With a little planning and reconnaissance work, you, too, can develop overarching strategies and approaches to inclusive meeting and event planning that will serve your audience and support your goals. And, it’s not hard to do.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the subsequent global protests, Black faculty members in the School of Education issued a call that the school become more anti-racist. The Promotion and Tenure Committee took up the call in its work. And so began more than three years of extensive, ongoing examination of the experiences had by BIPOC and white women faculty members in their pursuit of promotion and tenure.
Simply put, Universal Design for Learning is about proactively designing learning activities and workplace tasks and procedures to enable people to engage with material in a way that fosters their success.
When asked to define “obscenity,” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “I know it when I see it.” If you’re on the receiving end of a microaggression, you know it, too. Microaggressions are verbal, behavioral, or environmental slights, sometimes overt, sometimes unintentional, directed at persons of different genders, races, beliefs, or cultures.
The acronym “DEIA” signals something bigger than its component words. So, a solid grounding in the words, apart from one another and together, is the first step in creating a culture which uplifts and empowers every member of a community.
What does belonging look like in the workplace? How do you know if employees feel valued and included? And what if they don’t? How do you begin to combat disconnection—especially in the workplace where its effects may result in the loss of top talent? It begins with belonging.
Allyship is not about having a scripted apology in the wake of biased or racist behavior. Rather it is a philosophy, one that is agile, active, and ongoing, a practice that requires commitment, engagement, rigor—and creativity.
