Dordt University: "Rewiring for Diversity"

In the spring of 2021, Dordt University used a Lilly Small Grant to facilitate book groups who read and discussed either Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist (2019) or Jemar Tisby’s How to Fight Racism (2021) with the goal of analyzing our language use and campus practices when it comes to race and diversity. Nine book groups composed of 30 faculty, 8 staff, and 21 students read and discussed the books throughout spring semester, before meeting in large groups to create action steps to improve campus culture for students of color in and outside of the classroom. During the summer of 2021, faculty and staff are meeting to discuss textbook and curriculum changes for the fall to better address topics of diversity and better represent students of color. In July, book group members will lead a campus-wide pedagogy workshop on diversity in the classroom to shape similar choices across many disciplines as part of an ongoing project of “rewiring for diversity” at Dordt University.

East Texas Baptist University: "Connections: Faith in the Classrooms of East Texas Baptist University"

East Texas Baptist University’s small grant program was conceived as a two-part effort to help all faculty members integrate their own faith with their disciplines, equipping them to better model the integration of faith and learning in their classrooms.  The first part of the program, described below, was to promote faculty discussion of the challenges and best practices in faith integration. An interdisciplinary committee of four faculty members worked through the spring of 2021 to develop a common vocabulary, described in three scripture-based “anchors,” to facilitate discussion among faculty across campus.  Conversations among faculty were promoted in workshops during faculty work week, interdisciplinary reading groups, and small research grants to support a faculty roundtable on faith and learning.  The committee was pleased to learn that conversations were continuing in offices, hallways and breakrooms across campus.  The dialogue created a common sense of purpose on campus as well as a shared realization that creating meaningful faith integration experiences can be difficult and often requires a significant investment of time and energy on the part of faculty members.  The committee assessed the effectiveness of the program primarily through faculty surveys taken from January 2021 to May 2022.  Key to the success of the project was a careful assessment of faculty strengths and weaknesses, inviting faculty into ongoing, candid conversation, and a recognition of our students’ diverse needs, experiences, and expectations. Phase two of the plan will emphasize faith integration in the classroom through the creation of several interdisciplinary resource modules based on input from faculty during phase one.    

Saint Louis University: "Ferguson, the Clock Tower Accords, and Beyond: Teaching Racial Justice in St. Louis”

In order to build on the momentum within the Department of Theological Studies (DTS) at Saint Louis University (SLU) following the publication of a joint statement on racial injustice (July 2020), the department applied for funding from the LFP Small Grant Program to help us implement the concrete commitments identified in that statement: (1) to teach antiracism by integrating the experiences of African Americans into our program development, (2) to analyze the systems and structures of white supremacy in American culture, law, and religion, and (3) to integrate the contributions of Black theology throughout our curriculum. DTS coordinated its efforts with other units at the university. These programs shared resources and worked together in implementing several distinct but interrelated programs open to all members of the university community. DTS’s main contribution—aside from the ongoing work of the Ignatian Service Minor, the Law, Religion, and Politics Minor, and the Religion and Complex Social Issues committee—was to host a series of workshops at SLU facilitated by Fr. Bryan Massingale, the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics in the Department of Theology at Fordham University, focused on integrating antiracism education into the Catholic social justice tradition to help meet the challenges of twenty-first-century higher education.

Saint Xavier University: “Exploring the Mercy Mission”

Spread over four half-days, “Exploring the Mercy Mission” is a seminar that provides a history of the Sisters of Mercy, beginning with the life and times of Catherine McAuley and the historical, political, social, and economic framework that prompted the founding of the Sisters of Mercy.  The history continues with the work of the Sisters of Mercy beginning in the United States under the leadership of Frances Xavier Warde.  Special attention is paid to the Sisters’ work in education and healthcare as the Sisters of Mercy take an additional vow to care for the poor, the sick, and the uneducated.  Then the program turns to Mercy spirituality, the current work of the Sisters in social justice matters, concluding with reflection upon participants’ calling as Mercy educators and how they carry the mission of Mercy forward.  Participants are faculty and staff in institutions founded by the Sisters of Mercy.

Salve Regina University: "Mercy Faculty Dialogues"

Through the support of the Lilly Fellows Small Program Grant, Salve launched the Mercy Faculty
Forum. The Mercy Faculty Forum is a four-part mission integration series for new full-time
faculty (tenure stream and lecturers) to engage with readings and resources from the Mercy,
Catholic tradition and reflect together on their vocations as teaching-scholars in the landscape of
Mercy Higher Education. Eighteen new faculty participated in the Mercy Faculty Forum in two
cohorts over two years and seventeen faculty are scheduled to participate in year three. In a
survey of the first and second cohorts, 100% of responders strongly agreed or agreed that they
made significant gains in connection with Salve Regina’s Mercy Catholic mission, the Catholic
Intellectual Tradition and Catholic Social Teaching, the heritage and tradition of Catherine
McAuley, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Critical Concerns of Mercy.

Samford University: "Fostering Awareness and Dialogue on Racial Justice in Higher Education"

The project focused faculty and staff attention to the critical need to attend to the perceptions and expectations of the university’s minority students. The impetus for the project was a small study conducted with the University’s African American nursing students who represented 10% of the undergraduate nursing student body. The students in the study reported that some interactions and behaviors of faculty and fellow students were contributors to increased stress and the perception that minority students were not welcome at the university. Study participants reported that these stressful feelings and resultant impact on their ability to concentrate on their studies played a role in whether or not they would be successful in their academic programs. The project included the purchase of a book on race in America that was distributed to all nursing faculty and staff. Faculty and staff were encouraged to read the book and to attend scheduled book discussion sessions. Three book discussion groups were held with facilitators from the university’s Office of Diversity & Intercultural Initiatives. Discussions included attendees’ reflections on, and recognition of, unconscious bias in conversations and behaviors. The value of intentional efforts to relate teaching/learning activities to the diversity of the student body was addressed. Results of the project suggest that faculty and staff participation in the book discussion groups raised awareness of the impact that unconscious behaviors may have on student success. Participants reported plans to pay closer attention to their actions and words and to be more cognizant of how they approach all students.

Seton Hall University: “Faculty Workshop on Servant Leadership and Anti-Racist Pedagogy”

This was a virtual workshop that took place over the course of two days. The workshop leader was Prof. Angela Kotsonis, a trained Narrative 4 story exchange facilitator and former faculty member at Seton Hall. The participants included 9 students who were recommended by faculty members for their interest in diversity and inclusion issues, and 14 faculty members who had all completed the university’s semester-long Faculty Seminar on Teaching for Diversity and Inclusion. Ultimately, the faculty participants were guided in the development of their own “anti-racist educator ethos.” 

University of Dayton: "Catholic and Anti-Racist?: A Summer Faculty Cohort to Produce Materials for Faculty Formation at the University of Dayton"

A multidisciplinary cohort of faculty at the University of Dayton received funding to support work during the summer of 2021 on some aspect of being both a Catholic and anti-racist institution. Proposals were invited from across the university, with the aim of promoting a faculty culture in which the University’s Catholic identity refers not to protecting the Catholic “brand” from criticism but to advancing faithfulness to the tradition through the best intellectual and moral work we can offer. Three very diverse projects were funded, one focused on changing institutional responses to bias incidents, one developing new curricular materials, and one considering the potential of public art on campus. Each project recruited suitable partners from among those most familiar with the challenge at hand. The leads on each project formed a cohort which met monthly to develop greater capacity to engage Catholic and Marianist traditions and to learn about diverse experiences of racism at the University of Dayton. That cohort, while committed to enacting structural change and making progress on their particular projects, also became concerned with the importance of interior work. They wanted to ensure that structural changes were not merely another way to escape the deep transformation needed. They discovered in the Marianist discipline of “the five silences” a structure to support the necessary self-work. That discipline was accessible to everyone involved and seems a particularly fruitful avenue for future work.

We designed the program as part of our inclusive excellence initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). The program adopted a workshop model focusing on the implicit biases that get in the way of our students’ learning and success, with a special focus on our students of color. All CAS instructors received an open invitation in October 2020 to apply. The program involved two virtual workshops, one in early December 2020 and a follow-up workshop in January 2021. Before each workshop, participants submitted their goals (December) and the concrete changes they made to reach them (January) related to creating more inclusive classroom environments. A consultant, Dr. Andrea Abrams from Centre College, guided both workshops, shared materials, and worked one-on-one with instructors over the duration of the program.

University of Pikeville: "Developing Empathy & Ethics in Global Health Initiative"

The University of Pikeville is committed to strong cross-college and interdisciplinary engagement. Conversations and planning among representative faculty and staff from the Osteopathic Medical School, the Optometry School, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the local community will produce a truly collaborative and interdisciplinary program that embraces the importance of empathy and ethics in medical work through the development of a Global Health Minor. As Division Chair for the Humanities, I am most invested in the integral part that our programs will play in the creation of this program. To that end, we funded an invited speaker who offered us perspectives on cultivating empathy. We also arranged monthly faculty discussion groups to engage resources and ideas on the need for empathy and ethics in medical training. Humanities inspired courses play an integral role in this educational training and preparation. To be effective health workers, students need to think critically, demonstrate empathy, collaborate with diverse groups, and apply ethical frameworks to decision-making. Through this grant, the Humanities division was able to make a much-needed contribution to the academic program and to the students it will graduate. 

The University of Scranton: "Anti-Racism Training for Faculty and Administration"

Jesuit institutions of higher education in the United States have been predominantly white institutions (PWIs).  In recognition of the complicity of such institutions, the Jesuits published Know Justice, Know Peace: A Jesuit Antiracism Retreat precisely to create ways for personnel engaged in Ignatian discernment to focus their examinations of conscience on racism. Demographics among their network of schools are changing; the Catholic and Jesuit University of San Francisco, for example, is among the most diverse schools in the US presently.  Nevertheless, such changes are happening more slowly among schools like The University of Scranton. The goals of the project were threefold: (1) to provide our Faculty and Administration with encounters with highly qualified scholars in the field of race and anti-racism, (2) to stimulate intellectual engagement with race and anti-racism in order to (3) provide employees with tools for altering policies and curriculum backed by solid research. We held virtual meetings in the spring of 2021 to speak with three authors and discuss our readings.  We purchased four books for participants in the program: (1) Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840by Rana A. Hogarth; (2) The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Lifeby Elijah Anderson; (3) The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studiesby Tiffany Lethabo King; (4) Twice as Good: Leadership and Power for Women of Colorby Dr. Mary J. Wardell-Ghirarduzzi. Drs. Anderson, Hogarth, and Wardell-Ghirarduzzi accompanied us on Zoom.

Westmont College: “Looking Back/Looking Forward: Images for Worship and Devotion”

This project was designed to open up conceptual space in the Westmont community to consider an existing image of Jesus and envision possible alternatives. The existing image--the only representation of Jesus on our campus--was in a small but focal stained-glass window in our prayer chapel. The chapel was built in 1961 as a memorial to the 18-year-old daughter of the college president who was killed in a car crash near campus. Increasingly, members of the campus community were bothered by the way in which Jesus was represented as very white and could easily be read as nationalist (the figure is standing on a map of North America). In March of 2020, the President decided to remove the window. The LB/LF project was designed to invite students, and eventually the larger college community, into a discussion of what new images for that space might look like. The goal was multiple image ideas, resulting in multiple images to be rotated through that space in the future. We convened four study groups during the Fall 2020 semester. Each group had two faculty guides and hosted up to eight student participants. Each group had a different theme chosen to locate their discussion in an aspect of the world-wide church. Early spring, the project director took the ideas generated by the four study groups to the steering committee. The steering committee, in collaboration with the college designer, mocked-up one image idea from each group as a focus for wider conversation. They hosted two sessions, one with the study group members, and one with interested members of the wider community, to talk through the results. The conversations were rich, informative and productive. In collaboration with the art department, the project director will identify alumni artists to flesh out these ideas more thoroughly and artistically. A number of images will be printed on acrylic and, accompanied by an informative booklet, be used as devotional foci in Voskuyl Chapel. The former window will be moved to the vestibule of the chapel, where it will join other memorial objects from the early days of the chapel’s existence.