Posted by blissers on Thursday, November 6, 2014 in News.

October was an exciting month. The Crucial Conversations team has been hard at work, gathering information about the current state of affairs to more specifically determine the places where we need to focus for our various goals. In addition, we have been outlining potential solutions and initiatives to address these issues.

Major updates from our work:

1. Over the past month, the team worked to craft a narrative that explains our vision of an ideal Peabody. See this narrative for a more complete description of our vision and goals. Envisioning an Ideal Peabody
2. At the last meeting, we discussed whether to expand the scope of our current work to more explicitly focus on broader conceptions of identity and diversity, including gender, sexual orientation, etc. While remaining open to the idea that the future work of this initiative may shift to address these issues more specifically, and while acknowledging that our current work may necessitate some focus on these issues as they intersect with our current focus on race, we decided to maintain our current focus on race. We do not want to split our focus at the moment to the detriment of real, conscientious effort, and as such we want to remain more focused at this point.
3. The Curriculum and Teaching task force has compiled a list of required courses by program across Peabody College. Next steps include determining what additional information is needed and substantively interpreting the information we have thus far.
4. The Recruitment and Retention task force is trying to determine where the “holes” are in the recruitment of students of color. They are looking at the stages of application, admission, and matriculation to determine the evidence from admissions data that would inform this question.
5. The Mentorship and Orientation task force has been outlining the framework for a new graduate student mentorship program, and we have been in conversation with POPGE about future implementation of this program.
6. This work has involved a lot of feedback from POPGE as we consider the current administrative structures that can support this work.

Upcoming events to note in relation to our work:

• 11/7 @ 3:00pm in Mayborn 205 – Preventing Violence, Achieving Health Equity
• 11/10 @ 2:00pm in Mayborn 204 – Blackness in Education: A panel discussion on research concerning Black Americans in the areas of education and human development. Blackness In Education Flyer
• 11/12 @ 8:30pm in Sarratt 189 – Students for Change Against Power-Based Personal Violence

The Center for Teaching will be producing various online resources related to our work throughout this year. The first is this Guide on Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom written by former Graduate Teaching Fellow, Andrew Greer, from Human and Organizational Development. See this guide here.

Lastly, Dr. Chase Lesane-Brown is teaching PSY2100: Human Development in Multicultural Contexts this spring. Consider taking this course if you want to gain an inclusive view of developmental psychology that considers the life experiences of diverse individuals and families. See the this flyer for more information. PSY-GS 2100

As always, feel free to let us know if you have any questions or concerns.