The Faculty Flex Committee, in collaboration with the Professional Development Committee, hosted Dr. Luke Wood as the keynote speaker for this year's spring flex, which was Cerro Coso's second entirely virtual flex event. Due to the far-flung nature of our campuses, more faculty were able to attend the flex event virtually, as indicated by record-setting flex attendance.
Dr. Wood is the Vice President of Student Affairs and Campus Diversity and Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University. He also serves as the Co-Director of the Community College Equity Assessment Lab (CCEAL), a national research and practice center that partners with community colleges to support their capacity in advancing outcomes for underserved students of color. His presentations built on the discussions from fall flex with Lasana Hotep and covered the following topics:
Employing Culturally Affirming and Equity-Minded Teaching and Learning Practices to Advance Institutional Equity Community College faculty play an essential role in institutional efforts to close equity gaps and achieve student success, yet many campuses struggle to engage a broad constituency of faculty in these efforts, leaving many to wonder, “What is my role and responsibility in advancing equity efforts in my classes and beyond?” Thus, in this address, the presenter will: (a) discuss the role all faculty must embrace to advance and achieve institutional equity and (b) propose culturally affirming teaching and learning strategies that must be employed by all classroom faculty to address inequity and disproportionate impact. The insights of this presentation will be derived from experiences working with community colleges across the United States in a range of equity-related efforts and initiatives.
The Influence of Masculinities on Student Success for Men of Color Recent efforts to identify and examine factors that influence student success for men of color in community colleges have not adequately accounted for the impact of social identities—notably gender—in shaping postsecondary experiences and outcomes. Thus, the purpose of this workshop is twofold: (a) to recognize patterns of male gender role socialization and the ways in which they serve as barriers to student success for men of color in community colleges and (b) to devise strategies community college educators can employ to better account for identity-related conflicts and challenges in their work with men of color. In this workshop, qualitative data collected from community college men of color will be presented to further contextualize students’ perceptions of the role of masculinity in their lived experiences and to highlight intersections with race/ethnicity.
In addition to Dr. Wood's sessions, a variety of breakout sessions were offered. Many of these sessions focused on the topic of wellness. Most of the sessions were recorded, and you can view the recordings in the One-Stop-Shop of Canvas Resources. If you have accepted the invitation to join this course, you will see it either on your Canvas dashboard or by clicking on Courses--All Courses in Canvas and locating it on the list of courses. If you do not see the course, you can contact Rebecca Pang and request to be added to the One-Stop-Shop of Canvas Courses, which includes recordings from flex events and Lunch-n-Learns.
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