketing and Communications - Introduction to Writing for and About WMU

• 2020 Campus Climate Report

• COGNOS reports - 20.00.20 Registered Students

• Office of Institutional Research - Undergraduate Dashboards, Faculty Interactive Dashboards

• Salesforce - Target X (prospective and newly admitted students)
  How to build a report

• Become an advisor for a RSO 

• DEI Committee 

• University Strategic Plan - town halls, listening sessions, committee work

• Women's Caucus

While it is important to ensure we have a well structured hiring process, a bias-free hiring process also requires that we reflect on our biases and the impact they have on our hiring decisions.

We all have biases. Some we are conscious of and some operate on an unconscious level. Both types of bias can affect our ability to fairly an accurately assess job candidates.

Biases can also be embedded within the organization and are reflected in the organizational culture, policies, and practices. Individuals are better able to recognize and minimize the impact of biases in the hiring process when they increase their bias literacy. Bias literacy is the ability to recognize one's own biases and then take action to set new expectations for ones self and organizations (Carnes et al, 2012). 

We can increase our bias literacy by increasing our self-awareness, engaging in ongoing learning and increasing our comfort zone by interacting more with people who are different than ourselves. 

Turner Consulting Group, Bias-Free Hiring: Quick Reference Guide
WMU Office of Institutional Equity

PRESIDENTIAL INITIATIVE - WMU PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE

The Office of Institutional Equity, in partnership with the Offices of Academic Affairs and Diversity and Inclusion, will hold the third "WMU Professional Development Institute: Building Cultural Competencies", May 3 - 6, 2022.  A  presidential initiative and the first of its kind in southwestern Michigan, this Professional Development Institute (PDI) features a 30-hour curriculum (3 ½ days) that utilizes intercultural communication concepts and theories to promote the development of cultural competencies central to cultivating an inclusive, diverse workplace. The focus is on providing a comprehensive professional development opportunity for WMU employees interested in gaining the necessary knowledge, skills, and motivation to facilitate culturally-relevant learning activities in and outside of the university classroom.

Dr. Mark P. Orbe, Professor, School of Communication and Institutional Equity Faculty Fellow will be the facilitator for the PDI. Designed as a “train-the-trainers” workshop, the Institute works to empower and develop participants to effectively manage cross-cultural communication, implement diversity and inclusion programming, and facilitate different professional development opportunities in various university contexts. The curriculum includes low, moderate and high level experiential learning exercises followed by theoretically-informed facilitation processing which can be replicated and/or adapted to diverse audiences. Specific learning outcomes include:

• Engage participants in multimodal learning activities to create a heightened awareness of how historical, social and structural dimensions affect contemporary inter-group relations;
• Equip participants with the necessary knowledge, resources, support and internal networks to provide equity, diversity, and inclusion programming across WMU;
• Empower participants in the co-creation of individual professional development goals related to equity, diversity, inclusion, and access; and
• Enhance existing individual and organizational resources in the building of cultural competency capacity toward the development of a campus model for future sustainability.

Download the application to complete as a fill-able form, once completed "save as" to send as an attachment to oie-info@wmich.edu; or print completed application and send through campus mail, Institutional Equity Mailstop 5405. Please submit application by Tuesday, February 15, 2022. Selected participants will be notified no later than March 8, 2022.

• Geography, Environment, and Tourism  - Strategic Plan 2020-2026 includes Anti-Racism Statement, "Engage" goals, 
• Geological and Environmental Sciences - Geos URGE (Unlearning Racism in Geosciences)
• Political Science - meaningful outreach to all students - advising to majors/minors

Anti-Racism Reading List

1. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

2. How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi

3. White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

4. Sisters of the Academy: Emergent Black Women Scholars in Higher Education by Anna Lucille Green, Reitumetse Obakeng Maboketa

5. Conversations in Black by Edward Gordon

6. Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debbie Irving

7. Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel

8. Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race by Derald Wing Sue

9. The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching about Race and Racism to People Who don’t want to Know by Tema Jon Okun

10. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics by George Lipsitz

11. Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America by Joseph Barndt

12. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander and Cornell West

13. Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And other Conversations about Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

14. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

15. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi

16. How Jews Became White Folks and What that says about Race in America by Karen Brodkin

17. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise

18. Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality and Education by Cheryl E. Matias

19. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

20. America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis 21. The 1619 Project- www.nytimes.com 2019/08/14