Professional Staff Participate in a ‘Transformative Racial Justice Practices’ Spring-Summer Program

A committed cohort of 28 professional staff from academic affairs and student affairs recently completed the “Building Capacity for Engaging in Transformative Racial Justice Practices” (TRJP) learning sequence. This program, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education’s Higher Education Innovation Fund was designed to build capacity of student-facing professional staff to become more confident, skilled and prepared to hold space for conversations within and across racial/ethnic differences, and create and sustain more racially-affirming spaces with the student groups they advise, supervise, teach and coach.  The project was co-led and supported by a team of faculty and students from the College of Education's Social Justice Education concentration and educational leaders and professionals in Student Affairs and Campus Life, Student Success and Workplace Learning and Development.  The program consisted of a May institute, five-week small-group practice labs in June, and two reconvening meetings in July and August.

On August 18, TRJP participants completed their second reconvening meeting. This gathering provided participants a focused exploration to strategize together how to apply the learning and skills of transformative racial practices to their work with students and colleagues in their workplaces.

Barbara J. Love, professor emeritus of social justice education, College of Education, opened the reconvening event with a keynote talk “Transformative Racial Justice: Three Strategies for Student and Academic Affairs Professionals,” inspiring participants to create circles of support and accountability in order take steps to apply what they practiced and learned in the TRJP learning sequence in their work roles on campus.

Ongoing program assessment is highlighting the positive impact of this effort.  Participants have valued all components of this sustained, interactive experience, specifically the 5-week practice labs and sustained engagement with peers.  Reflecting on the initiative, participants shared that they “valued the cross-department connections,” and noted that this “felt deeper and more honest than other endeavors,” and “at its core is about building connections to unify against racial inequity.”