When: March 10, 2020 / 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Where: Michael P. O’Brien Athletics & Recreation Center, Arena
Hosted by the Divisions of Inclusive Diversity and Equity and Student Affairs in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Democracy
St. Mary’s Day is a campus-wide event focusing on “civil discourse” and its potential impact on our campus.
The impact of the 2016 election on our campus climate showed us that we have work to do around cultivating an environment where all students, faculty, and staff feel empowered to engage across lines of ideological and experiential differences. As the November 2020 election draws near, we think it is important that we make time to calibrate as a community through a day of reflection on principles and practices that, if taken up in real and consistent ways, will help us navigate the coming months and beyond.
In order to promote broad engagement from students, faculty, and staff, we are cancelling classes and suspending all non-essential operations as means to facilitate student, staff, and faculty participation in the day as a “class of the whole.”
Agenda:
8:30 – 9:00 am Doors Open / Continental Breakfast & Networking
9:00 – 9:15 am Opening Remarks
9:15 – 10:30 am Dr. Ashley Woodson
Topic: Deep Civility, An Inclusive Framework for Civility on College Campuses
10:45 am – 12:15 pm Mx. Lena Tenney
Topic: Tools for Interrupting Bias
12:30 – 2:00 pm Lunch Sessions
- Faculty ~ Cole Cinema
* Faculty who missed the deadline to order lunch may still attend and bring a lunch.
Speaker: Dr. Ashley Woodson
Topic: Deep Civility in the Classroom and Curriculum - Staff ~ MPOBARC Arena
* Staff who missed the deadline to order lunch may still attend and bring a lunch.
Speaker: Mx. Lena Tenney
Topic: Staff Super Powers: Embracing Our Role in Campus Climate - Students ~ Great Room
(No Registration Required)
World Café Discussions
Topic: Finding Your Voice at SMCM
2:30 – 4:00 pm Speaker: TBD
Topic: Critical Literacy and Public Discourse
4:00 – 4:30 pm Wrap Up and Final Remarks
Our goals for the day:
1. Develop a framework for understanding “civility” on our campus.
As a concept and as a set of practices, “civility” can be quite fraught, so grappling with the challenges and utility of “civility” is a difficult but important starting point. In order to shape and facilitate this conversation, we’ve invited Dr. Ashley Woodson (she/her/hers) to speak. Dr. Woodson is the William and Jean Stauffer Faculty Fellow of Education at the University of Missouri – Columbia, and her areas of expertise include citizenship and civic engagement. The focus of her time with us will be around what an inclusive framework for deep civility on college campuses looks like.
2. Cultivate an understanding of the ways in which implicit and explicit forms of bias challenge community building and to provide tools and practices for identifying and interrupting bias-incidents.
For this goal we have invited guest speaker Lena Tenney (they/them/theirs) who is the Coordinator of Public Engagement for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. At the Kirwan Institute, Mx Tenney directs the facilitation portfolio of the Race and Cognition Program, which includes traveling around the nation to facilitate trainings on implicit bias and being an active bystander.
3. Discuss critical literacy and the responsibility that we have to one another to be as thoughtful and informed in our engagements as possible.
The final goal will be addressed by Ms. Andrea Quijada (she/her/hers), a nationally recognized media literacy expert and consultant, providing services to organizations and schools on a range of media literacy and media justice topics. One of her most recent projects was a curriculum for Native Public Media on journalism and the First Amendment at Standing Rock. She is the former executive director of Media Literacy Project (MLP) where she spent 13 years developing media literacy curriculum and providing media literacy trainings to various audiences across the United States and in countries such as Britain, Uganda, Germany, and Mexico.
Speaker Bios
Ashley N. Woodson (She/Her/Hers)
Ashley N. Woodson is a mother, other-mother, award-winning writer and advocate for just schooling. Her teaching and research focus on stories of belonging told by Black and Brown kids, emphasizing how education (under) prepares them for democratic leadership. Dr. Woodson has facilitated dynamic professional development across the country on themes such as teaching difficult topics, supporting psychological safety in classrooms, and enacting culturally relevant pedagogy. She provides research-based equity consulting as Associate Director for the CARTER Center for K-12 Black History Education, and through her past appointment as faculty fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban Education. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Saginaw Valley State University; and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from Michigan State University. She is currently the William and Jean Stauffer Faculty Fellow of Education at the University of Missouri – Columbia. Dr. Woodson has published in Urban Education, Equity & Excellence in Education, Social Education and other prestigious journals. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR), the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and in The Atlantic.
Lena Tenney (they/them/theirs)
Lena Tenney is Coordinator of Public Engagement for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. They direct the facilitation portfolio of the Race and Cognition Program, which includes traveling around the nation to facilitate trainings on implicit bias and being an active bystander. Mx. Tenney is a co-author of the 2017 edition of the Kirwan Institute’s State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review publication and a co-creator of the Kirwan Institute’s Implicit Bias Module Series. Their interests include critical race studies, Whiteness, adult learning, higher education, and public policy. They are interested in continually identifying and implementing strategies that encourage active engagement with topics that are often considered difficult to discuss.
A trained Intergroup Dialogue facilitator, Mx. Tenney has a background in inclusive education and coalitional activism work. They are a founding member of two grassroots community activist groups that have sought to ensure legal protections for and institutional inclusion of LGBTQ individuals at the municipal and campus levels. Mx. Tenney previously served on the LGBTQ Student Success Task Force for The Ohio State University and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for TransOhio—a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for transgender individuals and communities.
Mx. Tenney holds a Masters of Education and a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma. They also graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelors of Arts in Religious Studies and History from the University of Oklahoma.
Andrea Quijada (SHE/HER/HERS)
Ms. Andrea Quijada is a nationally recognized media literacy expert and provides consulting services to organizations and schools on a range of media literacy and media justice topics. One of her most recent projects was a curriculum for Native Public Media on journalism and the First Amendment at Standing Rock. She is the former executive director of Media Literacy Project (MLP) where she spent 13 years developing media literacy curriculum and providing media literacy trainings to various audiences across the United States and in countries such as Britain, Uganda, Germany, and Mexico. While at MLP, Ms. Quijada served on the Consumer Advisory Committee of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) where she participated in the Universal Service Working Group making recommendations to the FCC on media policy to increase access to media tools for underserved communities. Prior to her work at MLP, she was a community organizer and advocate on issues of anti-violence and racial and economic justice, whereby she founded and co-founded multiple organizations in New Mexico. She has also served on many non-profit and foundation boards throughout her career including Generation Justice, Enlace Comunitario, Albuquerque Pride, Young Women United, Fierce Pride, and Astraea Foundation. She earned her M.A. in Art History from the University of New Mexico where she is presently a doctoral student. Ms. Quijada was a contributor to the book Media Education for a Digital Generation. She is a 2020 Voice of Witness Story Lab Fellow.