Faculty, staff to engage in cultural competency training
Session will include working with groups on student demands
JACOB BERTRAM | DAILY EVERGREEN FILE
Matthew Jeffries, director of the Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center, says the system-wide cultural competency training will help faculty and staff be more informed about student issues.
April 16, 2019
A system-wide cultural competency training for faculty and staff will begin this fall semester.
Jaime Nolan, associate vice president for community, equity and inclusive excellence, said the system-wide training will include five groups specifically focused on five demands from students.
Jaime Nolan, Community, associate vice president for community, equity and inclusive excellence, discusses the outcome she hopes to see with the system-wide cultural competency program Monday at Lighty Student Services.
Nolan said the five groups are: recruiting faculty and staff in underrepresented locations, addressing executive policy like harassment and discrimination, implementing cultural resource centers, providing gender equity transgender support and having cultural competency allyship groups.
She said the agenda for the cultural competency training session is developed and hopes to receive student feedback and improve different aspects of the training over the summer.
There are plans to change the term “cultural competency” because it sounds problematic, Nolan said, and they want to develop a sense of sensitivity and awareness.
Nolan said the goal of the training is to provide an experience for those who share common core principles with WSU — diversity, equity and equality.
Nolan said students articulated their concerns from protests that happened in the past, and one of the demands was to have a cultural competency training for everyone at WSU.
Matthew Jeffries, director of the Gender Identity/Expression and Sexual Orientation Resource Center, said one of the reasons they planned the training was because of incidents such as the Trump Wall replica that occurred a few years ago.
Nolan said students demanded the university hire more diverse faculty and staff. Students also wanted the university to look into discrimination policies, as well as to be clear about how to handle sexual violence reports.
Jeffries said the training will help faculty and staff be more informed about issues that students face.
He said the training aims to spread language around cultural competency in other WSU campuses and offices.
Nolan said they will set-up a web conference with the Vancouver, Tri-Cities, Everett, Spokane and Global campuses.
“By the time [the] fall semester begins,” Jeffries said. “We will be ready and that is the plan,” he said.
