DENA SAMUELS CONSULTING

Building campus inclusiveness is extremely important to retain diverse students, faculty and staff. The following workshops have been helpful for campuses that either have a newly acquired diversity requirement or who want to maintain and grow their campus-wide diversity.

• The “BIG Idea” Workshop: This 3-hour interactive workshop aims to provide awareness, knowledge and skills to participants about personal and institutional dynamics of social inequality. Providing hands-on strategies, the goal of the workshop is to better equip campus members to engage diverse social identities, to explore how oppression and privilege operate in our daily lives, and to create a more inclusive campus culture. This workshop can be incorporated into any other workshop as a framework from which to discuss other leadership and/or diversity concerns and growth.

• Building an Inclusive Classroom Environment: Once campus members are equipped with a framework for understanding social inequalities, this workshop expands on the “BIG” Idea workshop by providing specific strategies for creating a classroom environment in which everyone feels like they belong. The setting that is created in the classroom can have a lasting effect throughout the length of a course and can set the tone for a supportive, inclusive campus. Creating inclusiveness is critical for any campus and correlates with recruitment and retention of diverse student, staff, and faculty members.

• Leadership & Communication Workshop: This workshop includes interactive exercises and strategies for creating and maintaining better interpersonal communication throughout your campus. Focusing on listening skills and communication skills, participants can then become better leaders on your campus by practicing these strategies. They can become more effective members of the community and serve as role models for others.

• Managing Emotions: This interactive workshop provides a means for understanding the ways emotions can sometimes keep us from moving forward in our goals, including the inability to effectively communicate with others. Strategies will be provided for managing emotions in successful ways. This intensive, interactive workshop delves into dealing with emotions and most importantly, understanding the dynamics of resistance to move forward.