It's On Us Webinar

Good evening. Everyone I'm doctor, Marita Gilbert. I am the Dean of institutional equity and inclusive excellence at Juniata College. We're so glad that you could join us this evening for orientation web and R we'd like to take this time to kind of go through some information that you'll need prior to coming to campus. We will share some information with you and then hopefully you will engage with us in some dialogue and ask us some questions at the end.

So I'm going to start off but I want to make sure that I say to you that I am just one person of a team that will speak to you. This evening and talk to you all about all of the inclusive excellence measures that we are trying to integrate here at Juniata College. I often say that I have probably one of the best jobs on campus because I really do get to touch each part of campus and make sure that we are embedding values of equity diversity and inclusion into all that we do.

Uhm I get to do some things that incorporate both our all of our students or faculty in our staff. So I lead initiatives that range from working with faculty to develop inclusive classroom spaces. I partner with our student life staff to ensure that we are providing diverse Co. Curricular experiences and I also get to encourage students to see themselves in ways that challenge them and encourage them to be their self so.

Engaging high impact practices like study abroad and even super intern ships like the Shepherd Consortium, which really interrogates the effects and implications of poverty.

So I always like to start off by thinking about why we're here right and so, if we think about the word orientation are great friends at Websters. Dictionary talk about orientation as really a process that gets folks acclimated or provides information for them about the environment in which they will encounter.

And so tonight, we'd like to talk with you, a little bit about some of the work that we're doing across campus, but also ways in which you can partner with us and how we planned a partner with parents and students and Families, as students transition from their high school time to being young adults.

So as students if you are joining us as a student you will hear a message throughout your orientation process that goes something like this so it's on us right that each of us has right Anna responsibility. While we're here on campus to live and learn respectfully right so that we really do cultivate a sense of community whether we're learning and curricular spaces in our classroom spaces, whether we're engaging in Co curricular practices.

Or whether we're spending time in the larger Juniata community.

So perhaps there was a time when we relied heavily on our parents on our families on teachers on friends to guide us in our decision making, but now it's on us. So it's on us. Each of us to always give our best effort.

It's on us to speak and act with integrity always and it's on us to interrupt harmful behaviors and speech when we observe it.

Alright, we're testing the technology here, so I talked a little bit about some of the work that I do around inclusive excellence. And so when we talk about this idea of it's on us. It looks different ways across campus and so I'm going to point out just a couple of things to you. On this slide, so you'll see to the left there is an image.

Of myself and some faculty members. We attended a conference at Muhlenberg College in which we talked about ways to really diversify who's on our campuses right and so some of that was about. Yes, faculty that are on our campuses, but also the ways in which we are teaching diverse students. And so as we talk about the role of education in educating our students and all of our community members.

To embrace this message of it's on US. Education isn't limited to just our students. A lot of the work that I do really does work with faculty around this idea of inclusive Petco right So what I mean by that is not just who's in the classroom. But what it is. We're teaching and how it is we're teaching and are we thinking. Intersectionally are we integrating broad perspectives into our curriculum and into the kinds of things that we use in terms of.

Teaching and learning.

And also in terms of Co curricular programming. What are the kinds of events that were providing on campus that expand this dialogue that get us to think about all of our responsibility collective responsibility in terms of its own's.

So I say all of these things really to kind of underscore this message that the work of equity diversity and inclusion is not just the responsibility of one person or one office, but really each of us on campus has a role and responsibility. In this work and so I mentioned to you earlier that I am a part of a team and so I'd like to introduce the next person who will speak to you who was a member of that team and that is doctor, Cynthia Merriweather Defries Good evening everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Um, I have been a faculty member here at Juniata College for the past 20 years and one of the things that I have discovered and continually reinforces for me. The value and the power of change and so you know how you're young People have changed and you're young People will continue to change when they come to our campus. Whatever their dreams and aspiration's were they are not likely to.

Remain, the same as they have been we hope that as they become part of this campus environment. They will be exposed to different perspectives. We have a host of speakers that come in from our equity diversity and inclusion speaker series. We have artists and we have others that common share different perspectives. But we also have students from across the globe. So, your students are likely to interact with People.

That, they are not familiar with here about ideologies an perspectives that are new to them and that process of being exposed to new and different things will also help them develop a sense of who they are in my role as a faculty member an in my role as the assistant director of the office of equity diversity and inclusion. I will hopefully help your students in that process of exploration.

And development of new perspectives developing a new outlook is not a problematic thing developing a new outlook means that your student is going to be better prepared to work in a more diverse world. We know from current research that new employee that employers want their new employees to be able to think critically work independently and interact with a range of different diversity's.

And we hope that we will be the introduction to that process when they are on our campus.

I would like to now introduce the Saber who is the campus ministries coordinator thanks. Thank you for being here. Everyone and I appreciate your time. My name is Lisa Baron Catholic campus minister and I'm also the coordinator Campus Ministry. So I'm going to spend just a few minutes talking about campus ministry and then I'm going to fill in for some folks that aren't here with us tonight. So Campus Ministry's house in the unity house. So it's a place where we like to say we ask a lot of big questions and those questions aren't just about religion.

We have a kitchen and living room and dining room meditation room and so students really think it's a place that they call home and they hang out there just like they were your house so in the morning. When we come in. We can find dirty dishes and glasses and everything else. We have to kind of bring that in a little bit, but it is safe, Braveheart space. We have a lot of one on one conversations a lot of group conversations in those conversations are about life relationships, academics family religion diversity. I have an office upstairs and I can hear everything and that happens downstairs and so.

There's nothing off limits in those conversations that I haven't heard in some things that I probably wish I wouldn't have heard in my past.

A second point clubs in experiences to explore and growth.

Campus Ministry advises several student organizations. We have the Juniata Christian Fellowship Catholic Council. Hello and we in the past. We've had Muslim Student Association and brother and student fellowship, and the universe. Unitarian universalist and we're hoping that some of those groups will.

Find a way back to us and start up again, this year. We also run a program in the fall called faith quest where we take students to different places of worship for the first four weeks of the semester and I'm working on that schedule right now, so if your students interested in finding a home church home away from home. This is a great program for them. You do a lot of interfaith work. We have Bible studies in those Bible studies are run by students. We have book Studies Bible studies in book studies are both run by students.

Factory stuff, Sweet catalog a lot of volunteers that work with our office. We've got a lot of resources in a sense that we are committed to interfaith work. We have a Better Together council which is made up of volunteers across campus of students. Administrators faculty and staff were looking to bring some community members into that group as we've had in the past and the Better Together group is we try within campus ministry and Better Together to use our worldviews in our commonality in our purpose is to understand one another.

We work with the Baker Peace Institute interfaith break trips and provide some leadership opportunities for our students.

We share the unity health space with Office of equity diversity and inclusion and that was intentionally put together 14 years ago and it's been a good partnership to to do the work that both of our offices. Do we have a lot of volunteers at work within Campus Ministry Buddhist behind?

Coalition for Christian outreach and so we've got a lot of exposure for our students to have that conversation and I would be happy to answer any questions later if you have those questions.

Somebody is going to push me to the next slide. I am I am not the chaplain. So what was the chaplain anyway. While the chaplain are 2 college chaplains are Ben and Cindy Wladimir, who served as the pastors of Stone Church of the brother, which is right beside the campus. If you've been to campus. You will have seen stone church. They are not in town today. So I'm gonna try to do a little bit of their work here. They are new to this position though they have been chaplains for college campuses hospitals.

And now service pastors have stone church and So what they would want you to know is why do you need a college chaplain? What do you call the college chaplet for an besides those bad things in the grieving and all the sad things that we do. It's also a great opportunity to Coloma College Chapel for the happy things to celebrate the moments when we get to the last slide their Phone numbers are there, but their Phone numbers are also on the website that we would share that with you so that if you do have questions or.

If your students feeling overwhelmed or there's something really positive happening in their life and you like somebody to maybe talk to them and help them figure that out, maybe they're getting a job offer for an internship for the summer and trying to discern that or maybe something maybe they're grieving so there are some different reasons to call the college chaplains and they would love to have that exposure to your students.

And I think I'm going to turn it over to Dan Cook Huffman. Thank you. Lisa hi everyone, my name is Dan Cook Hoffman. I am the associate Dean of students at Tieline coordinator here at Julietta and I'm going to talk a little bit with you about some of the partnerships and Prevention programming that we have on campus that invite your students into or all Judy out of students into conversation and action about making sure that each of us takes responsibility.

To to contribute to a safe respectful inclusive community.

Where People can learn and grow without fear of harm?

We just had a being outside the door here, so we're wondering if there's a truck that ran into something or not sure but look OK.

It's not just a truck making a turn and they're not going to make it so will stay on track anyway, so I'll start by.

By talking a little bit about one of the programs that we've developed.

It is an upstander and bystander program called Green Dot, an all of your students are all Juniata students will have the opportunity to become engaged in this program. It just to die a little deeper into that for a moment just a snapshot. One of the core pieces of that program is to help students learn to to do something to stand up, and to become an active bystander if they see something like a harassing situation or bullying situation or some other kind of.

Bias related incident or discrimination students are encouraged to develop the skills to stand up, and to try to engage in conversation, and do something about addressing that problem on campus. So we teach students in that program to be direct if they feel confident comfortable to do that, or to delegate that to someone else. Another authority on campus or even to distract this situation so that they can buy some time so someone else can step in and help in this situation.

And one of the features of that program as well is that it helps students to identify the barriers that they might have internally to action In other words, anytime that we confront or observe or our participants in weather as perpetrators targets in activities that may not be fully wholesome or positive.

We run into our own biases, we run into barriers. We run into you know sort of anxieties and fears that emotions that are inside of us that can cause us not to act in the way we really should or would want to in our best moments and so that that's just a little snapshot into that program. We're really excited about that. You can go on to the next slide. We actually got a grant from the.

Pennsylvania governor's office the it's an S Grant, which helps us with that. Green dot bystander up standard program and we have the next person will hear from a moment is our director for violence prevention and she has put together an ambassador program for students who this fall and into the rest of the year. The remainder of this year will be training.

Hopefully the entire campus community all students in the green dot up. Stander bystander program and we hope that will help contribute to the kinds of conversations an?

Sort of responsibility and respect that are at the core of what Judy is really about.

And then finally before I turn it over to Jody. I want to talk a little bit about some of the other partnerships that we've had a great privilege and honor to be apart of in the last couple of years and how those partnerships contribute to the work. We're doing to create a safe respectful campus were date of all the creative People who live here. So let me start a little bit by talking about type online. I mentioned earlier that I'm at Tieline.

Coordinator and many of you have probably heard about Title IX and historically. We think of Title IX is being something about equity in sports. But it's much bigger than that and it really is about making sure it's it's a law that was passed in 1972 signed into law by Richard Nixon then president.

Um and it's designed to cause us to make sure there are no barriers to People accessing their educational opportunities on the basis of sex and gender and so it's more recently, the focus of Title IX has been on making sure that we are addressing instances of interpersonal violence, particularly sexual violence domestic and dating violence and stalking.

And we have put a great deal of work into training staff on campus and training students to understand our policies and our expectations, and our aspirations for them and so in partnership with lots of other offices on campus and off campus. The Title IX. Office is one of those focal points for that work. We also have received In addition to the governor's craft that I mentioned earlier for it's on us. We also received the US Department of Justice Grant.

From the office on violence against women.

Um and that has provided great resources and opportunities for us to also enhance our partnerships with local community with domestic violence shelter and the abuse network and the local hospital, the DA's office that local police for example.

Um.

I'll let Jody talk a little bit about the spot in a moment when she would she comes on, but two last things I want to mention one Love Foundation is a program that we adopted this last year at a partnership that we're developing that help students really understand domestic or dating violence and how those warning signs of a partner who might be too controlling or have the wrong attitudes about mutuality and respect in a relationship.

How those warning signs can be seen and how you can avoid escalation and get out or relationships that are really harmful for you and then finally very proud to mention that work at Judy out of men's group.

I and some other staff and faculty members and students a couple of years ago started the Mens group and we are a group of men who are interested in contributing to explorations in conversations about men's roles in violence and men's roles in perpetuating sort of cultures of domination and biased behavior, particularly around gender issues. So we meet weekly and we partner with other organizations and groups on campus.

To have conversations, and activities that really support mutuality and respect and consent and that really helped hold men accountable to those ideals so that's just a snapshot of some of the partnerships and the programs and the things that we are working on around prevention and trying to bring all students into you know their best selves and contributing to the health and well being of our community so.

Look forward to some of your questions and conversation little later. I'll now turn over to Jody all files.

Hello everybody my name is Jody old house on the director of the office for the prevention of interpersonal violence, which is very pretty among name and People like to sometimes called Director Violence Prevention, which is fine. Dan mentioned the spot earlier, the spot is the nickname or the acronym for my office. The students named at the safe place to talk as where students come for all sorts of concerns and issues and they come to find resources.

When I talk to you for minute about this summer before college. What might be going on in your house. Everybody's house is different as we know, but here's some thoughts. We've heard from some students there. There, thinking, I've graduated. I am just so done with high school on to the next basically. Woo Hoo and I know my daughter is now a rising senior at a college had many of those thoughts, maybe your students do.

Develop mentally, though what are most of our children thinking I'm invincible nothing will happen to be? I know everything after all, I've graduated high school you know what else is there to know.

So if we think about.

As an adult what we're thinking as apparent as a Guardian as somebody who cares for the student were thinking please. Be safe, please. Be careful, and things we might say to our children use good judgement choose your friends wisely make good decisions be responsible. All those things come out of our mouth and go through our heads and perhaps our child is thinking wow. This is a lot of responsibility.

Or for others they might just be singing along on their head like Walla because they can't deal with any of that it's not going to happen to them.

However, most of our kids deep down inside what might they really be thinking. I hope I fit in.

Will I make France?

But what if I'm not accept it. I really am sort of scared how will I know what to do and the People. You've heard from so far on this team on other webinars from Juniata College. We are the People that will help them know what to do, we're here to help them when they're scared when they feel like they're not fitting him because as we know in the past. We've often times told our children. What to do what not to do an what to think, but that's changed.

The new paradigm is we want to and we must empower our students and give them tools and options looking chart their own course teach them how to become engaged by standard help them become proactive members of society and let them know it's OK to ask for help. And if you look at one of our logos. It's on US, Juniata College. Yes, we are all in this together. It's on us all of us faculty, staff and students to help each other through this.

So you as a parent as a Guardian as somebody who cares about a college student. What can you do let your child your student note if you need help it's OK just ask?

Nobody is perfect mistakes will happen.

Reach out to counseling reach out to the Deans office reach out to campus ministry reach out to the office of EDI visit the spot speak with appear ambassador speak with an advocate basically remember that self care is absolutely not selfish.

So I'm going to just shift a little bit. I'm leave. I'm going to sum it up with giving you kind of a good description of the different teams, but how we all work together and Inter dependently a couple things we want you to remember if nothing else. That yes, we are doing the work to integrate values of equity diversity and inclusion throughout our campus. We are encouraging all of our students to be engaged upstanders right, so when you see behavior that is troublesome too.

Intervene to be the best disruptor of bad behavior when you see it. We're doing work to prevent interpersonal violence and all of that is really to create a community of understanding.

So the image on this slide that you see is actually a picture that was taken from our study abroad trip to the Dominican Republic.

Uhm I have included it for 2 reasons right uhm and I will talk about them in a in a few moments.

What it will say about it is yes it is a cultural emergen program?

We allow our students to be involved, not only in service learning, but to really be involved in asset based community development right. So to deep to see communities from their best from their assets from their strengths while they're living and learning in that community. The other reason I'm particularly proud of. This study abroad experiences because it really does incorporate students often least likely to participate in study abroad this year, almost all of our.

Participants are first generation college students mini for all of them. I think this was their first time out of the country and at the end of the trip almost all of them were eager to return either back to the Dominican Republic are ready to engage in their next study abroad trip.

So I include this up for a couple of reasons again because it dema demonstrates the various ways in which we really am incorporate inclusive excellence through our work on campus. But if you read the quote at the Top of our slide really one of the things that we're trying to do here at Juniata College is to foster graduates who pursue knowledge act ethically engage with the world through interdisciplinary and in our cultural lenses that is in fact, one of our institutional learning outcomes.

Right so yes, while it is a part of the edi programming that encapsulates again. An institutional learning outcome. This is also one of the experiences that prepare students with skills that lead to career success. And so, if I'm going to make this pivot as we prepare to close our presentation.

It is to say you know the So what? Why is all this important? Yes, we want our students to be their best cells during their time here on campus but we're also preparing them to go out into the world, either as scholars as researchers as creators and innovators as professionals as business owners.

We do that because we understand that curricular and Co Curricular Engagement.

Of inclusive excellence is significant for many reasons right. We know that fluency in equity diversity and inclusion prepare students to think critically intersectionally and to work collaboratively.

Here's another thing that we know we know that employers often call us and say that they have many candidates who are well versed in their content areas, but are less able to adapt the knowledge that they have to work with diverse communities.

To think critically about implications for different populations and what that means for them ask professionals. How are they integrating what they know to do work with different kinds of People and what does it mean in real time to make the debate decisions?

Early exploration of diverse disciplines encourages not only development of what we call here. POE's or programs of emphasis at other schools. They tend to talk about these as majors right. But we are also preparing you for a well informed career and so as we close. You've met some of us here. Tonight that are doing this work across campus. There's some other folks who could not join us this evening but I just want to point them out to you.

So Jonathan Revolico and will be our lead counselor this year and counseling services.

His contact information is listed there for you.

Patty Kluge is also our coordinator of Accessibility services and learning diversity's and so.

Even if you're not sure if you need an accommodation. It's always great to set up a time to talk with Patty to determine what is the best course of action for you while you're on campus. You heard Lisa talk about our chaplains reverence bin and Cindy Latimer and they are just across the street from us at the stone church.

And are there any other resources that may not have made the list but we think we should include as part of our team?

Alright so we wanted to make sure that you had some time for questions. So here's what we thought we would do.

We know that it can be a little difficult to ask the 1st question on a webinar. But what we thought we would do is just have a little conversation with each other and hopefully that will give some folks some courage to ask us. Some questions so I've prepared just 1st question for each of us on the panel to answer and I'd like for each of you to take a moment and to describe examples of programming in each of your area So what are you?

I talked about both curricular and Co curricular kinds of things that we have initiatives on campus. If you could describe for our listeners. Some of the programming that is related to inclusive excellence.

So I can speak a little bit 1st. I'll just take a minute. This is Jody Althouse, again director of the spot.

We do a lot of work on campus, with different groups of students. We do it by request and we also do it through actual programming that we schedule with coaches and with athletic teams and with professors on campus, so different topics come up sometimes will get a request for a program just unhealthy relationships. In general or maybe stalking 101 or sexual salt 101, dating violence, 101, calling it that just to give you a little bit of A.

A few into what the program could be about. We have 10 highly trained students on campus who will be sharing the green dot program with all students on campus. This semester through short one hour programs. We also have trained one left facilitators who will be sharing. The film called escalation with students and talking about safe dating relationships. So our programs are vast and varied and thereby requests, thereby drop in there by need.

Assess needs through students through arres through student groups through faculty, staff, etc. So pretty much the door is open for whatever programs are needed. We can create a program for our students on campus.

Then.

Thank you, yeah, Dan Kaufman again the associate Dean of students antiblack coordinator. I'll say a little bit about a couple of courses for those of you, especially who have students coming to Julietta that we offer an actually require online for new students as they arrive to campus and into the fall semester. And so everfi is our partner in that in that online course offering and there are 2 courses that your students.

If they're coming to Juliet at this fall will learn about suit probably early next week. They'll get an email inviting them to complete one course called alcohol. Edu, which is designed to look at alcohol and other drug use on college campus and to help students make good decisions about about those issues, and also the other courses called Sexual Assault Prevention for undergraduates. And that is designed to help familiarize students with our policies and expectations.

And also with the resources and processes that are available on campus to support students if they?

You know get into situations that are harming to them in her personally, but also to help them develop skills to avoid interactions that might that might be harmful to them.

So we expect all students to start those online courses before they arrive for the fall semester, so that want to look for that again next week.

And just a quick copy out, we had actually intended and told earlier Orianthi's in June that those courses would be coming out like at the end of July. But our partner made some last minute changes and some upgrades to the platform that they're working on and so it will be a better experience. Even though you're not going to get introduced and invited to participate in those courses until sometime next week. But we're excited about that. It's a It's a great partnership and it really helps too.

Get students all on the same page about our expectations in our community norms and a little later in the fall semester. Also, a part of the everfi online course offerings students will also be required to take an equity diversity and inclusion course and we wait for them to take that course to a little bit into the fall because we want students to sort of settle into campus a little bit.

And to start recognizing the diverse diverse students and others that they're going to interact with and then have kind of in those interactions and in those experiences have material then to really make that course more real and also because we don't want to overburden #3 courses all at once in the summer before they rock so anyway. If you have a student coming this fall. Please tell them to be watching for that information and encourage them to engage with that material.

And we look forward to seeing them soon doctor, one of the things that I would encourage you to.

Encourage your student to explore is the thing that is different and so there are academic programs. Academic speakers that will be here that are not in your students discipline. There will be cultural events that might be unfamiliar. This is a wonderful opportunity for your student to take the initiative and learn about things that they might not be it might not have been exposed to previously there are no wrong.

Answers in terms of what to explore an what to begin with when you're on campus. So check out the speakers that are coming to campus look to your academic disciplines, but also look beyond your academic discipline. If your student is coming as a scientist. You might encourage them to go and see a play or see one of our musical ensembles perform on campus if your student is an athlete.

You might encourage them to go to the science talk. There are a range of different opportunities available on campus and that's part of the beauty of diversity here at Juniata so encourage your student to stretch and grow.

Lisa so I'll just add a little bit to what they are said. and I would encourage your student to do all those things. But they're going to run out of time at some .2 so.

Get them a calendar or schedule, so that they can keep that and keep track of some of the things that they do. But some of the things that campus ministry has done in the past and continuing to look forward to doing this year. Our community service trip. We're looking, maybe over fall break this year to do something. As a retreat empty. Bowls dinner, which most of the programming that we do is in conjunction with student groups on campus or students will come to us and say we've got this great idea. Can you help us do that we had a student last year if you wanted to do divali, but needed some support to do that so.

We have to do it, the following we are Better Together council wanted to do a panel discussion around. Inter faith and spirituality and how that plays into the environment and your point of view, so we do a lot of those types of things are standard dinner working with Hello. People dinner is to work with the community in our student groups on campus different student groups from our pottery students to our Catholic Council students to students who have who are concerned about.

Food Securities and insecurities. We do mindfulness in conjunction with the counseling office. We do stress management for students who are interested in learning? How to destress or meditate and so we've got a lot of different programs going on our biggest program that we used to do is pasta dinners and just because of what has happened with the pasta dinners in our staffing. We are changing that up for this year. I'm looking to do some more intimate dinners within the unity house itself, so.

Your students and check those out.

Alright. Well, this is Doctor G again. I want to thank each of you for spending your evening with us. Um we don't see any questions, yet will take about another 30 seconds just to give you all a chance to ask us any burning questions in the event that you don't have any all of our contact information is listed for you and you can. Feel free to reach out to each of us or any of us with any questions, you might have.