foundational curriculum I 

  • There has been a paradigm shift, taking place in organizations related to diversity, equity and inclusion. While acknowledging and celebrating difference continue to be important in creating positive work environments, there is a higher expectation that all staff be able to identify how cultural differences impact their work so that they can respond effectively to difference. This funny and engaging session will introduce participants to overlapping concepts related to culture, cultural and intercultural competence to help staff better manage and navigate cultural differences.  

  • Over the last 50-years conversations about diversity, inclusion and equity have evolved from the promotion of welcoming spaces, to helping people accept equity as a 21st century necessity and business imperative. This session will outline historical and the emerging frameworks of diversity and inclusion providing each framework’s strengths and challenges. Participants will also engage in terminology lesson to help them better understand some of the key terms and language used in all three frameworks. Lastly, participants will be introduced to the Integrated Model for Inclusion and Equity (IMIE), to strategically implement, manage, and support organizational inclusion and innovation. 

  • Life is filled with conflict, and we experience it daily with a partner or spouse, siblings, parents, and children, friends, and co-workers. Many of us believe that conflict is driven by personality type, and while there is truth in this, many do not realize that there is also a cultural overlay prevalent in how individuals navigate conflict. This highly interactive session will focus on how conflict is manifested through culture, and participants will learn the four most prevalent styles people use globally when responding to conflict. Participants will also identify their preferred style of managing conflict and tangible ways to be more open, engaged, and responsive to styles that are different from their own.  

  • Adapted from the work of Dr. Steven L. Robbins, this session will take participants on a journey through the mind by unpacking the neuroscience behind how our brain works as well as explore the cognitive psychology of human behavior. Participants will begin to understand how and why the brain creates comfort zones, which often limit our ability to be open. They will also learn why we often resist new ideas and perspectives (i.e. why we hate change). We will also discover why our difficulty in embracing diversity is fundamentally about the cultures we create through "insider" vs. "outsider" behavior. Lastly participants will begin to understand why leveraging diversity is so important in our rapidly changing 21st century world. 

  • Your team/organization has taken the intercultural development inventory (IDI) and now knows its orientation but has no idea what to do next. Remember, becoming more Interculturally competent is a journey. This session will help participants understand what it means to be in their current orientation, and how, if they so choose, can successfully adopt behaviors that move them closer to their orientation goal of becoming a more sensitive participant, team, or organization when engaging cultural differences.

  • Individuals and organizations that desire to build their capacities to engage across difference and foster intercultural mindsets need to be cognizant of and able to engage across cultural differences. This skill set requires understanding of patterns within one’s own culture and others. This interactive session will invite participants into deeper understanding of culture general frameworks and strengthen their capacity to understand the cultural patterns around us.

  • Circles are used across cultures for dialogue. Recently a formal Story Circle model (UNESCO 2020) has been developed and utilized for intercultural competence development. The goal of Story Circles is to help participants:

    1) demonstrate respect for other,

    2) practice listening for understanding,

    3) cultivate curiosity about similarities and the differences of others,

    4) develop empathy and

    5) develop relationships with those who are culturally different from us.

    To ensure organizations understand the Story Circle model CIE/IC will conduct a session to discuss the goals, purpose, and value of this model, allowing participants to ask questions, and experience their first Story Circle together. CIE/IC recommends that organizations engage in between 3-5 story circles over the course of three-to-five-month period.

foundational curriculum II 

  • This session is an introspective look at diversity through the lens of authenticity and vulnerability. Participants will have the opportunity to understand, explore, and reflect on the many hidden barriers to engaging in conversations about “diversity,” and begin to understand how being vulnerable can support more open productive dialogue and support a greater understanding of difference. 

  • This session will delve deep into difference by helping participants understand the complexity of their intersecting identities. The first half of this all-day session will provide participants with foundational learning guidelines and a common language that will help them increase their intercultural competence and sustain future conversation about diversity. The second half of the day will focus on identity awareness and recognition. Participants will go deeper in the conversation by fully unpacking the myriad of identities we all carry, and how those identities impact the way we operate in the world.

  • This session will help build upon the previous sessions by helping participants understand how they are perceived through individual, group, and systems identities; and how these dimensions of difference impact the way we are viewed in the world. The second half of the day we will revisit the complexity of close-mindedness helping participants understand how we can begin to break the “cycle of oppression: and create a new framework for our personal and professional relationships.

  • While many of us are consciously committed to fairness and equality and be actively working against our learned prejudices, we still possess hidden bias and negative prejudice.  This session will allow participants to continue the conversation about unconscious bias, by talking about a more insidious form known as micro-inequities. Participants will be provided with clear definitions and examples of micro-inequities and how they can have a chilling effect on climate, personal safety, and productivity, as well as leave with practical ways of responding to everyday micro inequities and skills to support people who are impacted.

restorative practices

  • Restorative Practices (RP) is a social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities (IIRP). In higher education, RP is being used as a leadership and community development framework to help build and maintain healthy and engaged communities. RP is not solely focused on discipline but is about doing the proactive work needed to intentionally build relationships to prevent and/or respond to harm and wrongdoing.

    During this two-day, highly interactive training, participants will learn how to shift their professional approach and organizational culture by using RP as a key component of their leadership and community development. Participants will also learn how to align their organizational values to match the theoretical frameworks of RP. This includes learning how to facilitate proactive circles, restorative roleplays and by engaging in meaningful conversations that will bring theory into practice.

  • Learning how to use Restorative Practices is one thing, but comprehensive implementation into the fabric of your organizational structure is another. This workshop is focused on helping Res Life and Housing professionals think through the necessary steps of implementing RP as their community development framework. Steps include stakeholder conversations, on-going training development to include training of RAs, refresher training for professional staff, and training of trainers for long-term organizational sustainability.

  • Restorative Conferencing is the most formal of restorative practices (also known as restorative justice) and requires intentional time to master. This session is dedicated to helping staff run formal circles and formal conferences after severe harm and wrongdoing has been caused through mock case studies and scenarios. Staff will spend the day understanding the needs of those who have been harmed and how to hold spaces that address the needs of all parties in the restoration of community.

  • They’ve been trained, but have they truly adopted working restoratively? This training will allow participants to refresh their understanding of the theoretical frameworks of RP and engage in additional proactive and responsive practices case scenarios. Participants will also participate in a self-evaluation on their use of Restorative Practices using the RP Chain of Command Assessment (CCA). The RP-CCA will help them identify expert practitioners, from advanced promoters, intermediate learners, and novice beginners, as well as how to better support each other in the sustainable practice of RP.

  • This fun, and highly interactive one-day training will teach RAs how to hold restorative circles for the positive and proactive development of their residential communities as well as how to respond to low level harm and wrongdoing when it occurs.

  • Student leaders hold a special responsibility within the fabric of the college and university community. They are beholden to supporting the entire student body’s social and cultural needs, but often struggle to effectively lead and manage their organizational leadership teams and constituents. This training will introduce student leaders to the ideas of restorative practices to build their organizational teams, run meetings more effectively, and create higher levels of inclusivity.

  • They know how to build community and have been successful too, but do they understand why RP is effective? This training is designed to support second- and third-year RAs understand why RP works, by introducing them to its theoretical underpinnings in support of strengthening their leadership and day-to-day practice with their residentials students and others.

  • Now that your staff has spent significant time using RP, it’s time for your organization to become self-sufficient. This session will provide a select team of professional staff members with the ability to learn, practice, and master the core concepts of RP so that they can teach and support other colleagues who may be unfamiliar or new to RP.

  • Like the TOT for new res life and housing professionals, this session is designed to help experienced professional staff members teach RA how build community using RP. RAs who have mastered RP are also encouraged to attend this training.

  • Research has shown that when those in authority work with those they supervise, their employees are happier, more productive, and more willing to do things that promote the greater good of the organization verse their own self-interest. This session will focus on two of the four core concepts of RP, the social discipline window and fair process as a way of improving leadership and supporting organizational development.

  • Conversations that involve diversity, equity, inclusion are notoriously difficult, and even more complicated when facilitators do not understand human behavior or have strong facilitation skills. This session will provide DEI facilitators with restorative practices tools that will help them more effectively navigate these conversations with understanding, grace, humility, humor, and compassion.

bias response management

  • According to the FBI’s 2015 hate crimes statistics, college campuses are the third most common location for bias and hate crimes. As a result, many campuses have taken action, setting up policies, protocols and procedures to help respond to these types of incidents. This session is intended to educate teams on how to communicate the importance of acknowledging, supporting, and responding to bias as a means of creating a more welcoming and open campus community.

  • You know that you need to implement a bias response system and team but are not sure about next steps. This session is designed to support student/academic affairs teams in understanding the necessary steps needed to build a comprehensive system of support for students, faculty and staff who experience bias incidents. This training will include providing examples of policies, procedures, and best protocols for acknowledging, supporting, and responding to bias incidents.

  • Policies, procedures, and best practice protocols are in place, but when the “rubber hits the road” how will the members of your team respond to the myriad of incidents that occur in the classrooms, between students in residence halls, in their clubs and organizations, and even off campus. This session will introduce bias response teams to restorative practice technics that will allow them to respond to bias more effectively with those who have created and experienced harm.

search process management

  • Whether it is in higher education, for-profit businesses, non-profits or government agencies, research continues to validate that creating diverse and inclusive organizations help to maximize on creativity, innovation, and problem solving. In fact, a research study done by McKinsey in 2018 confirmed that compositionally diverse organizations (the differences in identity of its members), outperform less diverse organizations by 35%. This three-day training will provide participants with a myriad of skills to help successfully recruit, hire, and retain a more diverse workforce specific to their organizational needs and culture.

    Day 1 – Data Driven Diversification – What does your organization need and Why!

    Day 2 - Understanding the brain and human behavior during the hiring process and how to build a Hiring Plan

    Day 3 (optional) - Search Process Planning and Retention Initiatives

  • In order to have an effective hiring process that yields positive results, it is important for the hiring official/manager and their designated search chair be on the same page before the process begins. Transparent conversations about running an unbiased process are fundamental for search process success. Are considerations being made about diversifying the team, what is the educational background and/or proficiencies required for the position and are there specific transferable skills being considered? This intimate three-hour training session will help the hiring manager and their search chair think through and prepare for the hiring process by helping to create a realistic timeline, review of the position description, prepare the screening tool, and talk through search committee membership.

  • Before a search committee begins its work, it is important that they participate in a charge meeting that prepares them for the complexity and nuance of searches. This session will help prepare any search committee for their task by explaining their actual roles and responsibilities, the importance of networking, how unconscious bias interferes with the process, how to develop effective screening tools and interview questions and how to manage difficult deliberations through the process.

leadership & organizational development

  • In 2002, Pat Lencioni wrote a best-selling leadership fable called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team; a timeless classic about the pitfalls a team experiences as they grow together in their work environment. Sadly, the lessons in the five dysfunctions are still relevant today, but when paired with innovative leadership tools can be an effective way for teams to evaluate themselves, address their challenges, and become more higher performing. This two-day, retreat style training, is highly interactive and will teach participants what makes a team high functioning and provide them with the tools and skills to make it happen.

specialized workshops

  • Over the past decade, few professions have been under more scrutiny than law enforcement and public safety agencies. Those who are sworn to protect and serve have the challenge of balancing the safety of their communities and themselves, all while navigating societal issues associated with race, cultural, and other identities. This can be even more complicated on college campuses where the diversity of students, faculty and staff is paramount, safety is often taken for granted, and respect for all persons is a part of the social contract. This highly interactive session will help law enforcement officers (police and public safety) understand the complexity of policing in the 21st century by introducing them to terms like intergenerational trauma, unconscious bias, social pain and safety, and shame. Officers will also be provided the opportunity to build stronger communication skills that draw on empathy and culturally responsive practices.

  • We live in a diverse world, and we all have different lived experiences based on our intersecting identities and culture; and these factors often impact how we interact with compliance officers, and our trust in the systems that are designed to support us. This session will help those charged with administering compliance the knowledge and skills needed to help support students, faculty, and staff with their work  

student leadership retreats

  • Created by a University of Vermont (UVM) faculty member and staff members in the Mosaic Center, Racial Aikido is a Student of Color empowerment Retreat designed to affirm their experiences and provide them the skills needed to navigate predominantly White campuses. Held over three-days, Racial Aikido creates an experience where students will get to know each other better as a cohort and learn how to recognize problematic behaviors in their peers, respond respectfully, and replenish their mental health.

  • In 2022, Adnan Giriharadas book “The Persuaders – At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy, he outlines in extensive detail the attempts our enemies are making to dismantle US democracy through the concepts of contempt and dismissal, which fuel polarization and sow doubts in our governmental and democratic systems. But he also argues that there are still millions of Americans who he calls the Persuaders, who are willing to sit in the discomfort of difficult dialogue to help bridge the communication divide and strengthen relationships and community. This student retreat takes the concepts of the Persuaders and puts them into action by bringing students of opposing viewpoints together for a day-long dialogue that allows them to engage with students they consider “other” to help support higher levels of empathy and understanding.

keynote presentations

for students

  • Every year, students from all walks of life take their first steps on college campuses, excited, uncomfortable, and nervous. Many will gravitate to what feels most familiar, while others will venture into uncharted territory all to learn and connect. But college is about change, challenge, and growth, and as we know the best experiences are the ones that take you out of your comfort zones. This funny and highly interactive keynote is designed to help students understand the discomfort they feel as they enter their new academic community, while challenging them to think differently about diversity.

  • As a follow up to their orientation session, first year student’s will go even deeper on the lessons learned during the summer about how to better navigate difference, get out of their comfort zones, and expand their sense of empathy and community.

for professionals

  • One of the most difficult aspects of leading is creating a culture of belonging, one that affirms and empowers those you work with. This keynote is designed to encourage leaders to consider the Harvard Business Review’s endorsed model of Fair Process as a way to lead with people in pursuit of more welcoming, inclusive, and equitable work environments.

  • Once a res lifer, always a res lifer. This keynote is an affirming reminder to res life professionals that their time in housing is well spent, as it provides them all the necessary skills they need to grow and ascend to their next professional endeavor. A perfect session for res life and housing associations.

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