Intergroup dialogue FLC

Tarah Trueblood from the Center for American and World Cultures (CAWC) has been coordinating the intergroup dialogue sessions this semester, in which some of our majors, 112 students, and graduate students are participating. Next year, they are extending this to faculty and administrators as an FLC; she writes:

I want to give you a heads up that the CAWC will be facilitating an FLC next year to help develop a strategy for embedding intergroup dialogue campus-wide. We are hoping to create a group with about 50% faculty members. Would you share the information below about this FLC with your faculty?

The Center for Teaching Excellence has accepted the proposal to fund a 2019-20 Faculty Learning Community (FLC) called Intergroup Dialogue for Miami Faculty, Staff, and Administrators.

The purpose of this FLC is to forge an internal partnership of faculty, staff, and administrators dedicated to learning and embedding IDG pedagogy. The FLC will work to adopt an IGD model/s, assessment plan, and strategy for embedding IGD theory and practice among Miami faculty, staff and administrators. Such embedding will involve the formation of peer-facilitated intergroup dialogue groups who will engage in purposeful, facilitated, dialogue across social identity differences.

Application Deadline: Friday, April 19, 2019

This FLC will be co-facilitated by Alicia Castillo Shrestha and Tarah Trueblood starting in the fall. We will work out a meeting day and time that works with most schedules. I hope you will join us!

Contact Tarah directly for more information if you are interested, but I would encourage you to consider this opportunity.

Diversity & inclusion events next week

John Singer, PhD: Black Male Athletes’ Education Matters: What’s College Sport Got to do with It?
When: Monday, 4/8 @ 6-7:50pm
Where: 001 Upham Hall
Description: Dr. John Singer will present a talk on his research, which identifies “intersections between race, gender, sport, and education…and diversity and social justice matters in sport organizations, with an emphasis on historically underrepresented and marginalized groups.

Chinese Skit Competition
When: Tuesday, 4/8 @ 6-8pm
Where: Leonard Theatre Peabody Hall
Description: The Confucius Institute and the Department of German, Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures is co-hosting this event for Chinese language students, where they will act out skits and demonstrate their Chinese fluency.

Valeria Luiselli: Asylum Under Siege: Nations, Borders, and Refugees in the Age of Global Migration
When: Wednesday, 4/10 @ 5:30pm
Where: 1000 Farmer School of Business
Description: Working as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking children in the New York City Immigration Court, Valeria Luiselli realized that rather than just translating 40 questions on an intake questionnaire, she was “providing triage to a humanitarian emergency.” She will be presenting a talk related to her book entitled “Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions.”

Kate Welling Lecture: Intelligent Lives
When: Wednesday, 4/10 @ 7pm
Where: 152 Shideler Hall
Description: The first part of this event includes a screening of a film called Intelligent Lives, which details the lives of three young adults with intellectual disabilities. After the film, the night’s host will lead a Q&A.

Dr. Mich Nyawalo: “I’m Muslim Don’t Panic”: Responding to French Islamophobia through Hip-Hop
When: Thursday, 4/11 @ 5:30-7:30pm
Where: 040 Irvin Hall
Description: Dr. Mich Nyawalo will present a talk entitled “I’m Muslim Don’t Panic”: Responding to French Islamophobia through Hip-Hop.

CUR student travel awards

The Psychology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) offers travel awards to students presenting at regional and national conferences. The deadline for the current cycle is April 22, but this is another source for your research assistants to complement department and ORU support. Miami’s institutional membership makes all of our students eligible.

NIH R15 funding prospects

From Jim Oris, OARS:

You may not be aware that NIH recently updated criteria for NIH R15 AREA grants. These grants have always been focused on universities that have a relatively small profile at NIH and have an undergraduate component. The new change gives high priority for research with an undergraduate focus. We predicted that this will allow Miami proposals to be more competitive, and now, based on input from Gary Lorigan (who has served on these panels), it appears that our predictions are correct.

More information can be found here. Both Jim and Gary are willing to consult with faculty interested in pursuing this funding mechanism. I would encourage any of you who are considering options for external funding to take a look at this; the next deadline is June 25.

Diversity & inclusion events next week

Please remember that next week is our very own Diversity & Inclusion Celebration Week, with programming all week and our two workshops on Friday. The associated (public) events are also included below and denoted with **.

Screening of One Day at a Time**
When: Monday, 4/1 @ 3pm
Where: PSY 343
Description: For the first event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Unidos will present a screening of a TV episode detailing the lives of a modern day Cuban-American family. The episode focuses on what it means to identify as Latinx in the wake of micro-aggressions and hateful comments.

LGBTQ+ Allyship Workshop**
When: Tuesday, 4/2 @ 1-2pm
Where: PSY 134
Description: This is the second event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week. Hannah Thompson will host this workshop, where participants will learn the importance of using inclusive language, gain empathy, build cultural respect, and explore ways to create a more inclusive environment.

Coffee with ABPsi**
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 9:30-10:30am
Where: PSY 130
Description: In the third event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, members of the Association of Black Psychologists will host a coffee conversation about adversities individuals from diverse backgrounds face on college campuses.

How to Have Difficult Conversations**
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 1-2pm
Where: PSY 328
Description: In the fourth event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Pankhuri Aggarwal and Natalee Price will host a workshop on how, when, and why faculty, staff, and students should have explicit conversations about the impacts privileged and marginalized identities have on power differentials in academia.

César Chávez Day – Transforming America
When: Wednesday, 4/3 @ 5-9pm
Where: 212 MacMillan Hall
Description: The theme of the César Chávez Day Celebration is “Transforming America: Civil disobedience, social change, and environmental justice.” A reception begins at 5:45, followed by film screening of Dolores, who was an equal partner in co-founding the first farm worker union with César Chávez. After the film, a panel discussion will take place, featuring Miami students and professors.

Healthy Masculinities Workshop**
When: Thursday, 4/4 @ 11am-12pm
Where: PSY 134
Description: In the fifth event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Miami’s Men and Masculinity Committee will host an introduction to masculinity, with a specific focus on the complexities of college-aged men.

Ain’t I a Woman: My Journey to Womanhood
When: Thursday, 4/4 @ 8-11pm
Where: Hall Auditorium (101 S. Campus Ave)
Description: Laverne Cox is the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and in addition to her career, she is a prominent equal rights advocate. Laverne Cox will share an “empowering message of moving beyond gender expectations to live ore authentically.” This is event is free but ticketed.

Diversity Teach-In**
When: Friday, 4/5 @ 3-5pm
Where: PSY 125
Description: In the final event of the Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Celebration Week, Marie Parsons, Annika Goldman, Alejandro Trujillo, and Sarah Dreyer-Oren will present talks on Modifying Intergroup Anxiety, Ageism and Mental Health, Confronting Racist Incidents on a College Campus: Who Should Respond and Why, and Culture and Help-Seeking: Collecting Cross-Cultural Data at Miami.

Asian Cultural Festival
When: Friday, 4/5 @ 5-7pm
Where: Oxford Uptown Park
Description: The Asian American Association is hosting this event to allow the community and Miami students to learn more about the diverse Asian countries. There will be free food, prizes, and performances.

Seeking faculty to pilot e-textbook platform

From Carolyn Haynes, Associate Provost:

I am writing to you about a new and voluntary textbook initiative that could result in significant cost savings to your students as well as ensure that your students have their texts prior to the beginning of the semester or term.

Miami University recently secured a contract for the Unizin Engage platform. The Unizin Engage e-textbook platform allows students to gain easy access to the text via the faculty member’s Canvas Course site. Because Unizin has a partnership with Canvas, the textbook is integrated into the course site for easy viewing and access by students and faculty from day one of the course.

Students in the course will be sent an email informing them of the course text and how to access it via the Canvas course site. Unless students opt out of using this e-textbook, they will be billed via their Bursar account once the semester or term begins.

Students have the ability to highlight and annotate the text as well as download the full textbook and print out the entire book or portions of it on a copy machine. The faculty member will also be able to annotate the text and use the platform’s analytics feature to identify whether students are reading the text.

As part of the Unizin contract, Miami will join a consortium with other institutions using the platform such as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Ohio State University and the entire Florida and Nebraska systems. The sheer size of this consortium enables Unizin to negotiate with all of the major textbook publishers to secure significant cost savings (60% on average) for students.

We are seeking faculty on the Oxford campus who would be willing to pilot the Unizin Engage e-textbook platform in the spring 2020 semester. Interested faculty should contact Caroyln directly ([email protected]).

Meet Clinton Kelly during his visit to Miami

As part of Miami’s Lecture Series, we often get the opportunity for special events with the guest speakers. Those interested in potentially joining a small-group seminar or dinner engagement with Clinton Kelly on April 8 should let me know as soon as possible. From Lana Rosenberg, Chair of the Lecture Series:

Clinton Kelly is best known for co-hosting ABC’s daytime hit The Chew and TLC’s What Not to Wear. As moderator on ABC’s food-centric The Chew, Kelly hosted cooking and style segments. For ten years, he co-hosted What Not to Wear, the longest running primetime series on TLC, where he offered honest style advice with a sense of humor.

Among his books are Freakin’ Fabulous On a Budget and Freakin’ Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate and Generally Be Better Than Everyone Else. Previously Kelly was a New York based magazine editor and freelance writer; he received a Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University and a Bachelor’s in Communications from Boston College.

Kelly is a sought-after fashion guru who empowers his audience to revamp their wardrobe and revamp their lives: “Looking good is everyone’s inalienable right. I’m interested in helping real people develop a sense of style that’s understandable for them and appropriate for their lifestyle.” His lecture is titled “Dressing the Body You Have, Not the Body You Want.”

Relay For Life faculty participation request

Grace Tomlinson, President of Colleges Against Cancer at Miami, asks for your (faculty) help for Relay for Life, an American Cancer Society fundraiser:

We are looking for professors to volunteer for a “Pie a Professor” fundraiser from 7pm-9pm on April 5th. These volunteers would come for a portion of that time slot and be pied in the face with a plate of whipped topping in order to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Student’s would pay $3 to pie their professors. We will provide all of the supplies needed for the fundraiser

Anyone interested can reach out to Grace (tomlingk) to sign up or get more information.

John Dovidio speaking at Wittenburg University, March 27

Stephanie Little, Chair of Psychology at Wittenburg University in Springfield, Ohio invites us to two invited lectures by John F. Dovidio, Professor of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University. He will present “Why Can’t We All Get Along? The Challenges of Race Relations in America” onn Wednesday, March 27, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. in Bayley Auditorium (Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center). He will also present a colloquium, “Included But Invisible? The Intergroup Consequences of Colorblindness for Immigrant and Racial Minority Groups,” at 4:00pm (same location). She writes:

Although John F. Dovidio may best be known by the public for his expert commentary on the ABC series, “What Would You Do?” with John Quinones, Dr. Dovidio is widely recognized in the scientific community as a preeminent social psychologist, winning the Donald T. Campbell Award in Social Psychology in 2011 for career contributions to the field and the Kurt Lewin Award in 2004 by the Society for the Study of Social Issues for scholarly accomplishments.

Dr. Dovidio, along with his long-time collaborator, Samuel L. Gaertner, uncovered evidence supporting the notion of “aversive racism,” where well-intentioned Whites who see themselves as egalitarian and fair-minded toward African Americans may nevertheless harbor unconscious negative thoughts and feelings that can often result in discriminatory behavior. Because such discriminatory behavior is antithetical to their conscious beliefs, they tend to rationalize and deny that their negative behavior toward African Americans is racist. Such subtle forms of racism have recently become popularized and introduced into the public forum as implicit, as opposed to explicit, racism.

Dr. Dovidio not only identifies and illustrates modern forms of prejudice and their consequences through empirical investigations, he also demonstrates mechanisms for ameliorating their negative effects. For example, using their “Common Ingroup Identity Model” of intergroup relations, Dr. Dovidio and his colleagues have facilitated processes which can enhance trust and adherence to medical advice among White physicians and Black cancer patients. These procedures may ultimately be applicable to a wide range of problems confronting our multicultural society.