Symposium video archives

This interactive workshop will explore the School of Social Work’s multi-year planned change process as a model for disrupting oppression and bias within departmental spaces. The workshop will guide participants through three principal steps of this process:

1. Assessing needs
2. Inclusive, results-based planning
3. Implementing change

Throughout this workshop, we aim to build a self-reflexive space by facilitating an honest conversation about the types of harm our department has perpetuated and the steps we are taking. To build a foundation, we will provide an overview of the hallmarks of White Supremacy Culture, which helped us create a common language underlying this work.

We will also engage participants in a power mapping exercise designed to “make visible” departmental and organizational perpetuation of oppression and bias. As we move through the actual process, we will discuss strategies to assess needs and concerns through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and secondary data, including the CSU Employee Climate Survey.

We will then share our year-long strategic planning initiative in which work groups used logic models to address school climate, school structure, student experience, and conflict resolution. Finally, we will explore unforeseen challenges of this work, focusing on strategies to overcome intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational barriers to implementation, as well as the steps in our process that did not work well and should be avoided.

Implications for cost, human resource needs, and participant safety will also be addressed.