‘When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

Here’s a pilot effort I’ve been working on that’s coming out of the Social Justice Education Office at GVSU.

Cultivate

Cultivate is an inclusive leadership development program for faculty/staff at Grand Valley State University. It offers a unique approach to leadership development by focusing on essential skills and competencies leaders need in higher education— through a lens of inclusion and equity. This is an intensive cohort model with a structured curriculum with sessions designed to build upon one another. The curriculum will feature the combination of evidence-based research and practical application.

Participants will  be invited to:

Think critically about how identity impacts leadership, relationships, and decision making.

Gain knowledge and understanding of inclusion and equity theories and models that broaden our understanding of leadership.

Develop ways to foster the growth of oneself and others by recognizing social and cultural context.

Foster the skills to transform organizational culture to maximize capacity for inclusion and equity while recognizing the influence of external societal systems.

Apply inclusion and equity learning to a specific program, policy, practice or initiative over which they have influence.

Participants will meet for 4 hours a month from September-April for a total of 32 hours.

Context

We are situated differently. Cultivate is an acknowledgment that discourse about leadership that does not implicate the systems that contribute to inequity offers an incomplete contextual picture of the forces that impact the lives and outcomes of the people we serve.

We want to engage participants in thinking critically about their own identities and experiences with bias, power, privilege, and marginalization as it relates to not only how they are experiencing and perceiving the people they work with, but also how those experiences impact the decisions they make, and their understanding of systems of inequity that affect themselves, the members of their teams, and the students we all serve.

Although Cultivate is in its infancy, our learning outcomes include gaining knowledge and understanding of social justice foundational theories and models as applied to leadership in higher education, ways to better understand how to foster an employee’s growth and development by recognizing their social and cultural context, among others.

We will regularly evaluate participant feedback to make improvements for future cohorts. As the program continues, with additional cohorts, we will also track the impact in a longitudinal way, identifying successes and needs for changing directions.

Participants will be asked to identify a specific program/policy/practice or initiative that might be impacted by an area of focus including Equity and Structural Diversity, Inclusion and Campus Climate, and Learning and Development and will work to apply what they are learning directly to advancing an area of inclusion and equity within their unit. Tracking those developments over time will give us a clearer picture of the program’s impact.

Launch

Our cohort is finalized, and we had our first session this month. As a consistent theme, cohort participants will approach their work through a lens of Applied Critical Leadership; thinking critically about how their privileged identities and experiences might limit their perspectives on what is actually taking place in the environment, and how centering the voices of folks with marginalized identities when it comes to problem-solving can actually enhance the environment in ways that ensure equity for all people. I launched a series of workshops on Applied Critical Leadership in 2016, and the Cultivate sessions will accommodate a deeper dive into those concepts. As an example, one such concept that participants will explore as a way to lead for equity is Targeted Universalism.

Session 1 Reactions:

“This was a great session. I really appreciated the opportunity to have these kinds of conversations and reflections. I’m ready to look for places where I have power & influence in the university to be more intentional with incorporating social justice.”

“This was well thought out. I’m ready to be more open minded and realize that my experiences might not be someone else’s. We don’t always know.”

“I liked the variety of activities to help engage with the topics we covered. I may use some of them to help build awareness within my team.”

“Well done! Thoughtful. Great activities. I appreciated when the facilitators modeled and joined in and would appreciate if that continued. I enjoyed hearing other people’s stories about how they came to value social justice. I’ll be more mindful of things I could miss due to my own privilege.”

“Well planned, thoughtful and very good conversation to help challenge us. It’s early but I’m looking forward to learning and applying the concept of calling in more as well as recognizing the differences between safe spaces and brave spaces.”

“I am glad I was here today and will seek more information.”

“There was a great mix of interactive activities. The drawing/storytelling and hearing others helped me to remember we all have a script to unpack.”

“I really enjoyed today and look forward to spending time learning with this group this year. I’m trying to remain mindful of how my privilege comes out in my decisions and actions.”

It’s a Journey

It’s a pilot year for this initiative, and I look forward to experiencing the growth of the participants, and the many possibilities that will result from their involvement.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones

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