6 + You Initiative Transcripts

Hi, I'm Michelle Miller, and I lead with the help of many other people across campus. The one community, one book project, which was part of the six plus U. Grant initiative. Current racial tensions and continued violence against members of the black community highlighted the work needed to achieve racial justice, specifically to tackle pervasive institutional racism through education and on authentic dialogs about race in and out of the classroom and within the community.

As one of the steps towards this and towards educating the whole person, the one community, one book, Yusef committee brought together resources from USF Center for Research, Artistic and scholarly Excellence, Praise the Division of Student Life in the Gleason Library and jointly selected a book related to racism. So you want to talk about Race by Oluwole Ijeoma as a common reading for yourself. Fall 2021 Incoming First Year Students. Students read the book and attended facilitated discussions about it, led by 40 staff and faculty from across campus on their first day of orientation.

The duo then visited our campus virtually for a broader discussion about race. The following month, our goals were to establish a common, educationally purposeful experience among first year students to foster community at USF. To orient new students to critical thinking in the spirit of excuse me, intellectual inquiry, and to provide incoming first year students with the opportunity to begin exploring new perspectives and ways of viewing the world.

What did we accomplish? Some of our highlights were simply kind of simply the minutia of putting this whole thing together. We narrowed down the choice of the book from so many good choices, and we're really proud of the results with the book. So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma? We got 1500 of those books sent to all of our first-year students in time for them to read it before they arrived to campus.

We rallied 40 staff and faculty of all races from all points and parts of the campus to facilitate discussions on orientation day. We trained all of them and debriefed with all of them. And coordinated their schedules for orientation day. We're proud of all the facilitators we had who read the book, attended those trainings, and successfully led the discussions with our students. We're proud of each Yoma who was able to visit us virtually, albeit, but we had 350 attendees at her event and her video has been watched many times over since the presentation.

We're also really proud that we reintroduced what had been a long tradition at USF, and that's a common reading for all of our first-year incoming students. And we're super I am super proud of all the people that I got to work with, very privileged to work with along this journey. As I said before, this project wouldn't have come to life without all the everyone involved, and the book was well received.

By all accounts, we had positive, excellent feedback from both students and the facilitators about the discussions, and the students in particular really appreciated the open and honest conversation. Couple more. I'm proud of myself in that it personally pushed me out of my comfort zone as I had a lot to learn and I still do about facilitating conversations about race. But lastly, and most importantly, this was an opportunity that educated students and all of our USF colleagues about race and racism, but how to talk about it, how to change behavior and how to continue the conversation about it. What more can we ask for in that regards? It wasn't easy.

We had challenges along the way, as might be expected. We knew it would be challenging to find 40 staff and faculty to or we expected it to be challenging anyway, but we had overwhelming support. Getting them trained and up to speed was a challenge, which we anticipated, but everybody came through. Even with last minute attrition at the end, folks couldn't attend for some reason or another. Some unexpected challenges, I think, which will be challenges in the future. But we underestimated the amount of time it would take to put this all together and the numerous pieces of the puzzle that had to come together to make this all happen. Everything from getting those books to students, getting the books to the facilitators, setting up training schedules, classroom scheduling during orientation, zoom rooms set up for those that occurred, those conversations that occurred virtually.

Speaker logistics and pre meetings with her the just so much and I'm not even touching the tip of the iceberg but like I said, we came through I hope beyond this year that we continue to have a common reading for students. We keep that top of mind for the university. I hope that all who participated don't forget the important work they did and the conversations they had for this project, and that there will be opportunities to take part in a project like this again, one that strength strengthens our community, expands our community beyond campus, and at the same time, educator educates us about challenges and successes that occur in those communities. All in all, I'm super proud of this project, the team that put it together, and thank you for the opportunity to take part.

The idea behind this particular program was to take a group of second year students who are black, identifying and help them with internship placement, personal growth and career development. We felt this program was successful in this initial year because we were able to launch it. We had we started off with ten engage sophomores through a rigorous interview process and do that through that interview process, we were able to find them and work with them, finding internship placements for the summer as well as putting them through an internship preparation process and personal professional development led by my colleague Go Inventors,

Dr. Richards was able to help us using his strategy, using strategies related to personal and professional growth, and really helped engage students in conversations about self development and where they want to be next. I'll turn over to Kevin to talk about sort of how what were the ups and downs in particular in the program. Ancestor Cameron Collymore served as the assistant dean for retention and persistence programs here at the University of San Francisco. I work with CASA but also support the base initiative. So going in to expected and unexpected challenges, so expected, we expect to all of our students to get an internship match with the company based in San Francisco.

And for the most part, that did happen. All of our students did receive housing, and so housing agreements that were agreed upon before the start of the pandemic were honored by USF. So that was expected. Some unexpected challenges that arose, I would say started with one we had the idea or the idea was that all of our students would have a traditional in-person internship experience, and for the most part, the majority of our students had a virtual or at least hybrid experience based upon county rules, based upon a company policy at the time where a lot of companies were still not fully in-person. And so that in-person going into the office, meeting with people.

Some of that component our students didn't receive on a consistent basis. Another, I would say unexpected challenge that came up was how do we provide the stipends that we agreed upon to the students in a timely manner as we did based upon how financial aid works here. USF students really don't get back refunds outside of state and federal aid. So working with our partners in h.r. To come up with a retroactive or retroactive work experience to justify getting having students being paid, the stipends that we all agreed upon that they would receive at the beginning of the program. I would say the last unexpected challenge, but i would say a good expectation was some of the host organizations requested an agreement. Right. What would what do we expect from the host as organization internship site?

So that was something we had to kind of develop with our partners in development really quickly. But that also kind of led to other internship opportunities elsewhere, and I will now pass it over to our scene director, Dr. Lawrence. Hi, my name is Emile Lawrence and I'm senior director for Bass, So I'm just going to speak a little bit about some of the takeaways and the lasting impacts that we hope to gain beyond the program. So I would say one of the biggest hopes for us was for the students to actually take away the skills that we try to impart upon them inside the workshops. So we didn't want this to be a self-contained 2 hours per week. We really want to instill in them lasting lessons that they can take beyond their sophomore year into their junior year and into their careers.

So we hope we accomplish that. From the feedback that we got from the students we feel that we did. Secondly, we wanted them to have community amongst themselves, so we were really establishing a cohort cohort of about nine students at the time, and we wanted them to perform to form relationships with amongst themselves. We all know what retention is like when students feel a sense of belonging and we feel that we accomplish that goal. The students, from my understanding, they still keep in touch here and there, so we didn't want it to also just be one experience for one year. We want them to stay in touch with each other and check on each other throughout their college time here at USF.

We also wanted them to see us as a resource, so we want them to know that we're not just here for them. During that one time, during their sophomore year for the program. We're here for them throughout their time at USF and they could come to us for help with internships, but they can also come to us with help from classes. Kevin is a cast coach, so we are here for them. We're here to serve them, so we want that to last beyond the program. And the final thing I'll say that we want to glean from the program something we want to carry on throughout the throughout after the program is the fact that we're making connections from base and other campus partners.

So we establish a good connection with career services that's going to carry on beyond the program. Also, Alumni Affairs, the Change the World from Here Institute Housing and also CASA. So these are relationships that we form between base and other campus partners. We hope that continues on after the program. And I think we'll just have Lester close this out. It was an honor to be a part of this program. It was something that Candace Harrison and I and as well as and Duck and Duck and Goldie Ventures really wanted to want to see happen and really excited that we were able to pull it off. It may not continue in the way that we thought it would, but again, I think it was a wonderful stopping short of seeing how we could really expand understanding for Black, identify students of what it means to be professionals and have career opportunities that will allow them to get to where they want to be when they graduate.

I'm starting early, so that's probably the most important benefit for me, is realizing that working with our students and getting them thinking about what the next step is early in our college career, which is which we know is helpful.

Understanding racism in the US is of course created for international students to learn more about the US racism. The course was designed to offer a space for international students to learn more about U.S. history, systemic racism and how it is present today. The course provides a foundation for students to engage in this conversation and also reflect on their own experiences and oppress oppressive systems within their own society. We are grateful to the Jesuit Foundation grant and the six person project for making the course possible and are pleased to share with you the student learning and experiences from the first half of the course. In this first iteration of our course.

It's been very exciting and a great learning experience for me too. The biggest takeaway is that I have are that the way that we understand race in the US as the title of the class suggests might not be the same way that students from other parts of the world, our international student population understands race.
We've had a very rich conversation just about what is race and how that differs from ethnicity or culture or even nationality. One of the richest conversations that we've had was around people's secondary school experiences and how those might have been different from one another and how there were probably parts of everyone's secondary school experiences that were some way unpalatable to them. And I use that as a springboard for understanding systems and systems of oppression.

To illustrate to the students that we all operated in systems for our secondary school experiences, then there might have been elements of those that we didn't really like. How could we go about changing them? And a lot of them responded with, We wouldn't be able to change that. And unfortunately, in a lot of ways, our system of race and oppression in the US is like that. It's not to say that we're not trying to dismantle systemic racism and oppression, but it might be more complicated than people realize. Like I was saying, I've learned a lot this semester, or I already have ideas of how we can move forward in the next iteration of this class next semester. But it's been a rich experience for all of us so far, and I feel very lucky to have the chance to deliver this course. We've had so far. Let's talk about race. It's a fascinating book.

It covered intersectionality. Certain personal experiences, how to have conversations of race and from which perspective to happen specifically. We are moving on now to a new book, People's History of the United States. I mean, it's an incredible book that basically contains all of what is being censored in other history books. In this class, we read the book. So you want to talk about race. The book provides a valuable and necessary perspective on the issue of race and racism and encourage readers to take action to address this issue in their own life and communities. One of the most striking aspects of the book is the on vulgar importance of intersectionality in understanding the experiences of the something many groups.

This intersectional approach has to illustrate the way in which race intersect with other identities, such as gender, sexuality and ability to create unique and complex form of discrimination. It's been a very eye opening class, if I can say so myself, and I feel like I'm growing in my knowledge about how racism has been exploited in the U.S., I feel like coming from Zimbabwe into the U.S. for it, that it's just like what you see on TV. So like people protesting racism against people of color from the police and everything. But the more I learn about it, the more they they hear of the murder. Realize I had a very one-sided view of things.

One of the most impactful moment in this class for me was when we did the paper change activity in the first class, when we were put into different groups and was assigned randomly by a lock to choose the best tools that our group can make the longest conversion with no restrictions. Some of the group does not have scissors and some do, some have tape and some are really lucky they have everything. So we did an activity for a few rounds and eventually all of the groups were together. We helped each other and made a really long watching at home. It was really touching and it was a powerful visual representation of how privilege work and how is it going to destroy the society.

It really made me thought how privilege can be so impactful and how different people have different access to resources and opportunity at a completely different level as starting points. It also made me thought more aware of my own privilege and the ways in which I can use to create positive change. What I would like to learn more about in this class is the relationship between police and people of color, because it has been a very controversial topic, especially after George Floyd incident. And I also would like to learn about how Asian and Asian people have been treated by the privileged people in the United States. I want to learn more about understanding more vocalized ways of understanding racism in the U.S., maybe toward specific cities, specific towns, etc. Just for me to have a better idea and a better feel about where where things are going in different parts of the country.

That's the thing I want to get something I would like to still do in this class. Maybe get more guest speakers and hear about more experiences from black people that experienced racism in the US. Because in our class we have a lot of international students and people that experience different types of racism here, but we don't have any specifically black on black American person in this class. And I would love to hear experiences from people that live in the US are not internationals and just I think guest speakers can be a great addition for this addition for this class.

Their incoming school of management cohort. We as the formal participants, of course, and the members of the School of Management, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee would like to take a moment to capture in this video what we've worked on, what we've learned and what we hope for the future. In summer 2021, we embarked on this journey by participating in the two week intensive training, where we collaborated with faculty members across five colleges and the library to build racial literacy and learn to start dialogs about race and racism based on what we've learned. We designed and implemented a series of four racial equity dialogs here at School of Management.

We recruited participants, both faculty and staff, and created two cohorts. Each cohort consisting of 8 to 10 members. Our dialogs were purposefully designed to build a stronger sense of community, explore awareness of our cultural, social and racial identities. Both similarities and differences. Discuss race and racism in the US and critically assess the climate, culture and inequities within the school of management. During these sessions, we had other DEA committee members facilitate with us so that they can become trainers moving forward. Finally, we recently hosted a year end gathering where we invited the entire school of management, faculty and staff to showcase and share our work.

Now, Courtney will share what we've learned from our experience. In the spirit of growth and development, we want to share some lessons learned. First, embrace slowing down while we do this work because we are anxious to make change. Sometimes the richest conversations that laid the foundation for this change occurred when we slowed down to listen to our colleagues, and we're willing to go where the conversations were taking us. This means being okay when a session didn't go exactly as planned. Second. Being a facilitator doesn't mean being an expert or having all of the answers. We also invited our colleagues to call facilitate with us. We understood that we are each on our own journeys and saw value in learning with our community of colleagues when planning and hosting the dialogs. Third, we try to remember that small is all. Our goal was to start to bring folks along and the School of Management's transformation and knew that everyone might not be ready to join the ride just yet.

So we focused on building community with folks who could be with us this year and know that we will work together to continue to bring more along. So June Courtney and I believe that the race dialogs deepened our personal awareness about privilege and oppression. It improved our intergroup understanding, and it provided opportunities for the members of our community to explore ways to work together toward greater racial equity and justice within the school of management. We hope these results last and that they transform our school.

And as we hope they help our community members wake up to the realities of our inequitable system. And we hope that they make concerted efforts to educate themselves and others and actively foster change. But we know that in order for this transformation to happen, the ideas and concepts covered in the dialogs need to live beyond this year and beyond the current two cohorts of dialog participants. In other words, being okay with talking about and dismantling racism and all of its manifestations needs to be widely adopted in our field management. We talk about how this is done, how adoption of new ideas happens. In particular, we draw on a theory that explains how, why and at what rate new ideas or innovations are spread by members of a social system. This is the diffusion of innovations theories. In a nutshell, this theory says that an innovation must be widely adopted by successive groups of consumers in order to self-sustained. Furthermore, within the rate of adoption, there's a point at which an innovation reaches critical mass.

At that point, the innovation reaches saturation level. We need to get to critical mass in the school of Management. So to that end, we recommend that this work is carried forward by training the next generation of facilitators to conduct race dialogs with new cohorts of faculty and staff in the School of Management. The second generation of dialog facilitators can be identified among the participants of the first two cohorts. The idea is that the dialogs continue until we have critical mass. This, we believe, will transform the culture in the School of management. As the authors of our guiding texts race dialogs. Right. While it may seem lofty, we believe that dialog, facilitation and participation provide the basic building blocks for dismantling systems of oppression and the skills and vision to co-create a new, equitable, democratic social structure. We appreciated this opportunity to serve as the innovators of the race dialogs and school of management. And we look forward to continuing this work with you with much gratitude. Sonia. And Courtney and Jeff given.

Hello, everyone. I'm an adjunct faculty in School of Education at USF. In this short video, we're going to talk about the six plus year grant that Brian and I received for spring 2022 when Brian and I heard about this grant opportunity for projects related to anti-racism work which both of us are passionate about. We got super excited and decided to submit the proposal called Restructuring Curricula through Racial Literacy Group.

The goal was to create a rubric for educators to help them assess the curricula and the course materials they use and the pedagogy they adopted through an anti-racist lens. And we hope this rubric would help educators reflect on and then allies and allies in their in-class practices and dismantle any materials or curricula that are.
As for accomplishments, this this grant opportunity certainly inspired us to collaborate on a project which is a racial literacy rubric that will be very helpful for educators to use in their classroom to dismantle institutional racism and banking concept of education with free terms. Both Brian and I have experience in K-12 and in higher education, but we of course, wanted to set the foundation of this rubric not only on our experiences but also on research, of course.

So we started researching and writing more about the implementation of racial literacy in educational contexts, which inspired us to write and publish a paper together. So one project opened up doors for another project and of course created more opportunities for collaboration. Also, we are very excited to share this with our colleagues in national and international conferences. So we even started searching for calls for proposals for 2023 conferences. Right, right, right. Whereas we're really, really excited about the possibility of going international, going domestically, really trying to help educators all over the globe, really assessed their curriculum and really, really impact the lives of each and every one of their students.

Some of the expected and unexpected challenges that we sort of arise was that we recognized that we were very, very ambitious as it related to some of our goals. And we really were really compassionate. And we believed that our proximity to the project itself would have been more successful had we envisioned sort of a different timeline as well as COVID, as well as life and scholarship. We were really challenged with our time and we didn't understand the extent to which our project would be more Next, we would require more necessary time and some of our hopes, you know, beyond the sort of grant timeline and windows that we want to really have this work, have a home place, whether in different publications.

As you mentioned, we want to present at different conferences, whether internationally or domestically, and we have some goals of presenting at a few conferences that we saw that are happening next year. So we are really excited to continue to work on this project and really, really thankful for the support from University of San Francisco.

Hi. We're presenting to you from Gleason Library. My name is the info I use. She her pronouns, and I'm the head of instruction outreach. My name is Amy Gilligan. I use they she and he pronouns. And I am the school of Ed Librarian. To give you an overview of what we did at the library. We hosted a series of workshops throughout fall and spring semester with the goals of increasing racial literacy with library staff members. And we also wanted to foster relationships as well as accountability between our colleagues who are engaged in anti-racist work or wanted to learn more about how that how they might approach doing that kind of work. And the library itself has identified a variety of different equity initiatives. And so we also wanted to give our cohort just a little bit more contextual information as well as shared language and understanding as we begin to do some of that work that has been identified by the library leadership team. So just to give you an overview of what this actually looks like.

So in the fall semester, we hosted for two hour Zoom sessions that replicated the stage of intergroup dialog. And Amy and I participated as part of Core. Over the summer, we were trained by race forward as well as on a yacht club app in terms of how to do intergroup dialog. And so we tried to put into practice the things that we learned over the summer. And so our cohort was 14 self-selected staff and librarians from a variety of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as sort of different places within the organization. So some department heads as well as staff members.

And then what we did within each workshop was a mixture of mini lectures and large intergroup discussion and dialog as well as we also used racial affinity discussions. So that was what we did in the fall. And then in the spring we had one follow up session with the library cohort in which we talked through what different affinity and accountability species might look like moving forward. That was something that came up from the fall series of what some of our staff members were hoping, you know, hoping for is just more communities so that folks could build coalition and do anti-racist work. We also had recommended that the library leadership team do a session with with race forward. And so that also happened in the spring semester. All right. So in terms of accomplishments and what we're proud of, one of the things we're most excited about was the creation of ongoing racial affinity spaces within the library.

That's something we've been talking about for a couple of years. And through this racial equity series, it became an interest of all the participants as well. So while the series is ending, we're working towards having a bipoc affinity space as well as a wide accountability space going forward. We're also really excited to finish the series just because it was a lot of work. I mean, it was great, totally worth it. But we feel very proud of what we've done and then also really excited in terms of going through the program and getting to learn different facilitation skills from folks.

That was really amazing, as well as the experience of being in community all doing this work. So in terms of challenges that we encountered, one of the biggest challenges was scheduling. Just because this group, this cohort was both library staff and librarians and folks have very different schedules and then kind of in conjunction with that was also the uncertainty of format, right? Because with pandemic, we weren't sure if we were going to be in-person or on Zoom. And we kind of came to the conclusion to just keep it on Zoom. And then another challenge we had was trying to avoid pacing for privilege. And so there's a number of folks within the cohort, and folks are coming to the journey from different places. And so there are some folks who are very new to the journey and some folks who have lived experience of understanding race and racism.

And so we wanted to make sure that we were creating a session that wouldn't just catered particularly to white folks. Noting the journey. And one of the ways we did that was through racial identity spaces. Another thing we had to deal with in terms of challenges with power dynamics, power dynamics in relation both to some department heads being within the session, but also power dynamics between staff and librarians.

Librarians being considered faculty. So our hopes beyond this year, in terms of the library, we really want to see folks carry this work forward in terms of using equity as a lens through which we approach our work. So it's not just something you do like, Oh, I'm on a task force, but actually what's driving the decisions you're making and the way that you participate within the library and the university as a whole. And we also hope that this creates a way for folks to build off a shared framework of racial equity.

Because part of the thing going into this was that folks were trying to do anti-racist work within the library but didn't have a shared framework or shared lens. And so we're hoping that this can help increase the capacity of folks to stay in the work now that they've got the shared framework. And then also for colleagues to continue to build racial dialog skills, because as folks are building multiracial coalitions, it's important to be able to talk about race and also to understand that sometimes these conversations are going to be messy. And to have skills in order to stay in the conversation and also to make repair when harm happens. So in terms of going forward in our wishes for you, you know, if you're doing stuff that has to do with racial dialog, it's always great to have a facilitator. Case in point and it's really great to get to know your call facilitator and to discuss strategies for supporting each other when conversations get heated.

So have that discussion ahead of time and you want to talk about their different identities and how they show up in the work, right? And you may also want to have nonverbal cues for when maybe you need your coach to jump in. All of these things are things you want to frontload from the beginning. Then another thing that's really important is that as you're having these discussions, you want to be really clear about the purpose and scope of the space. So within intergroup dialog, we talk a lot about building the container, right? And so there's a lot more you can do within like our situation was like four weeks to our sessions versus like 160 minute session. So consider the container you have. How much time do you have? Right. And consider the audience how they're coming into it. And that'll kind of help you shape the container so that you can make sure that you're not creating a space that perpetuates more harm. Right. And so that purpose and scope is really, really important. And then also kind of building off that is scaffolding the discussions from low to high risk. So with intergroup dialog, one of the things that we appreciate about it is that folks get a chance to practice some of the dialog skills with a very low stakes environment so that when they move into a discussion that gets more challenging and possibly heated.

Right, that they have those skills. So, again, low to high risk. And then lastly, another thing that we would encourage you to look into is introducing and utilizing racial affinity spaces. The introduction part is really important to explain, like what racial affinity spaces are and what they aren't. Right? Super important for folks to understand that racial affinity spaces are intentional anti-racist spaces. They're not segregation, right? Because segregation has to do with institutional violence and denying folks resources. But racial affinity spaces, intentional spaces where folks through an anti-racist lens build community with each other and then, of course, utilize those spaces. Right. I know that there are groups on campus, student groups that have racial affinity, but particularly within the library, we haven't had that kind of spaces in the library. So having these racial affinity spaces allowed us to go deeper in the conversation. And so with that, we're going to bring this to a close, and we're super excited about the work that you're going to do. And, you know, Annie and I are both on campus, so feel free to hit us up if you have any questions. Do you have any final thoughts for us? Yeah, I'm just wishing the future cohort the best of luck. And yeah, just know that Amy and I are available if you need support.

So today is June 2nd, 2022. So we're at the the start of our summer. And this is the report from the College of Arts and Sciences team. I'm Aisha Dybala, Christina Garcia Lopez Glenn from uh Simon Kim and Evelyn Rodriguez. So we are the team who is in charge of organizing, the Moment to Movement project, which came out of the The Race Core initiative. we took all of the, uh, the work from the summer training of 2021 and came together to build a specific project for the College of Arts and Sciences. Uh, which is called Moment to Movement. and the, uh, sort of vision that we developed, uh, last summer, I can't believe it was a whole year ago now, was to develop, uh, a program that would build on the initial training, from summer 2021, that would move us in the direction of sustained work in anti-racist pedagogy in the College of Arts and Sciences, and additionally, that would build on already existing strengths and the already very, very sophisticated work that we already have have going on in terms of anti-racist pedagogy in the College of Arts and Sciences. 

And so you can see that we could not waste any time. We went straight from that summer training into a quick leap into like very quick, planning mode to try to get this retreat together, that we had a two retreat idea together that we had. And it was a, you know, of course, Covid conditions and very quick sort of movement towards scheduling. And we were able to somehow, miraculously, secure a spot at Villa Ambrose, our retreat center, which we would highly recommend as a great venue. in, uh, what was the city again? That was then in Menlo Park. Menlo Park, it is Menlo Park, and so south of the city. And so, uh, we were able to secure that, and that had spots for up to 20 people to stay. And so that was sort of where we went in terms of numbers is, uh, we kind of had a limit there, but we don't necessarily envision, you know, sort of future continuing program being limited to that number necessarily.

So you can see that in the fall 2021 we were going through, and there were also certain considerations involving, uh, you know, kind of monetary budgeting and raising funds. Uh, that also dictated where we could do this very ambitious project on a shoestring budget. and so the vision was for a residential style retreat where we would have sustained time, right? Dedicated time over a period of days to build community, uh, among the 20 people and to be able to just pick up on the work right, every single day. And the original vision was for, uh, a five day retreat total. but we ended up having the misfortune of needing to reschedule, uh, the program, which was originally, supposed to be for January 2022. and then we ended up having to push the, programming into May. So towards the end of the semester. And, that meant a number of things. One was that the retreat had to become short.

And so the original vision was to have that sort of sustained work, you know, uh, involving a group that is is sort of building its dynamics and sort of going through a process of long term transformation. Right? Uh, in, in certain ways, uh, and so we had to kind of sacrifice some of that, uh, vision, unfortunately, due to those circumstances. So it shrank down to three days. And, and also meant that unfortunately, we, uh, didn't have all of the participants, which I'll get to in just a second. You'll see the breakdown. But for now, just like looking at this slide with the timeline, you can see that the sort of prep work and the applications and everything that was work in fall 2021. And what we did was the programming was to center on spring 2022. But the prep work for the group to sort of begin the group building process. that there was an event that was a pre retreat workshop dinner, which was held in December successfully. And then we had the retreat itself instead of in January. We had it in May of 2022. And then finally we ended up with, uh, a very quick follow up, post retreat workshop dinner in in May as well.

And then we can go to the next slide. And then you can see in terms of the, the breakdown of participants. So we had originally, uh, envisioned a group of 20, including the five of us. but it ended up the numbers came down, unfortunately, to 16 people because of the scheduling difficulties related to the Covid reschedule. and one of the major setbacks that we face, uh, was the fact that by the time all the sort of numbers were solidified, we ended up having, unfortunately, zero African American primary identifying participants, which was a huge loss for us. Uh, that was one of the things that that was, you know, unforeseeable, and that we hope would not repeat itself, you know, in the future. Uh, hi. So, uh, I just wanted to Terry from, um. Uh, from there to talk more in terms of details of what the retreat discussion looks like. and so, what we really like about the process is that, uh, we we tried, to build it as community based as possible. And so the very content of the discussion for the retreat, we generated it from the, applications that, uh, colleagues, uh, send in in the fall itself. and so, we, uh, we didn't have questions that asked, you know, what would be the topics for the retreat, but we kind of, as you know, what drew them to this retreat and what and share some of their, interests and concerns.

And based on those responses, uh, we generated some of the main, uh, topics that you can see here. so, uh, it boils down to four major themes and some of these, uh, because there's so much to discuss. we have more than one session. so the sessions are. Uh, social location and positionality. and then we discuss, you know, both in terms of, uh, teachers and students. the second one is risks, vulnerabilities and emotional labor. the third one is, uh, multiple and shifting perspectives, because we didn't want to assume that there's only one way of talking, uh, about this work about anti, uh, racist pedagogy. and, uh, the fourth one, uh, uh, pedagogical practices we were hoping, to share with each other what, uh, everyone, everyone has been doing. and there's, uh, there's actually a fifth that is not on this current slide. and, uh, it's connected to what Aisha said before that.

 initially we were going to have a four day, three night retreat, and that has to be shortened by one day because of the Omicron variant. And so we moved the fifth, uh, major theme into our post retreat dinner instead. And that was to talk about the, the institutional and long term goals for USF and College of Arts and Sciences specifically. so, uh, in the next slide, you will see the more detailed questions. and all of these, we gathered from the initial, applications from everyone, and these are all suggestions. So what we did is that, we want to involve everyone as much as possible. And so we saw ourselves as participant and facilitator. we didn't want the content to be generated by us only. and so, the, the questions under each of these themes, uh, suggestions. and uh, among the participants, we divided into five teams for the five themes. and, you know, they, they can, uh, facilitate each session at the retreat and they can bring in their own questions and their or their own ideas of facilitation. and I would say that that, that was a good idea because, uh, as the retreat, you know, unfolds, you will see that, you know, some people may be, uh, more vocal than others. And so it's good to have everyone as facilitators so that, uh, at some point, you, you do hear from each of the participants. so I think the the slide is good. No, I, I don't need to read out. so, uh, I am very happy to talk about, what the team accomplished because I think this was, really phenomenal commitment from everyone.

 that eventually, uh, ended up participating. this was very exciting. And honestly, to pull it up, during the year that we are fully back in person where, you know, it's challenging in multiple ways, it's, uh, it's it's really, you know, an accomplishment in itself. but I do want to highlight, uh, a few things, that were pretty crucial. the the first and foremost is, is to be able to secure funds. to make the retreat happen. because the, idea from the university initiative was, uh, very open ended. And so, uh, we, uh, we could have gone, uh, with any format and as, uh, Aisha, uh, already mentioned, we really wanted to, to, to build something that foster community connections. and so we needed to go to the College of Arts and Sciences dean's office to ask for additional funds in order to make the retreat happen. And it was amazing that they were very receptive and really, uh, very supportive. and, and gave us the funds that were needed for the retreat in the pre and post retreat, uh, dinners and, and basically all the funds, that were needed.

And we were also able to, uh, have support from, the senior vice provost, uh, and the provost. Uh, so institutional support is very important to sustain this work in the long term. the the second thing, which was no small feat, was that everyone, who, you know, apply was really committed, uh, to the workshop. because of the Omicron, in general, we were supposed to have the retreat in January, and we basically, had to, uh, postpone it because, uh, because a lot of people were not unsure about, gathering in person then. And honestly, we were really afraid that we wouldn't be able to, have it happen in spring, on such notice. And, uh, we still ended up. Having 16 participants in the retreat. and another one also join us in the post, uh, retreat dinners. So, and also, you know, at the end of the retreat, we had a survey to ask for, uh, people's experiences and people, uh, share a lot in the survey as well. And so, it just it just highlights the, uh, really amazing commitments that are already there in different, spaces, uh, within the College of Arts and Sciences. and we think that, you know, there would be more participants, in future years if we are able to sustain this in the long run because, you know, people couldn't come for many different reasons this year.

The third one, which was, uh, a really crucial, uh, uh, teamwork and accomplishment, is that, uh, because we were able to gather in person, and, and it was not just a short kind of, two hour dialog. so we were able to address we were able to, uh, really deliberate on a lot of issues. We were able to, share as colleagues, uh, the different experiences that come up in the classroom, outside the classroom in terms of mentoring, in terms of advising. and these meaningful dialogs happen both in those small group discussions at each table, as well as over dinner, over meals, as well as, you know, in the large group discussion with everyone participating. and, one of the important things that we were also conscious of was to think about recommendations for both, size, but also USF more broadly in terms of supporting and sustaining this work, beyond this one year. and so we, we identify recommendations for the short mid and long term as well. and so, I, I could talk more and more, uh, about this, but I just wanted to really highlight that this was, uh, an amazing team. Uh, both the five, both the five of us and also, you know, the, the overall group and, and it was, uh, just really meaningful work to do this together rather than, in our individual classroom.

Okay. So now I'm going to talk about some of the challenges that we had. so that this can hopefully inform and, uh, prevent this from happening in future, future iterations. Uh, so for everybody's sake, hopefully Covid is not as big of a problem or disruption as as it was for us. so in our case, uh, Covid really affected the pre retreat, the actual retreat itself, as was mentioned, and also the post retreat as far as, uh, being able to schedule in-person gatherings. Uh, and also uh, as far as venue availability. Uh, and so hopefully this is not a problem, uh, going forward because Covid will go away. and so the second uh, part is enabling the participation of Stem and also over service colleagues. So, uh, I should talk about the demographics of the, uh, participants. And, uh, this was something that again, uh, we tried to be very intentional about and yet, it proved to be a major challenge for us, especially as far as, again, uh, having people from Stem disciplines come and participate in this. And so, uh, I ended up being the only participant from, uh, stem, uh, being from biology. and so another thing is, uh, the diverse faculty participants, uh, and seeking distinct, distinctive forms of support.

Uh, and so what we mean by this is the fact that, you know, even within the kind of community of people that really care about this anti-racism work. Uh, there were very distinctive, uh, kind of points of views and, uh, life experiences that were present, uh, within our retreat. Uh, and so, because of this, one of the challenges was to create a retreat and kind of a curricul uh, that was supporting, uh, all of the different kind of, uh, viewpoints, uh, that were present. Uh, and then finally so, uh, one thing is the adequate compensation for organizers and participants. And so hopefully, again, future iterations can receive, uh, even more compensation, for, uh, the organizers and participants, because this was one of the challenges that we did have. Okay. And also maybe just to add a little bit to that compensation bit that, you know, the, the, six plus one university wide initiative provided compensation for, uh, uh, for the, the call organizing team, uh, over this academic year.

But, you know, especially if you want kind of community based and, you know, just involving everyone as democratically as possible. then you also, uh, ideally would want to be able to, have compensation for just people being involved, uh, especially if we envision this to be work in the long term also. So, that so I just wanted to add a quick note to that. Yeah. So I'm Evelyn and I'm going to start off talking about money also. so we as mentioned already, had a survey administered after the entire retreat series. And I think one of the most, prominent sort of data points was, everyone's gratitude for the time and the connection at the retreat and, the, the recognition that this should be something that continues, that is just a beginning and that for it to be sustained, there needs to be really tangible and concrete university and institutional support. and so that means, actual setting aside of funds for this type of program to be able to, to be ready to go each year. And so, now that all is said and done and we're not just constructing the budget as we go, we're looking at about $15,000, per academic year, and that's with about a 20 person cohort.

We also got feedback that said that, that we really should have some concrete, documentation of identified institutional barriers. and so from the retreat and from that post workshop dinner, came the idea that there should be a campus wide survey, a survey that identifies the kinds of Dei needs and impacts, in the college as well as the university. other recommendations that emerged from the retreat include, you know, what you see here on the slide, clarity, as to where it is that recommendations from these kinds of, collective efforts should be delivered, reconsidering how the project should look. So again, there was a majority of, participants who said that they really liked the retreat, that they felt like they gained a lot from it, that they want to see something like this again, that they would like to continue participating in this kind of community because the connection was so valuable.

And the retreat series, can be reimagined. I think that from the survey data that we collected, the majority of folks would like something before the semester with fewer sessions per day for the same or less number of days. So you all meeting the next set of folks who are going to be organizing this can do with that what you want. But other ideas have also been tossed around, very lightly among participants. things like, a dinner workshop series, that, that spread throughout the semester or the year, for example. going back to the challenge that someone mentioned about there being diverse numbers of participants with different kinds of needs from the onset of even just designing this retreat series, we all recognize that there is no one size fits all to try and anti-racism. and, you know, again, circumstances put us in the situation of really trying to build something for 20 folks with, with varied, teaching and life experiences. And so, something that also emerged from, dialogs among our participants was the idea that there might be multiple and ongoing affinity groups series with, those affinity groups occasionally being able, to come together to exchange ideas, etc. because of the race core, kind of charge. this retreat was really about pedagogy.

And, almost all of our participants said that they felt like they walked away from the retreat series with ideas about new texts, assignments, grading practices, teaching activities, guest speakers, and said that they were going to be updating their syllabi, and their teaching. however, folks also talked about going beyond our courses. So looking at institutional programming and other practices, including, recruitment of other um faculty from underrepresented groups, they're hiring, their retention, their promotion and their tenure. there also were some very concrete ideas about, how it is that we might consider overhauling, the university's culturally cultural diversity core requirement, and really incentivizing anti-racism work. So, going back to that. Compensation. so not just adequate compensation for you all who are, you know, hopefully going to be, who we are passing the torch along to. but to all of the folks who are engaged in this work, whether they're, you know, helping to organize the next MQM or not. So, uh, adequate, constant compensation for teaching cultural diversity and CDL courses, for example, other institutions do compensate those courses with an extra unit or unit and a half of teaching um team teaching, to encourage more experienced anti-racist educator educators to meaningfully mentor newbies and then, incentives for baby steps.

So I think that, our participants looked at the McCarthy Center's model for incentivizing baby steps towards community engaged learning, where there's these paid incentives for learning new practices, like, you know, reconstructing a syllabus, trying to institute new practices in a course, etc. So, again, this slide just includes some of the really, really, key ideas that came up during that post retreat dinner when we were talking about names. these any of these are ideas, I think the next set of risks for, a College of Arts and Sciences folks might be able to pick up on, we do plan on having a meeting with, our deans this summer, to, to bring these recommendations, and see whether or not they'll get somewhere. So maybe, you know, we'll be a little bit further along by the time you all are watching this silly video. Okay. So I think that Christina is going to represent. Okay. Thank you. Evelyn. Uh, so what next? as everyone just said, we are going to meet with the College of Arts and Sciences deans. and report our recommendations, uh, for the next steps. Uh, and hopefully there will be a race for next year in 2022 to 2023. Uh, which we are really hopeful about.

And, uh, as, uh, somebody said previously, we did do a survey with some really useful data that I think has been covered here. And so we can certainly review that data. Think about what the survey respondents expressed. Think about how that can be utilized to, uh, to really build this longer term, uh, movement within the College of Arts and Sciences. And, let's see some of the things, as everyone I think talked about was, the gratitude that people felt to have the space for the community. that we might also think towards things like concrete ideas, uh, such as syllabi updating. and definitely people expressed a desire to continue this work in one way or another. Uh, as Evelyn said, we also want to think forward about the possibility of affinity groups and cohorts. So as you just heard, uh, for people of color, maybe in affinity groups around white accountability, uh, Stem and then also certainly involving part time and full time faculty and staff. Uh, and another really important outcome was that that that recognition that anti-racism is hard work. uh, many participants talked about how the there is a strong need for emotional and financial support and that doing this collectively is important. So we really want to kind of, make sure that that is ingrained within any future iterations, that this is indeed work.

And so I have the next slide where I really just wanted to express on behalf of this whole team. Uh, thank you to the Jesuit Foundation to six plus U. Faculty race court and the USF College of Arts and Sciences. And of course, special thanks to Eileen Fong and Joshua Jensen. Pamela, Paul's organist, uh, comic Con, Susan Selassie and Gregory Crum. And, of course, to all of our participants from this year's M to M community. Thank you. Ooh, ooh. I want to say one more thing. Lisa Larson to Lisa Larson. She really helped us. Yeah, she really helped us kick off the pre retreat, dinner workshop. And we were really striving to make it special because we wanted the folks who applied and who were invited to participate to know that this was work that the college recognized and valued. And she went out of her way during Covid times. She had us set up, like on the mezzanine with real wine glasses. and it was just so nice. And yes, white wine is very important.

My name is and Lei and I'm the assistant director of the Cultural Centers and also a new facilitator for the Cultural Diversity Immersion Workshop series, also known as CBI. Today, I'll be interviewing Aaron Eccles, director of Usf's Cultural Centers around the CDI Workshop series.

Hi, Aaron. Could you provide an overview of your projects, including your projects goals? Yeah, definitely. So the Cultural Centers project was the Cultural Diversity Immersion Workshop series, which we initially proposed with the title of dialogs on Race. These workshops offered students the opportunity to build skills and knowledge, to advocate for racial justice and to understand and define their roles in activism. The successful completion of each segment of the series earned students digital badges where they could display their skills.

So the full series contained nine workshop topics which were broken down into three badge segments The badge. One was Identity Awareness, which provides a foundation for discussing social identities, cultural differences and concepts central to social justice work. But two was interpersonal engagement, which focused on identities, power dynamics and communication styles. And Badge three was a solidarity building badge that focused on dialog as a method for critically examining socialization, equity and justice.

Are are learning outcomes and goals for the workshops were for students to increase their awareness of their own identities, experiences and biases, and how that impacts their roles as student leaders. For them to increase their knowledge of how we create welcoming and inclusive environments for student learning and community building, and for students to increase their skills and challenge discriminatory, oppressive and stereotypical attitudes. In addition, we hope that students increase their understanding of the cultural centers department and start us out as resources as well. All of our workshops contain time to build connections between the workshop topic and a Jesuit value, which was important to us so that they really felt that motivation and connection to do this work and to honor our Jesuit identity.

And in addition to our coordinators of the project developing and presenting the curriculum, this project also supported the development of a train, the trainer curriculum. And we train staff members from throughout the US off campus to be facilitators for the sessions, which is a benefit for us as we move forward in the future. I love all the learning outcomes and how Jesuit values have been tied into these workshops. So what would you consider to be an unconscious accomplishment from this effort this year? Anything that you're proud of?

Yeah, I think some of our accomplishments this year included engaging 50 students in the workshop series in the fall, and really of those students, many were graduate students. Some are joining us from other countries as they studied remotely somewhere new students, the campus and engaging in the topics for the first time really led to a diversity of perspectives and really the identities that were brought into the conversations focused on race really deepened the learning within the group. Most are really proud of the facilitator group. Not only do they go through the trainings and learn how to present the curriculum, they also really share of themselves in the workshops in ways that built connections to the students. Many of our attendees want to stay after the virtual sessions and continue talking with the facilitators, even reaching out after the sessions for support. Unrelated topics.

It's amazing the high and broad levels of engagement you received on such a new workshop series. Were there any challenges that you ran into this year around this effort? Yeah, we we actually ran into more interest in the workshops and we had initially planned for. So to respond to that, we hosted our first three workshops twice each to accommodate more students. We also found alternative options for interested students who we couldn't accommodate in the sessions. We also had staff from the cultural centers buy new positions at other campuses, which made it difficult for us to host the workshops this past spring. Instead, I focused our time on training additional trainers and facilitators so that we would have an increased capacity to hold these workshops in future semesters. I'm really glad that we were able to expand our number of facilitators so that we can continue the series. So are there any ways that you hope for this project to continue next year and do you have any plans in place?

Yes, we have 11 trained facilitators who've agreed to facilitate for this fall semester, which is exciting for us. We gather together all the facilitators in June to discuss how we might move forward, and the group really believes that transitioning the workshops into in-person opportunities would be a best practice for us, while also continuing to recognize the benefits of the virtual workshops. I've also begun conversations to connect the series more to students based on academic departments All right. Well, thank you. And that was all the time we had today. I'm really excited about for what's to come next with the CBI workshop series. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks.

Note: The presentation begins with slides and the several do not have accessible text. 

SLIDE 1: “The 6 + You Initiative, University of San Francisco. Jesuit Foundation Grant Initiative. Promoted and sponsored by the Provost’s Office, coordinated by the Center for Humanizing Education and Research.” 

SLIDE 2:  “Grounding: Land and Black Lives Matter Acknowledgements.” 

SLIDE 3: The third slide has accessible text. 

SLIDE 4: “One Book Community: CRASE. Black Student Leadership: BASE BRC, Black Living-Learning Res., Black Scholars Program. Learning Across Difference: International Student and Scholar Services. Faculty Teaching CoRPs: Supported by Center for Teaching Excellence. Cultural Centers Discussions on Race: Cultural Centers. Re-Imagining Public Safety: Department of Public Safety.” 

SLIDE 5: Vision: In the wake of the most recent murders of Black community members by armed officers, students at USF have called for the defunding or dismantling of the Department of Public Safety Department at USF. National concern over state violence against Black bodies is a concern on our own campus. Black students and their allies have called on USF to examine its own practices and to consider a new way of thinking about safety and wellness for our community. What does this mean and what would it look like? 

This project provides race training to officers in the Department of Public Safety as well as a series of forums on race and policing for the entire USF community. The purpose of this project then is to continue the education of DPS as well as the broader USF community so that the campus can remain committed to and engaged with the project of reimagining policing on campus. 

Connection to USF Strategic Initiatives: Recruit and retain a diverse faculty of outstanding teacher-scholars and a diverse, highly qualified service-oriented staff, all committed to advancing the University’s Vision, Mission and Values. Enroll, support and graduate a diverse student body, which demonstrates high academic achievement, strong leadership capability, concern for others and a sense of responsibility for the weak and vulnerable. Provide an attractive campus environment and the resources to promote learning throughout the University. Continue to strengthen the University’s financial resources to support its educational mission. 

Goals: 1) Continue the anti-racism/racial justice education of officers and staff of DPS. This is in line with the goals of all of the initiatives. Students, faculty and other staff are also expected to increase their racial literacy. 2) Re-imagining how we define and enact safety (this is in line with other aspects of the Jesuit grant to re-imagine pedagogy, for example.) 3) Create a proposal for the community that is re-imagined version of safety that is in line with the overall social justice mission and vision of the University. Involve those officers and staff interested in re-imagining in the process. 

SLIDE 6: Accessible

SLIDE 7: Fall 2020. Building Our Capacity to Talk About Race and Policing. Learning: In Fall 2020, 14 staff and officers in DPS gathered for a course called “How to Talk About Race and Policing.” In this course, we learned tools for talking about race, increased our racial literacy, and practiced talking about hot topics around race and policing. 

Spring 2021. Webinars: Hearing from Those Who Are Re-Imagining. Learning: In Spring 2021, we invited scholars and activists who are the forefront of re-imagining policing on and off campus to a series of three webinars to educate DPS and the broader community. We also engaged in debriefing and reflection after each webinar, practicing dialogue skills learned in the Fall. 

Fall 2021. Research Teams: Narrative Study of Those Who Are Re-Imagining. In Fall 2021, for those who want to move forward into the re-imagining portion of this work, we will convene to continue our learning and growth as well as collect data to inform our proposal. We will focus in this first semester on the call to disarm and change the visible look of the department. 

Spring 2022. Proposal Creation: Gathering Our Data to Propose a Re-Imagined DPS. Based on the work we’re able to accomplish in Fall 2021, our hope is to work collectively on a proposal for a re-imagined department to the rest of DPS, PPCAB and the Dean of Students. 

SLIDE 8: Accessible 

SLIDE 9: Training and Hiring: The importance of having the “right people” who hold the “right values” in DPS. Hiring BIPOC officers who reflect historically marginalized students and a team with a critical consciousness and understanding about race and policing. Sense of Belonging: Current forms of policing make BIPOC students feel like they don’t belong on campus. Implicit biases of officers and other community members lead to assumptions that BIPOC students do not belong on campus – thus, they are asked repeatedly to prove that they belong by showing their ID. It is hard for BIPOC students to feel a sense of belonging if others on campus continually communicate that they do not belong. Building BIPOC Student Trust: BIPOC students, due to experiences with policing in their home communities, or on campus, witnessing police violence against Black people, and their knowledge about race and policing are wary of security efforts on campus. This distrust is justified, yet creates a barrier and challenge to DPS ability to serve the BIPOC community. Defining Abolition: It’s not about whether there is a DPS or not, whether they carry guns or not, whether people lose jobs or not. It is about engaging radical imagination. It's a necessary conceptual framework that encourages us to imagine in ways that we have not been able to. 

SLIDE 10: Accessible

SLIDE 11: Fall 2022: World Cafes. 

August 2022: Team plans to meet with the first of three World Café sessions with the broader USF community. World Café: a process that allows community members to both learn about and provide input into the initiative. 

September 2022: First World Café: Five tables: 1 theme per table. Three questions: 1) What did you hear? 2) What resonated with you? 3) What are the implications for action and change? Rotate across all five tables. 

October 2022: Summary from first World Café presented. Small group discussions of the implications for action and change. Prioritize and order implications for action and change. 

November 2022: Summary of priorities and order for action and change presented. DPS presents which of these are already done within/by department. Low-hanging fruit and larger reforms presented. Large group discussion. 

Right. Connie, Dori and I are excited to share with you the project that we were fortunate enough to help facilitate as a part of the Six plus Youth Grant initiative called Reimagining Deep's. We open in over the last two years each time we met. Each session that we had with DPS and with each other, we opened with a grounding. We opened with a land acknowledgment and also a Black Lives Matter acknowledgment. And so here we'd like to open with the same here for this presentation. We'll start with a land acknowledgment that was written by Yusef Salaam, Kaleena Lawrence, and we'll read a shortened version here today as we share space to strengthen our journey towards consciousness and liberation. We must take time to acknowledge the difficult truths of our history that have shaped our current realities.

Our relationship with Indigenous people, by Yusef by San Francisco and by the US is an immediate and sincere need of reconciliation and reclamation. Today, we cannot deny the story of the land upon which Yusef sits and its truths that are too often untold. Our institution sits on Unceded stolen aloni territory. Will also offer an acknowledgment of the black lives that were stolen, the work that was exploited, and the families that were systematically and purposefully dismantled and continue to be today. We do our work together to make sure that past, present and future black lives are seen and honored as lives that matter. So as we begin today, we invite you to take a moment to feel the land beneath your feet.

So much has happened on this land that we have sent that has been centered in violence and injustice, but also in love and joy. We can hold this hypocrisy through awareness, dedication to land of racial justice and a commitment to joy as justice. In our work together. We also wanted to make sure that the way that we did our work together reflected our anti-racism goals. And so we committed to community care values, which you'll see here on the screen. We committed to loving kindness, compassion and patience for ourselves and for others. Centering and reimagining rest. Embracing an abundance rather than a scarcity mindset, democratizing the space in each of our meetings and remembering that small is where true change can happen. Here. We wanted to just remind everyone of the six total projects in addition to the plus projects that happen. So we were one of many amazing teams that were embarking on this anti-racism. But I'll pass it over to Dorie. Thank you.

So want to share just briefly the mission and the vision of the Reimagining project. Our vision is grounded in the current reality and historic reality. In the wake of the most recent murders of black community members by armed officers. Students at USF have called for the defunding or dismantling of the Department of Public Safety. National concern over state violence against black babies is a concern on our own campus as well. Black students and their allies have called on the U.S. to examine its own practices and to consider a new way of thinking about safety and wellness for our community. What does this mean and what would it look like? This project provides race training to officers and the Department of Public Safety, as well as a series of forums on race and policing for the entire U.S. Army. The purpose of this project, then, is to continue the education of DPS as well as the broader USF community so that the campus can remain committed to and engaged with the project of reimagining policing on campus. And our project is closely aligned with several of the U.S. strategic initiatives. The first to recruit and retain a diverse faculty of outstanding teacher scholars and a diverse, highly qualified, service-oriented staff, all committed to advancing the university's mission. Vision and values. Second, to enroll, support and graduate a diverse student body which demonstrates high academic achievement, strong leadership capability, concern for others, and a sense of responsibility for the weak and the vulnerable. To provide an attractive campus environment and the resources to promote learning throughout the university and to continue to strengthen the university's financial resources to support its educational mission. And the goals of the reimagining.

Public Safety project are to continue the anti-racism, racial justice, education of officers and staff at the Department of Public Safety. This is in line with the goals of all of the six plus few projects in this in projects in the initiative. Students, faculty and other staff are also expected to increase their racial literacy. Reimagining how we define and enact safety. This is in line with other aspects of the Jesuit grant to reimagine pedagogy for a chuckle. And our third goal to create a proposal for the community that is a reimagined vision of safety that's in line with the overall social justice mission and vision of the university involving those officers and staff interested in reimagining in the process.

Now, there was a lot of great work being done over the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative. And we want to give you an overview of what was done during each semester. So during the fall 2020, we focused on building our capacity to talk about race in policing. So in fall 20, 2014, staff and officers in the Department of Public Safety gathered for a course called How to Talk about Race and Policing. In this course, we learned tools for talking about race, increased our racial literacy and practice, talking about hot topics around race and policing. Then in spring 2021, there were a series of webinars where we heard from invited scholars and activists who are at the forefront of reimagining policing and off campus. And we also engaged in briefing and engaging and reflective work after each webinar practicing the dialog skills that were learned in Fall 2020. 

Then in fall 2021, this is where research teams’ narrative study of those who are doing reimagining work was done. We wanted to move forward into the reimagining portion of this work. So we convened to continue our learning and growth, as well as collect data to inform our proposal. We focused focus the first semester on a call to disarm and change the visible look of the department. Then in spring 2022, this is where proposal the proposal creation happened, gathering our data to propose a re-imagined DPS based on the work we're able to accomplish in fall 2021. Our hope was to work on a collective proposal that really reimagined the department, the Department of Public Safety, and also our PCAOB, which is our Progressive Policing Community Advisory Board, which is an advisory board that works with public safety. As far as identifying problems and solutions regarding community safety at USF and also our Office of Students. Collette. Give me a. In fall 2021 in a listening circles that were part of the narrative research that we conducted. And we wanted to share four of the themes that came forth. I'll share the first two and I will share the latter.

Two are one of the themes that emerged from the listening circles with police chiefs from similar Jesuit institutions, from abolitionists and from Bipoc students, was the importance of training and hiring. Hiring. The importance of having the right people who hold the right values. And DPS was expressed by all three groups here. Right Values, meaning those that align with the racial justice mission of the department. They also discussed the hiring of Bipoc officers who reflect the historically marginalized student population, as well as the importance of having a team with a critical consciousness and understanding about race and policing. Again, the three groups that were a part of the listening circle the police chiefs, abolitionists and Bipoc students all also mentioned the importance of bipoc students feeling a sense of belonging and how historically and currently they do not feel this sense of belonging on campus. Our current forms of policing make bipoc students feel like they don't belong on campus, particularly the implicit biases of officers and other community members lead to assumptions that bipoc students do not belong on campus. Thus, they're asked repeatedly to prove that they belong by showing their ID. It's hard for Bipoc students to feel a sense of belonging if others on campus continually communicates that they don't belong. 

As with the previous two themes, the theme of building Bipoc student Trust emerged across all of the stakeholder groups that were engaged in collecting this data the Bipoc students, abolitionists and campus police chiefs at other universities. And in this theme we saw that the bipoc students, due to experiences directly or experiences they've heard from others, work with policing in their own home communities or on campus. The witnessing of police violence against black people across the country, along with their own knowledge about race and policing, have created a situation in which they're wary of security efforts on campus. This distrust is justified, yet it creates a barrier and a challenge de Pessoas ability to serve the Bipoc community. And another large theme that arose was the defining abolition. And the theme really centered on the fact that it's not about whether there is a DPS or not, whether they carry guns or not, whether people in the department lose their jobs or not. It's about engaging radical imagination. It's a necessary conceptual framework that encourages us to imagine in ways that we have not yet been able to do. With these themes.

We had an intentional effort to involve the community in the process of the proposal and also in discussions of what is coming out from these themes. And thus the World Cafe's were created for a community centered process for the Reimagining Public Safety Initiative to continue. So I'm going to break down what that will look like in fall 2022 for us. In August, the team will meet to plan the first three World Cafe sessions with the broader USF community and at these world cafes. It's meant to be a process that allows community members to both learn about and provide input into the initiative so that they have a direct seat at the table in this process.

At the First World Cafe, there will be five tables and each table will have one of the themes that we just presented. And at each table, there will be three questions asked to participants. What did you hear? What resonated with you? What are implications for action and change? And each table will rotate so that they have a chance to discuss each of the themes. Then in October, the summary from the First World Cafe will be presented. There will be some small group discussion around the implications for action and change. And then we will move to prioritize and order those full implications. In November. A summary of the priorities and the order of action and change will be presented. DPS will then respond and present on the areas that is already being worked on within the department or by the department. And then there will be a few items that will be identified as low hanging fruit, namely things that can be worked on within a more immediate time frame, and then recommendations on how to address those low hanging fruit will be presented and we will engage in large group discussion on what that looks like. And that is our initiative. So thank you for listening. Thank you.