Bridging the racial divide and ending systemic racism is an evolving challenge, one that requires constant conversation as well as humility: a willingness to listen, accept responsibility, and move forward in a way that always honors and respects the intrinsic value of each person.
By leaning on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and living its core mission values, a St. Ambrose education and experience gives students and graduates the knowledge, skills and confidence to work against racism, bias and inequities.
The university can do more. Creating agents of change requires educators to provide honest and validating representation of race within curriculum. The goal, always, is to prepare all graduates to thrive and advance in a diverse and inclusive global society.
"I think historically we prepare students for a society where race matters and in some cases they learn that by going out and into the community. Occupational Therapy students have worked with refugee and immigrant populations. Teacher education students volunteer at an inner-city school in Chicago. Engineering students have traveled to South America. These experiences are great for preparing students for a world where they see race matters," said Ryan Saddler '95, '06 MEdT, the university's Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
"We are trying to grow this into who we are as an institution, into curriculum and making it a standard practice rather than a high impact practice where we intersect with race. Our goal is for the thoughts and ideas to become part of who we are within an increasingly diverse population," Saddler said. "We are committed to doing the work."
Introducing diversity into curriculum is essential, Saddler said, noting its absence, "creates a thought that maybe people are 'less than' because they are not included in the significant storyline. In our subconscious we start to think of people as the image that has been placed in our head. If we begin to use it in reverse, to highlight diversity in our landscape, history and education system, then we begin to see we really are not that different as human beings, as people," Saddler said.
Faculty and staff in the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS) have stepped up to the task. In the past year, a committee of CHHS faculty and staff began discussing how to bring a much wider cultural lens to what and how they are teaching.
"We aim to prepare creative and critically thinking graduates who practice with a person-centered approach and are advocates for social justice in their communities. Higher education is a key pathway for social mobility in our country. An inclusive curriculum is important for student retention, persistence and the preparation of graduates who can make a difference in the world," said Sandra Cassady, PT, PhD, Dean of the CHHS and Vice President for Strategic Initiatives. "It begins with educating our faculty, staff and students about issues surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion, and empowering our graduates to be advocates for social justice for all."
In addition, the CHHS plans to ensure rules and standards fully consider the student experience and do not disadvantage students of color.
"We are committed to a full review of policies, procedures and practices," Cassady said.
Saddler said faculty within the College of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences also are working to broaden and enrich curriculum. Professor of Marketing Joe Miller, PhD, co-published an academic case study this past summer that addressed the racial history of the Aunt Jemima brand and examines the decision by Quaker Oats/PepsiCo to change the syrup's name and branded image in June. The paper was published in the November-December edition of The Harvard Business Review and Miller made the case study a primary piece of marketing courses this fall.
"I think one of the things business schools do well is teach skills. The reality is we have a responsibility to make sure the graduates we pass into the world always consider a wide array of factors, and race is one of them," Miller said.
"This is a discussion we have to have. I think we underestimate students and their ability to discuss issues maturely. The culture at St. Ambrose is very open, as are the lines of communication, which makes it very amicable to have these discussions now. Our core value of social justice speaks to that and faculty and staff hold us to that. Our own mission in the School of Business is to enact business for the greater good. This is part of that, making sure everyone feels valued, and I think we do that well here."
Hundreds of professors from across the world have contacted Miller and his co-authors and are incorporating the case study in courses they teach. "It caught fire, and what that taught me was universities around the world are trying to answer the appeals for inclusion and diversity in curriculum," Miller said.
Infusing diversity into discussions, assignments, and readings is one way to underscore race matters. "Students in our programs will not go through any course that does not discuss inequality, racism and bias," said Professor and Chair of Criminal Justice and Sociology Nicole Pizzini, PhD.
"Our job is to create a safe environment for controversial and challenging conversation to happen. You have be willing to put aside what you know and have experienced and truly listen to hear what people are saying - not necessarily the words being spoken, but to understand the deeper meaning and experiences associated with them," she said.
Experiential learning is key, too. Whether a sociology major interning at a K-12 school, a criminal justice major doing field experience at a county jail, or a graduate student assisting research into racial profiling by police, St. Ambrose students witness and discuss the impact systemic racism and inequality have on people. They leave equipped to be part of the solution.
"A majority of our students leave our programs with that understanding as a part of who they are and what they do on a daily basis," Pizzini said.
In the School of Social Work, "Diversity is baked into everything we do," said Director Katherine Van Blair, PhD, who also directs the Master of Social Work program. "It is embedded in the readings, activities, discussions, self-reflection and field experience our students complete. It is intentional and multi-layered so students can build an ethical practice in the empowerment social work model in order to challenge injustice everywhere. It becomes an ethical imperative, an obligation - once students know there are forces at play in society that disadvantage many, many people, they have to go forward and make change."
Jabari Woods, '02, '05 MSW said he learned at St. Ambrose how to enter a world that needs assistance in a powerful, solution-focused way. "The end goal is not to change minds, but to empower people to see things through a different lens and find positive ways to tackle problems together," he said.
As the associate director of human resources and equity, and Title IX coordinator for the Davenport School District, Woods is working with educators to make sure every child receives an education that reflects, honors and values their identity, culture, and lived experience.
"The world we live in now requires educators to teach not just from a knowledge base, but a cultural base, too," Woods said. "Diversity is an asset and a benefit. This is how you enhance and enrich education for every child, every adult," he said.
It is a change K-12 schools and universities across the country are embracing. At SAU, Saddler is working with faculty to create and add diversity outcomes to graduation requirements. And later this year, faculty will take part in a seminar on de-colonizing the curriculum and how to bring a lens of diversity into what and how they teach.
Gene Bechen, PhD, a professor and Interim Director of the School of Education, recognizes the power of an inclusive curriculum. Education majors, from day one, learn about the wide diversity they will experience in classrooms, about culturally-relevant teaching, and how to reach and respect every student as an individual. They embrace that challenge, he said.
"I don't think we give them enough credit. They are very insightful and intelligent about all of this, and it is exciting to watch them because in many ways, they are doing a lot better job than older generations. There is a more of an openness, which in turn creates a higher-level of empathy," he said.
"When our education students get into the schools and get into the day-to-day of it, they start to see that we are just tiny little pieces of this much bigger thing, and they choose to go beyond and do more. They volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters, or Project Renewal or United Way. They get to a point where they are reaching out beyond a classroom and extending their training to the community," Bechen said.
"That is what it is all about. That is what it means to be Ambrosian," he added.
Kristi Law, PhD, professor and chair of the program, witnessed a change in students this semester, on campus and in her classrooms. "I am amazed at the way they react and respond when we are discussing justice issues, and the way they infuse examples of protests and the racial reckoning we saw this summer. This is my eighth year in academia, and it feels like a big shift. Now is the time people are wanting to talk about these issues."
Tom Higgins '67, the SAU trustee whose donation helped create the BSW program, said education is and will ever be an essential weapon in the fight against racism.
"A big contributor to structural racism in society is ignorance. There's no other word for it," he said. "The lived experience of people who suffer from discrimination is so foreign to people who have never experienced that, who know nothing about it, who live in a more or less comfortable cocoon and are unconscious in many respects of how their own behaviors might contribute to that."