Building Capacity for Transformative Racial Justice Practices Initiative Receives Outstanding Social Justice Collaboration Award

UMass Amherst’s “Building Capacity for Transformative Racial Justice Practices” (TRJP) learning sequence received the “Outstanding Social Justice Collaboration Award” at the College Student Educators International (ACPA) annual convention held in Saint Louis, Missouri from March 6 to 9.

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This initiative involves 28 professional staff who work in a range of student-facing roles in student affairs and academic affairs, including six schools and colleges. Initially funded by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education’s Higher Education Innovation Fund, this program was designed to build the capacity of student-facing professional staff to create and sustain more racially-affirming spaces with the student groups they advise, supervise, teach and coach.

The project was initiated, and continues to be supported, by a team of faculty and students from the College of Education's Social Justice Education concentration and professional educators in Student Affairs and Campus Life; Undergraduate Student Success; and Workplace Learning and Development.

Participants have valued their learning throughout multiple components of this sustained effort, sharing that they “valued the cross-department connections,” and noting that this effort “felt deeper and more honest than other endeavors,” and “at its core is about building connections to unify against racial inequity.”

Some highlights of this effort are nice encapsulated by three of the participants:

• Felicia Griffin-Fennell (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences): “I longed for a like-minded community whose goal centered on developing strategies to improve campus relations pertaining to racism; I found that community in TRJP.”
• April McNally (Student Affairs and Campus Life): “I found this experience crucial to my job as an educator and my identity as a white person as I continue my journey to engage in more antiracist practices and advocate for racial justice on systemic levels.”
• Adam Ortiz (Undergraduate Student Success): “We are all walking away better equipped to have conversations about racism and antiracist work with our students, colleagues and supervisors.”