Executive Summary of ARCC Meeting
1/22/16
A. Setting our goals: We clarified the purpose of the ARCC and our goals
a. Reactivate the group’s accountability function alongside its consultative function.
i. Current members were appointed with this purpose and are not required to serve the
consultation function although they may wish to
b. More than just monitoring School activities, ARCC can envision new ways that the anti-racism
commitment can live in the School and provide leadership in advancing this work
c. Members identified their hopes for our work: extension of anti-racism work to staff, alumni, & admin;
bring transparency to the School’s curricular work; to be action-oriented.
B. We discussed bringing other students onto ARCC
a. Kai, Denis, and Manuel had requested that we add more student members.
b. The Dean clarified that the committee has only 2 faculty members serving. The other members
represent the other constituents of SCSSW: staff, administrative offices, and alumni
c. There is a proposal that the student members nominate other students. More to come in the summer.
d. There has been outreach already to members of Council to participate in ARCC.
e. Potential issue: We need a commitment from the group to participate in an ongoing fashion.
C. Discussion of how the School is responding to the 11 item of the student petition of summer 2015
1. 40% of assigned readings in all courses written by authors of color.
a. A group of faculty have proposed a new course that will allow us to identify and gather learning
information that represents diverse voices and perspectives. The goal is to develop an archive of this
content that students are actively involved in creating, for instructors’ use
i. Current idea: that students in the class work to identify 3-6 content areas to prioritize
2. A student representative from the Council for Students of Color shall be appointed to the Faculty Curriculum
Committee to increase transparency and communication with the student curriculum committee.
a. A change to the membership of a standing committee requires change to the Faculty Code, the faculty
procedures and policies. The Personnel Practices Committee (Professors Drisko, Pruett, and Corbin) will
bring a recommendation forward for faculty vote
b. There are differing responses by the faculty to this proposal ranging from agreement.
3. The course Racism in the United States will be two terms
a. The Racism course will remain 1 term this summer, as this requires longer term review.
4. Practice courses will include at least 40% of case studies by a clinician who identifies as a person of color.
a. 150 case studies have been reviewed so far by Annemarie Gockel, Phebe Sessions, & Katelin Lewis-Kulin
b. Katelin reported that as a result there will be a significant difference in the kinds of cases used in both
first and second year practice
c. ARCC Member will work with the field committee
5. Hiring and search committees must include student representatives of color with the aim of increasing faculty,
Faculty Field Advisors, Thesis Advisors, and Community Practice Project Advisors of color.
a. For summer 2016: 121 faculty hired, 33% of who identify as a person of color
b. Total new faculty: 17 (65%) of whom identify as a person of color
c. This reflects a change to recruitment and hiring strategy, and placement of hires over the curriculum
d. Dean O’Neill will bring in trend data for next meeting
6. All faculty will be required to attend at least one Pedagogy and Diversity meeting per summer for consultation
on skillfully incorporating anti-racism into pedagogy.
a. We are approaching this a little differently having heard student voice for issues of facilitating classroom
discussions
b. The faculty has agreed that we will be trained on the O’Neill & Kang Critical Conversations model of
group facilitation.
Executive Summary of ARCC Meeting
1/22/16
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
i. Our goal is to have all faculty, administrators, staff, FFAs, students will be trained through a train
the trainer model
ii. We will need to discuss roll out
c. Pedagogy and Diversity will be continued this summer
d. The current online course on racism offered to instructors will continue and we need to find a way to
increase visibility and usage. We have asked all instructors to attend Pedagogy and Diversity and/or
complete the online course
Administration will work with students to design and implement a mid-term feedback form as an ''instant
evaluation tool" to assess whether anti-racism pedagogy is adequately reflected in each course.
a. On agenda for next meeting
Students will have access to qualitative and quantitative information from all evaluations of Smith's Anti-Racism
Commitment, including findings from course evaluation data on anti-racism.
a. On agenda for next meeting
All instructors who teach the Racism in the United States course for clinicians of color must identify as people of
color.
a. The commitment to the course has been to have the course co-taught by instructors of different
races/ethnicity in order to have more representation in the classroom. Only in more recent years, has
there been more sections taught by an instructor who identifies as white and one who identifies as a
person of color.
b. Faculty have discussed and have agreed to assign co-instructors, both of who identify as a person of
color and who are from different racial/ethnic communities to the course.
Students of color will be offered additional consultation from faculty of color and an optional differentiated
orientation for the second year Anti-Racism Assignment.
a. On agenda for next meeting
Smith curriculum will demonstrate value for diverse and multimodal ways of knowing by including non-peer
reviewed materials such as blog posts, multi-media, poetry, and visual m1s to include authors, m1ists, and
creators of knowledge who are not based in traditional academic institutions.
a. See item 1