Thursday, November 11, 2021

Keeping DEI in focus

At the risk of over-blogging, I simply have to give a shout out to the organizers, presenters, and nearly 1,000 registered participants in last week’s virtual DEI summit. What a tremendous, thoughtfully produced, collaborative, insightful, and thoroughly engaging event. 

The passion, creativity, and energy that our faculty and staff bring to the work of making our universities inclusive communities that welcome and support success of all their members was on full display. So was the desire (even urgency) presenters and participants alike felt about sharing their work, building broader coalitions around it, engaging organically in a kind of movement building the power to demonstrably improve our students’ success and our campus climates.

The scope of impactful innovation on display was breathtaking. I learned about:

  • the power of storytelling in making learning communities feel safe for all their members while enabling bridge building between them.
  • ground water mitigation efforts and what they look like (I‘ll never drive by a gas-station again without looking for piping sticking up through the ground) but more importantly why it matters in our thinking about the societal importance and reach of the geo-sciences.
  • professional development (certificate bearing, no less) being made available to ESU faculty to improve cultural competencies and through that, student outcomes.

I had a refresher course on micro-aggressions – how to recognize them and what to do when you’ve committed or observed one, and on the power of collectives in advancing positive change.

And I gained perspective from exceptional keynote speakers bringing us the benefit of their experiences dealing with comparable issues outside the PASSHE fence (as it were). 

I left impressed by the welcoming environment that the summit seemed more or less naturally to produce, the can-do / must-do attitude on display from participants, and the sense of comradery and optimism that prevailed throughout. The latter was particularly uplifting and inspired me with hope, especially now, given, the tenor of our national discourse – its propensity for shouting with outrage and division rather than actively listening to build common ground. 

My heartfelt thanks to Vice Chancellor Pearson, her small and mighty team, our conference organizers – and to the nearly 1,000 members of our PASSHE family who took the time to share, listen, learn, and advance the ball making our communities even better places to learn, live, work, and grow.

4 comments:

  1. How about tying PASSHE funding to its ability to help reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in Pennsylvania? For example, in safely downsizing prisons, cutting crime through innovative measures such as paid open lot cleanups, reducing Medicaid costs through preventive medicine and fraud detection, and reducing the effects of climate chaos created by fossil fuel extraction and use?

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  2. How can you get more money from the State when you give raises to people who ALREADY MAKE ALOT OF MONEY,and expect the State to believe you are a good steward of the peoples money???Erinn Lake already drives a car 5 that cost 5 times as much as the newest car on campus!!

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  3. Paying administration more money,IE;Erinn Lake,$190000 a year will not make our system better.She is a nice person,but to give out raises to 4 people totaling $100000 plus, is mismanaging tax dollars!There are buildings on our campus here at Edinboro that could use some of that raise money to make much needed repairs.

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  4. How about not handing out $40,000 raises!!PASSHE needs to be responsible with the taxpayers money.I know of 4 positions where the administrators recieved over $100,000 worth of raises.The community knows about this as it was on our local news.This doesn't look good for the people that are doling this money out.

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