Abstract Title
Learn ways you can train your student leaders on Equity-Minded Education to create
transformational change.
Abstract
University of California-San Diego’s residential life staff will address how cross-campus
collaboration can create transformational change with equity, diversity and inclusion
matters. This panel will provide an overview of the steps we took to develop our
“Equity-Minded Education Workshop” that was presented to approximately two hundred
student leaders. The presenters will provide data regarding learning outcomes from our
workshop.
This workshop has been implemented since August of 2011, when professional staff from
all seven areas that constitute the University of California-San Diego's residential life
program partnered with the Cross-Cultural Center and various other campus offices to
create an intensive two-day workshop on the topics of equity, diversity, inclusion, social
justice, allyship, and bystander intervention. This breakthrough collaboration was
recognized with an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award in its
inaugural year.
In September 2014 twenty-five additional professional staff from units across campus
volunteered to serve as small-group facilitators. Together with the residential life
professional staff, they worked with close to 200 residential student leaders. Resident
Assistants, House Advisors, program interns, and residential council members were
challenged to think critically about their own identities, the identities of individuals in
their communities, and the ways in which they could respond to incidents of intolerance,
hatred, and bigotry through personal intervention and intentional educational
programming.
The workshop’s curriculum was based largely upon Bensimon’s 2004 equity-minded
framework, the work of Adams, Bell, & Griffin in their 2007 text, Teaching for Diversity
and Social Justice, 2nd ed., and the 2010 UC San Diego Student Affairs Learning
Outcomes. In groups of 5-7 students, facilitators guided participants through educational
activities that examined socialization processes, power dynamics, and ethics.
The presenters, who were part of the planning committee, will speak about different
components of the workshop curriculum. The information will be presented in a panel
format and at the end there will be time for the audience to ask questions.
Executive Summary
History
As a result of the 2010 Compton Cookout incident that occurred at UC San Diego, the
residential life staff decided to combine efforts to educate UCSD’s student leaders in
matters involving equity-minded issues. We debated whether or not to invite a guest
speaker to address the inequalities and racial situations that our institution was dealing
with. Due to financial constraints we elected to form an internal committee of residential
life staff professionals who possessed the knowledge and the expertise in the field of
equity-minded and social justice matters. The Equity-Minded Education (EME)
committee’s main objective was to create a training curriculum designed to teach our
Resident Assistants, House Advisors, program interns, and residential council members
to recognize and deal with social justice inequalities.
Getting Started
The Equity-Minded Education Committee met over a period of time where they began
conversations regarding what content could be covered in a predetermined 2-day
workshop. Designing the curriculum and finding the right materials to present to a group
of student leaders who played unique social roles at the university, whose education
levels varied, and whose passions were distinct from person-to-person was a challenge.
We wanted this experience to be beneficial not only to certain individuals but to
everyone. As a group we thought about what materials we needed to include and how to
create a welcoming environment for courageous conversations to occur. We explored
various theoretical frameworks, learning outcomes, concepts, and presentation ideas in
order to create a curriculum for our student leaders to use in practice.
Here are some requirements that assisted us in the development of the EME Workshop:
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The seven residential areas at UCSD had a mutual agreement that common
reading materials would be assigned in order to bring all staff members to a level
of mutual understanding
We would provide theoretical frameworks and also teach the student leaders how
to put what they learned into practice
Having the student leaders explore and identify their own multiple dimensions of
identities in order to understand their relationship to others
Deliberate mixing of staffs so that there was an opportunity to hear others’ stories
and perspectives
Students would learn how to brainstorm and present different programs and
activities that can be done in the residence halls
The student leaders would gain leadership skills that would be passed down to
their residents and the rest of the UCSD community
Collaboration with other departments
Equity-Minded Education Workshop Layout
Morning of Day 1: Setting the Stage
Learning Outcomes Met:
 Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Development
Purpose and Goals of the Training and Set Ground Rules
Keynote Speaker
Discuss
 Social Justice Education, Equity-Mindedness
 Privilege, Oppression
 Comfort Zones, Learning Edges and Triggers
Break Out, Complete, and Discuss: Who am I? Activity
Introduce Social Groups Constructs and Oppression Dynamics
Multiple Dimensions of Identity
Afternoon of Day 1: It’s All About You
Learning Outcomes Met:
 Knowledge acquisition, construction, integration, and application
 Cognitive Complexity
 Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Development
 Practical Competence
 Leadership Development
Discuss
 Cycle of Socialization
 Blindspots & Mindbugs
 Microaggressions and Inclusive Language
 Small Group Activity
 Debrief
Evening Act of Day 1
 Spoken Word Event
Morning of Day 2: Allyship
Learning Outcomes Met:
 Humanitarian and Civic Engagement
 Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Development
 Leadership Skills
Discuss
 Cycle of Liberation
 Ally Action Continuum
 Cultural Competence Self-Assessment
Afternoon of Day 2: Leadership and Action through Programming
Learning Outcomes Met:
 Humanitarian and Civic Engagement
 Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Development
 Leadership Skills
Student Leaders apply lessons learned into plans for future social and education
programs
Experiential Learning
Work in groups to design and present on:
 Celebratory
 Educational
 Advocacy
Closing Speaker
Creating Transformational Change
Equity-Minded Education has generated a shift on how our student leaders in residential
life think about equity-minded issues. The student leaders have learned how to gain the
leadership skills necessary to create a welcoming and inclusive climate in the residential
areas for the residents. Resident Assistants, House Advisors, program interns, and
residential council members have learned how to decipher oppressing situations, how to
deal with diverse groups of students, have gained the competence to present equityminded material and have educational conversations regarding such issues with their
community. These student leaders also continue to educate themselves on equity-minded
and social justice materials. It has been fascinating to see this specific group of student
leaders implement what they have absorbed into their personal lives, with their peers, in
programs/activities, in different initiatives, student trainings, and leadership development
opportunities.
Assessment
Assessment of Equity-Minded Education has taken different forms since the workshop’s
inception. Post-workshop participant satisfaction and suggestions for improvement were
the initial focus. After the curriculum was established, measuring learning became the
priority. The Socially Responsible Leadership Scale, Revision 2, a 68-item statistically
valid instrument based on the Social Change Model of Leadership (Komives et al., 1996),
was adopted as a pre/post-test in 2014 and will be used in all future implementations of
the workshop to collect longitudinal data. The instrument is mandatory for all
participants and is administered through CampusLabs.com. Because the system develops
a unique key for each respondent, results are anonymized but are still able to be tracked
for pre/post-test or year-to-year comparisons with individual students or with cohorts.
Even with widely varying survey content, there is promising evidence that our students
are learning from the EME workshop and applying that information in meaningful ways
to their lives. For instance, given over 450 unique responders over four years to survey
items that asked about learning new equity-minded information, approximately 75%
stated that they learned a moderate to a considerable amount during the workshop. A
majority of respondents reported feeling more comfortable talking about equity-minded
issues with peers and other community members. Many reported that they were able to
seek out, form, and maintain healthy relationships with a wider variety of people after
attending the workshop. A majority of respondents reported that they were able to
collaborate more effectively with a wider variety of people and many respondents stated
that they were able to put their knowledge to work in student-led seminars and peer
education efforts. Finally, students who attended the annual EME workshop two or more
times not only reported learning a significant amount more during each subsequent EME
workshop, but also demonstrated differential growth from their same-aged peers when a
moral development framework was applied to the short answer portions of their
workshop questionnaires. With the adoption of the Socially Responsible Leadership
Scale, we hope to quantify more uniformly the effect of the EME workshop on its
participants and look forward to sharing that information in the coming years.
Best Practices and Next Steps
1. Faculty/staff involvement benefits both faculty and the student participants
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Promote faculty/staff engagement as keynote speakers to provide a glimpse
into their research/positions and how the participants can connect to the
faculty/staff as resources
Utilize faculty/staff as facilitators to provide direct links between academic
and social community development. As a result student leaders can more
easily connect their students to faculty/staff
Develop opportunities for faculty/staff to help student leaders connect
experiential learning to application in and out of the classroom
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Engage and support interdisciplinary cross-training for faculty/staff to
encourage equity-minded practices in and out of the classroom
2. Create inclusive learning environments that challenge intellectual and
interpersonal growth
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Foster an intentional equity-minded environment in our campus community
Provide structure and skill building for a more equity-minded campus
community
Develop a new perspective which engages critical thinking and equity-minded
problem solving in their role as a student leader
Utilize social media and current stories to engage students in a critical analysis
of society today and to promote continual self-growth and development
3. Fostering peer-to-peer engagement
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Educate and train students to nurture equity-mindedness in and out of
classroom setting
Create and maintain spaces to encourage dialogue between peers
Provide formal or informal assessment and feedback for students
Conclusion
Being able to incorporate Equity-Minded Education at UC San Diego has been a very
rewarding experience for all of us. It has given us the opportunity to foster an
environment where this topic isn’t avoided but embraced by our community. It is exciting
to witness an idea flourish into an accomplishment that has exceeded our expectations in
regard to its impact on our community. This journey wasn’t easy and is far from over,
but we are proud of the foundation we set for the transformational change that has
occurred and expect to renew and adapt for years to come.