Equity Professional Development Offerings
The following is a list of Professional Development Offerings for Faculty to use to improve their skills and abilities regarding equity in their teaching, counseling, and other services. Equity work is best viewed as an ongoing practice of continual improvement. While there cannot be a checklist or a minimum number of hours needed to be considered "equity trained," for the benefit of your students, please plan on spending a significant amount of time each semester learning and applying new equity skills. The following is a list of resources to help you as you strive to become more equity minded.
To serve on a faculty selection committee, faculty are required to participate in at least two hours of training from among this list (within the previous 12 months) according to AP 7120. You are responsible for keeping track of your equity trainings and reporting them to your division chair before you can serve on a faculty selection committee. These equity trainings are in addition to the EEO training that is required to serve on any selection committee for the District.
Is there an equity training opportunity that you would like us to add to this list? If so, please submit your proposed training or activity here:
Proposed trainings must satisfy the following requirements:
- Provide professional development specifically on the topic of equitable, culturally sustaining, and/or anti-racist practices in teaching, counseling, or other faculty service areas.
- Reflect current research and practices.
- Equity Professional Development Activity Proposal Form
At regularly-scheduled Faculty Professional Development Committee meetings, the committee will vote whether or not to approve proposed training opportunities:
- Each submission will be reviewed based on the above criteria
- If the committee approves the training, the Coordinator for Faculty Professional Development and Equity Education will add the opportunity to the list of Equity Professional Development Offerings and will notify the proposer of the approval status.
- If the committee does not approve the training, the Coordinator for Faculty Professional Development and Equity Education will notify the proposer of the status and the reason(s) for denying the proposal.
- Current Flex Offerings, JANUARY 2025 (1/15/2025, 1/16/2025)
- Previous Flex Offerings - Archive of Flex offerings from 2019 through 2024
Approved Equity Training Offerings & Information:
*Some options require fees or registration. Please reach out to the Faculty Professional Development Committee or Student Equity for funding support.
Recorded Session from January 2024 Faculty Retreat
Dr. Brenda Ingram, EdD, LCSW Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, USC Keck School of Medicine, Associate Director, USC Counseling and Mental Health, and Program Director, Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention and Services, USC Student Health Center
Dr. Ingram's talk includes:
- What is trauma?
- Trauma and its response in the brain
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in communities of color
- Prevalence of ACEs in college students
- Trauma impacts on college campuses
- Trauma-informed care
- What does it mean to be trauma-informed?
- Essentials of trauma-informed care
- Self-care when working with students impacted by trauma
Dr. John Pascarella III conducted a 3-part professional learning series to prepare Cuesta College employees to be racial allies working in solidarity with people of color to more effectively advance racial Equity on Campus. In this series, John presented contemporary cases of racial problems, concrete examples of racial allyship, and practical strategies that faculty, staff, and administrators can use in their classrooms, workplaces and campus spaces. Each session included justice-oriented exercises that engage participants in opportunities to reflect critically on race and racism, analyze the sources of racial socialization, interrogate individual complicity and reproduction of racial bias, and practice actionable racial allyship strategies. This series is organized as three 2-hour professional learning sessions.
Learn from Dr. Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, how and why racism persists as a form of vision and division. Dr. Benjamin will share the challenges faced by community colleges related to technology, data and equity, including teaching and learning online, and how this impacts the student experience. She will offer a toolkit to better understand how racism distorts our relationships, communities, and institutions, and what we as individuals and as a campus can do about it.
Cuesta College, along with over 60 other community colleges, is part of the CA Community College Equity Leadership Alliance working towards racial equity through monthly professional development eConvenings. These high-quality professional learning experiences were held virtually throughout the 20-21 academic year. Each focused on one specific topic – see an abbreviated list below in Table 1. Four-hour learning modules were delivered by experts who teach in the USC Equity Institutes. These instructors are well respected leaders of national higher education associations, highly-cited professors who study race relations and people of color, chief diversity officers and other experienced administrators, and specialists from the USC Race and Equity Center. eConvening modules focused mostly on strategies and practical approaches. Instructors used contemporary cases of equity dilemmas and racial crises on community college campuses. Emphasis was placed on learning from sagas that have recently occurred elsewhere; learning how to get ahead of situations and reducing risk of crisis; and learning actionable equity leadership strategies. Participants learned about evolving trends pertaining to diverse community college students and employees.
Alliance member colleges also participate in a trio of campus climate surveys on a three-year rotational basis – the student survey in year one, the faculty survey in year two, and the staff survey in the third membership year.
Access to Alliance online trainings available for Cuesta employees only. CLICK HERE to access. Cuesta login required.
Table 1: List of eConvening Topics
- Engaging in Productive Conversations About Race
- Fostering and Sustaining Inclusive Classrooms for Students of Color
- Understanding and Addressing Implicit Bias
- Understanding and Confronting Anti-Black Racism
- Meaningfully Integrating Race Across the Curriculum
- Recruiting and Hiring Faculty of Color
- Confronting Explicit Acts of Racism and Racial Violence on Campus
- Equity-Minded Student Support Services
- Understanding Equity and Inequity; Free (approx. 4 hours)
- Ditching Deficit Ideology: The First Step Toward Cultivating and Equity Commitment; (approx. 4 hours)
- Responding to Racial Bias and Microaggressions in Online Environments - (1hr7min)
- Employing Equity-Minded and Culturally Affirming Teaching Practices in Virtual Learning Communities - (1hr25min)
- Addressing Anti-Blackness on Campus: Implications for Educators and Institution - (1hr44min)
- Black Minds Matter Series - (Times Vary)
- Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools - (1hr31min)
There is increasing evidence that students have better academic performance when they are taught by teachers of the same race. However, in the United States this is not often the case, contributing to racial disparities in educational achievement. Dr. Bettina Love explores this dynamic in her new book We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, and argues for dismantling tweaks to curriculum and testing that perpetuate inequality in school in favor of what she calls "abolitionist teaching" which draws on the history of the 19th century abolitionist movement, focusing on integrating lessons on racial violence, oppression, resistance, and social change in the classroom.
- We Want to Do More Than Survive - (56min)
The author of "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain" explains how her personal experiences led her to investigate what children need to have an academic mindset. Dr. Hammond also explains how "grit" and "pep talks" aren't the solution when early learners struggle during The Learning Pit. Check out a copy of Zaretta Hammond's book in the San Francisco Public Library online catalog.
- Culturally Responsive Teaching - (22 min)
- Grading for Equity - Joe Feldman
- Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges and Universities - Dr. Gina Ann Garcia
- From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education - Tia Brown McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, Lindsey Malcome-Piqueux
- Using Student Support (Re)defind's Success Factors to Ensure Student Learning - Diego Navarro & Kathy Malloy
