(Audience: Any)

Cultural competency training often focuses on increasing the knowledge and skills needed to improve the ability to effectively interact with different cultural groups. While this is helpful, we must go beyond cultural competence and create cultural humility, which is an approach to cultural competency trainings that proposes change through a lifelong process of learning, including self-examination and refinement of one’s own awareness, knowledge, behavior, and attitudes on the interplay of power, privilege, and social contexts.

(Audience: Any)

Implicit biases create embedded stereotypes, shape how we behave or respond in a given situation, and affect decisions and behaviors without our conscious knowledge. In this workshop, participants will explore their own implicit biases. However, it is not enough to simply be aware of this. We will also develop strategies and action plans for creating equity and conscious inclusion in your classroom, department, unit, or organization.

(Audience: Any)

This workshop will draw on the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR) and SAMHSA’s National Center for Trauma-Informed Care’s (NCTIC) Six Guiding Principles To A Trauma-Informed Approach. These principles include safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment and choice; and cultural, historical, and gender issues. We will address how these principles can be embedded within an organizational structure that involves understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma (including community disasters, violence, abuse, grief, and crises) and develop an action plan for implementing trauma-informed practices.

(Audience: College Educators)

In this workshop, participants will learn about the ways that diversity, equity, and inclusion are a part of the advising process and apply the appreciative model (and developmental model) of advising in their work to create an inclusive campus environment.

(Audience: K-12 and College Educators)

Safe Zone is an in-depth, interactive workshop designed to educate faculty and staff about the LGBTQ community and develop participants' capacity for building an inclusive campus for all students. Anti-LGBTQ bias and prejudice affects all members of a community, and we all have the opportunity and responsibility to work against it. Participants will learn terminology related to LGBTQ identities, discuss the experiences of LGBTQ students, develop skills for building LGBTQ inclusive environments, and leave with a plan of action for moving forward. Participants may choose to become members of the Safe Zone network following the workshop.

(Audience: High School and College Educators)

In this workshop, participants will learn about the specific barriers for first-generation students, examine the research and practices that improve first-generation student success, and identify relevant supports and campus resources for first-generation students.

(Audience: College Educators)

In this workshop, participants will learn about the specific barriers for students returning to college after years out of the classroom. Participants will examine the research and best practices to help support lifelong learners in the pursuit of their college degree.  

(Audience: Middle School, High School, and College Educators)

This workshop focuses on the intercultural factors that influence the experiences of international students. We will explore effective communication strategies between and among instructors and students and the academic and pedagogical challenges, opportunities, and promising practices for teaching international students. We will provide practical approaches for addressing issues of language, curricula, teaching methods, assignment design, assessments, academic integrity, classroom management, classroom participation, and help-seeking.

(Audience: K-12 Educators, Social Service Providers)         

Students enter our classrooms with different backgrounds and a variety of experiences. Teachers not only work with students, but also have reciprocal interactions between families and schools. How do we create welcoming school environments for LGBTQ students and parents? How does our own perception of gender and sexual identity affect our interactions with students and families? We will also address how to create school and classroom practices and processes that support the growing diversity of our student body.  

(Audience: K-12 Educators)

Students enter our classrooms with different backgrounds and a variety of experiences. Some students may not be prepared for school while others appear grade-levels ahead. Teachers have to navigate working with students with diverse needs in the classroom. Teachers not only work with students, but also experience the reciprocal interactions between families and schools. How do we find our way through this terrain? How do we work with students and families from different social class backgrounds? How do we work with underresourced students? How do we work with overscheduled students? How do our own perceptions of social class affect our interactions with students and families?

(Audience: Middle School and High School Educators)

This workshop focuses on ways to prepare students to transition into higher education. We will address how to prepare students academically and socially to engage in discussion based classes at the collegiate level. We will also address some of the developmental changes that students experience and how to prepare and support them for this next stage of their life.  

(Audience: Any)

The ReThink Poverty Simulation is an immersive experience to educate students on poverty, to increase empathy, and to learn more about campus and community resources.

(Audience: Any)

The media literacy workshop is an interactive experience that focuses on analyzing media content to increase knowledge on how media ownership or regulation may affect the type of media we consume or share. The workshop will help participants become better media consumers, better media producers, and better global citizens by learning how to think about various media and the messages that are presented.