Office of Access + Equity

The Office of Access and Equity (OAE) supports the College of Arts and Architecture in establishing a culture of anti-racism and anti-oppression that embraces individual identities, fosters inclusion, broadly promotes equity and a culture of belonging for students, faculty and staff.

In February 2023, Associate Dean Wilson summarized the work her office has been doing with colleagues in the College of Arts & Architecture in her second All-College Virtual Town Hall: What Does Change Look Like? (click link to watch replay). She shared the context for how she is viewing our current educational environment and the Town Hall included a panel of administrators, directors, faculty and student representation that shared what change looks like in their respective areas. The A&A community had the opportunity to place themselves on a continuum of individual change, and to discuss possible next steps in moving towards personal activism and a better understanding of equity and inclusion.

…you can do NOW to foster equity, inclusion and belonging

Use Pronouns. Respect individual preferences by sharing and allow others to acknowledge individual identities when introducing themselves in the classroom, online, and at events. Include your preferred pronouns in prominent places like email signatures, on zoom, name badges and business cards. Penn State’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity offers suggested formats for email signatures, suggested language to address pronouns in syllabi and handbooks, as well as other resources, like gender diversity terminology.

Find authentic ways to acknowledge the land. Penn State developed a land acknowledgement in collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples Student Association and the Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance. Start by learning about the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 – a part of the great land grab that funded the establishment of agricultural-based colleges such as Penn State with expropriated Indigenous lands. Think of a land acknowledgement as a starting point to learn more about Indigenous America.

(an occasional series)

In a recent Op-Doc in the New York Times (February 22, 2023), multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator Angelo Madsen Minax, shows a work originally commissioned for the exhibition Ghosts of Lost Futures, (2021) at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Minax was one of ten artists invited to make work from the news archive the year the Southern Methodist University’s G. William Jones Film and Video Collection in Dallas was founded in 1970. These news clips from over 50 years ago, are dramatically edited together to highlight the same issues we are dealing with today. As Minax remarks: “…climate disaster, racially motivated violence, police brutality, poverty, war, domestic violence, housing crisis and voter fraud,” are part of the same coverage in 2023 news cycles. He reimagined the figures from the 1970 coverage as, “…pseudo-divine bearers of a potential truth…” If this is true, it is interesting to consider: have we learned or heeded anything from these “truth bearers” to affect the direction or our responsibility to our future–our present today?

Video length: 8m 47s
Event source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/opinion/stay-with-me-world-devastating-place.html

Imagining a culture of equity + belonging
Where do we go from here?

A Report to the College of Arts and Architecture

My Fall 2021 listening tour initiated a period of listening as research about the culture of the College of Arts and Architecture and individual concerns regarding equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. I spoke with more than 50 representatives of the college, including students, staff, faculty, college leadership and administration, as well as a few members of the university-at-large.

My role in this inaugural position is to lead with the cooperation and collective support of this community in realizing, among the others, one of four important college strategic goals to:

…establish a culture of anti-racism and anti-oppression that embraces individual identities, fosters a culture of inclusion and promotes equity through our curricula, values, standards, ideals, policies and practices.”

There is good news: the college has already started down this path of welcoming and fostering diversity. My report provides significant details regarding the listening tour process and data analysis, as well as key recommendations and goals. Moreover the report highlights other equity issues and actions impacting the college.

View the Listening Tour Report