Schedule & Breakout Session Descriptions

Facilitated by Stacy Blake-Beard | Curry 601

Women of color have often been excluded from key communities and critical opportunities. This workshop supports women of color in strategically leveraging their networks to break down the barriers and challenges that they face. Participants will: 1. Engage in a networking exercise to open the workshop; 2. Identify a goal for which a strategic network will be critical; 3. Receive information on the importance of networking through a brief overview of aspects of a strategic network; 4. Assess network strength and diversity through completion of a Network Overview Table; and 5. Plan how to use a strategic network to support reaching their goal.

Facilitated by

Micky Lee, Marjorie Salvodon, Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber | Curry 301

Conservatives’ relentless assaults on DEI efforts, affirmative action, and academic freedom will have long and detrimental effects in academia. The public humiliation of former Harvard President Claudine Gay has shown that WOC are often judged harshly, deemed to be quota-fillers, and described with grossly negative stereotypes. As program directors, department chairs, and associate deans, the co-facilitators of this workshop will help participants reflect on moving up the administrative ladder. The workshop will have three sections, each with interactive activities. We will explore the reasons for moving up the administrative ladder, focus on fears about moving up, and on creating an effective support network.

Facilitated by Dzidzor Azaglo | Curry 610

What do we do now to create the kind of world we want to live in? Embark on a journey into the Dream Space—an enchanted portal beckoning you to craft realms of possibility. Here, the past and present waltz in a dance of connection, inviting you to ponder the profound: What actions must we weave into the tapestry of now to conjure futures that liberate us collectively? Channeling the spirit of Octavia E. Butler, we use writing, imagination, and play as a tool to seek the infinite possibilities nestled within community care and alternative futures. This workshop is an invitation to create manifestos, affirmations, and poems to create a world centered on care, community, rest, justice, love, and imagination.

Facilitated by Christie Chung, Priya Shimpi Driscoll

Curry 310

Mentorship is a critical component in the success of academic leaders and is especially important in achieving the goal of diversifying academic leadership. Christie Chung and Priya Driscoll will discuss the significant role that everyone can play as mentors, sponsors, advocates, and connectors for the next generation of aspiring leaders. We will begin with Christie and Priya briefly sharing their narratives, and then the session will be open to audience participation guided by the following questions: 1. How has mentorship influenced your careers? 2. What are the small steps we can take to encourage impactful mentorship? 3. What else may be necessary to ensure the success of women of color in academic leadership?

Facilitated By Melinda Boehm

iGROW is a dynamic and interactive workshop designed to help researchers think through their personal and professional research branding to formulate their own personal board of directors and learn the basics of funding searches with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. iGROW takes a different approach to a grant-seeking workshop and focuses on strengthening the PI’s professional development toolkits. Participants will come away from the workshop having working drafts of their personal narrative, professional narrative, and personal board of directors.

Facilitated By Angelique Davis

This workshop is part of Angeliquie Davis’s book project with Rose Ernst, PhD, Racial Gaslighting: An Antiracist Guide to Protecting Your Joy in a Racist World, which offers practical and concrete frameworks to identify, respond to, and interrupt racial gaslighting for individuals and organizations. It is an outgrowth of their article “Racial Gaslighting” (2017), which developed the concept and provided the foundation for subsequent workshops on how to recognize and respond to diversionary tactics of racism. This workshop will focus on a 5D framework they are developing (Discern, Decide, Disarm, Defy, and Deepen) to help BIPOC people respond to and interrupt racial gaslighting.

Facilitated by Kerrie Wilkins-Yel | Curry 601

Black feminist scholars and activists dating back to the Combahee River Collective (1975) have long sounded the clarion call to listen to black women, believe black women, and center black women. To heed this clarion call, this presentation and conversation are designed to elevate the lived experiences of black women in STEM undergraduate and doctoral programs through photographs. This immersive photo-based experience will illustrate how black women resisted systemic barriers in STEM and protected their mental health.

Facilitated by Clareese Hill | Curry 301

This is a participatory workshop with rest at the forefront. The workshop takes the form of a full-body somatic release of the physical drag of the academic commons, activated by a sound healing meditation and experimental collaborative world-building exercise. Through prompts from black and feminist thought and cosmologies from the African diaspora, we will collectively speculate and imagine strategies for building fugitive spaces for thriving, growing, and refusing to be part of the extractive labor economy of academia. During the workshop, we will build a temporary community that will hopefully be a praxis participants take with them and replicate in their communities.

Facilitated by Noor Ali | Curry 610

From Dr. Claudine Gay reminding us how frightening it is to “be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” to the suicide of Dr. Bonnie Bailey, we are reminded daily of the severe inequities that prevail around BIPOC women in professional educational settings. In areas of service, research, evaluations, navigating predominantly white spaces, teaching, and advising, BIPOC faculty and staff face unmatched challenges. This workshop seeks to explore ways in which we can build a supportive community through the creation of affinity spaces, collaboration, mentorship, counter-narratives, networks, and peer support circles to push for systemic change.

Facilitated by Thalia Ramirez, Adrianna Crossing, Felicia Waldron | Curry 310

This interactive, multi-modal workshop will lead participants in group activities to: Examine the white supremacist cultural values present within the work culture of their institution; Identify the ways they knowingly (or unconsciously) resist these oppressive norms; And honor, through a poetry reading and discussion, the bridge building that they and former mentors have done to nurture one another and advance equity despite the presence of these norms. The purpose is to celebrate the cross-generational, -professional, and -cultural efforts that have sustained our collective movement toward social justice. Although we’re still here fighting the fight, we’re still here!

Facilitated By Shanae Chapman

Unlock the power of effective negotiation with this interactive workshop. Transform conflicts into collaborative opportunities, whether at the bargaining table with colleagues or facing opposing parties in personal matters. Learn about proven frameworks for maximizing negotiation value and discovering clarity about creating solutions. Dive into mediation skills and learn to turn challenging negotiations into breakthrough collaborations. Elevate your negotiation prowess with this powerful workshop. Uncover how your assumptions and behaviors may inadvertently contribute to undesirable negotiation dynamics, and master the art of adopting new, constructive behaviors for successful negotiations. Immerse yourself in this workshop featuring dynamic lectures, hands-on exercises, real-world case studies, and negotiation role-play to enhance your negotiation skills.

Facilitated By Lyssa Palu-ay, Kenlyn Jones

Explore the opportunities and challenges of nurturing a community culture of mentoring. From the experience of a faculty member and dean, we will offer personal experiences, current research, and recommendations for supporting an ALAANA community. We will reflect on informal and formal structures and approaches. We will also consider how this mentorship work has developed over the last twenty years at MassArt and how it can be replicated at other institutions. Participants will be invited to consider what community means to them, ask questions, and imagine a space that fosters these hopes.