Date Time
Thu 10/19/2017 8:30am - 4:30pm
Fri 10/20/2017 8:30am - 4:30pm

The 2-day Building Inclusive Communities (BIC) Workshop is designed to provide a framework for participants to take personal responsibility for creating a truly engaged diverse and inclusive campus environment and to stay current with the diversity, equity and inclusion needs and issues of a changing population base and VCU community. The BIC workshop can help us learn an approach to continually recognize and examine the impact of our own biased assumptions and perceptions and to overcome obstacles to becoming culturally competent leaders and making sustainable systemic change. This comprehensive evidence-based workshop teaches about group and organizational dynamics and helps individual participants change their own behaviors and improve organizational outcomes. Using experiential learning through personal sharing and discussion, the program addresses specific VCU-related examples. The key workshop components are: Creating a safe, non-blaming learning environment; shared assumptions and definitions; examining four levels of analysis (personal, interpersonal, cultural, institutional); tools for collaboration and cooperative communication, problem-solving and trust building; understanding the concept of historically included or privileged and excluded or discounted group memberships and identities, and the impact of those societal dynamics on the function and success of teams and relationships; developing participants` skills to address the attitudes, pitfalls and conditions (often unconscious and unintentional) that perpetuate disparities in power and access (Modern Ism's and Internalized Oppression Theory), opportunities for practical applications and problem-solving with the training tools at the individual, team, organizational and systemic levels. Together we can develop a culturally informed VCU community that empowers each of us to strengthen communication and effectively address the needs of diverse groups.

Prerequisites: Pre-workshop readings will be provided. BIC facilitators invite personal sharing from participants in order to enhance learning from each other, and workshop discussions are confidential. Participants are asked to do some assigned reading in advance and to discuss personal examples of work situations.
Cost:
$0.00
Sponsor:
Inclusive Excellence
Audience:
VCU Faculty and Staff Only
Category:
Contact:
Altman, Janice H
804-828-8947
jhaltman@vcu.edu