Professor Miller examines critical moments in which legal and policy decisions construct barriers to racial equity and contribute to the challenges we face today.

• Ariel Clarke
• Fatima Mangane
• Netra Mittal
• Miriam Monroe
• Devon Peeples

Through their intersectional identities, female students of color and non-binary students of color have an important voice to include in a UB dialogue focused on social justice. How do they experience UB? More specifically, how do they experience the classroom or other educational spaces? This session seeks to explore these and other critical questions through a panel of undergraduate students of color from various majors who serve as Diversity Advocates in the UB Intercultural and Diversity Center. What do they, as students of color, wish their faculty and classmates knew?

While teacher referrals may be the predominant way in which students are assigned advanced math classes, data suggest that students are identified long before 7th or 8th grade. Tracking, or the homogenous grouping of students based on test scores, began in the early 20th century as a response to the influx of immigrant children in U.S. schools. Modern day segregation, disguised as ability grouping, disproportionally excludes students of color from advanced and higher-level learning opportunities. High academic expectations of students of color is integral to quality learning. We must work to give all students a fighting chance by taking a strengths-based approach to instruction and learning. Classrooms must be diversified with multiple ability students and rigorous corequisite courses must replace remedial and prerequisite classes.

Even pre-COVID, many classes have moved online to create access for distance learners and those who may have full time jobs. Unlike many other courses, Multicultural Counseling addresses issues that are at the core of who we are and hope to be, as clinicians, while addressing the challenges of not being able to see the in-the-moment responses to the topics at hand. We will cover how to connect with students on these challenging topics, how to maintain engagement and how to create a safe space to learn, while offering the space to challenge their own beliefs and each other as they move forward in their clinical areas of work.

Archives are not neutral. Structural racism and other inequities are inevitably embedded in the intellectual history of the profession, its best practices and policies, and the demographics of its workforce. Even with a growing tide of “activist archivists” and an increasing emphasis on social justice as a core archival value, much work remains to be done. As such, what does anti-racism in archives look like? Who can we look to for inspiration and what steps can we take as archivists (and allied professionals) to more effectively serve as anti-racist allies? How do we hold ourselves accountable? This interactive session is intended to serve as an overview and conversation starter — please bring your questions and strategies!

Black females (students, staff and faculty) in higher education are often subjected to dual oppression as a result of their race and gender. African American women on college campuses may experience discriminatory behaviors in a number of ways, including: being silenced in classrooms; assaulted with verbal microaggressions; viewed as aggressive; overlooked for advancement opportunities; and exposed to other types of biases on a daily basis. Unsurprisingly, such experiences can be traumatizing for Black females, especially when they lack a strong support network from within their higher education institution or from their family/community. This presentation will address how intersectional oppression negatively impacts African American women in higher education and will provide recommendations on how campuses can best support Black female students, staff and faculty.

In this session, we discuss the role of peer mentors in the creation of a college-going culture in high schools where the goal is to increase college access. We discuss our work with college students who serve as near-peer mentors in Buffalo public high schools to help students navigate the college choice process, and we discuss how our strategies have evolved to provide stronger mentorship for the college student mentors. Nearly three-fourths of our interns identify as students of color, which reflects the population of high school students they serve.

This session will provide practical ideas for transforming curriculum and pedagogy from more traditional environments toward a more equitable student-centered model that allows for greater use of student voice and cultural assets, all without sacrificing academic rigor. Attendees will discuss the power of culturally relevant and sustaining practices and will have the opportunity to work on a real lesson plan that can be immediately used in any classroom.

The Collaborative Learning and Integrate Mentoring in the Biosciences (CLIMB) program at UB provides mentoring, career and professional development to strengthen STEM and professional diverse pipelines across the University at Buffalo. The CLIMB program, through its divisions, mentors undergraduates for the summer (CLIMB UP: 62% URM), PhD (CLIMB HI: 21% URMs) and Master in Science (CLIMB PATHWAYS: 18% URMs) students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty (CLIMB-NS). This presentation will provide an overview of the mentoring, professional development and funding opportunities for trainees across the entire spectrum, from undergraduates to faculty, as they build their portfolios of digital badges and micro-credentials. The CLIMB mentoring programs positively impact workforce development in the biosciences at large by partnering with all STEM Schools across the University.

Supported in part by the 2R25 GM095459-06, Jacob School of Medicine and Biomedical Science funds, iSEED Funding from the Office of the UB Provost, UB Pathways funds and by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institute of Health under awards: KL2001413 and UL1TR001412.

The presenters will teach concepts commonly used in Intergroup Dialogue, as taught at the University of Michigan’s program on Intergroup Relations, to help student affairs practitioners improve learning strategies. Attendees will gain conflict and dialogue facilitation skills, increased awareness of diversity and intergroup issues, and a clear understanding of the co-facilitation model. This presentation will incorporate theories of Social Identity Development; Social Inequality, including power, privilege and oppression; and Ally-building.

Calls for social justice in and beyond the field of library and information science (LIS) often ask researchers to take an "intersectional" approach to their scholarship, praxis and teaching. However, the meaning of "intersectionality" is often diffuse in these situations, especially as the framework applies to identifying and addressing structural inequities and their downstream effects in the academy. This talk presents the matrix of domination as articulated by Patrica Hill Collins as a framework through which to both understand and redress intersecting instantiations of oppression in LIS.

In the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the widespread militarized police response to peaceful protests, many cities in the U.S. are experimenting with defunding or even dismantling police departments. Although these ideas seem to have entered mainstream discourse very rapidly, they come from decades of abolitionist organizing based on the philosophy and strategy developed by writers and activists like Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. This session will provide an overview of the abolitionist vision of communities without police or prisons, and discuss the abolitionist philosophy and strategy related to issues in education like the school-to-prison pipeline.

Although anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes against Muslim Americans are at an all-time high, Muslims are one of the least studied marginalized groups in the U.S. They are mostly excluded from social justice work as well. This session will address the challenges that Muslims in the U.S. encounter. It will also highlight Muslim-American experiences with discrimination, provide information about intersectionality and address the unique struggles of double (i.e., queer Muslim) or triple (Black Muslim woman) marginalized members of this community. Lastly, the impact of the Trump era on Muslim community will be discussed.

Amplifying concepts from Nelson Flores', Jonathan Rosa's and others’ scholarship on raciolinguistic ideologies and a raciolinguistic perspective on U.S. schooling, this discussion-based session advances a series of propositions about intersections of language and race, provides examples from research and real life experience in/with preK-16 schools, and invites participants to engage in dialogue around each of these, sharing their own examples and insights.

The increasing diversity of immigrant and international student groups presents challenges for American colleges and universities to become globally inclusive higher education institutions. Immigrant and international students have been often marginalized and alienated on college campuses. This mixed-methods study is based on transformative education and asset model, thus challenging conventional deficit view. Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) data, this study examines undergraduate students' readiness gaps in terms of academic and sociocultural preparation (high-impact practices) for career and graduate/professional education. Qualitative analysis of interview cases offers additional insights into their educational opportunities and strategies for success. Additional challenges under recent anti-immigration policies and pandemic crisis will be also discussed.

This presentation focuses on some of the experiences of, discourses concerning and policies governing displaced youth emplaced in the U.S. educational system. Presenters discuss considerations and strategies for supporting students displaced due to economic migration, refugee status and who are at risk of becoming (or already have been identified as) trafficking victims. Presenters also highlight aspects of their professional backgrounds with a particular focus on sharing strategies for researching this phenomenon in an interdisciplinary, multi-theoretical and collaborative manner – and toward the end of co-creating critical awareness and action around these and related equity issues. Recommendations for researchers, policy-makers and educational practitioners (e.g., leaders, teachers, counselors, support staff) are offered.

This talk will outline the theoretical foundations of an ongoing research project examining the presence and force of systemic racism in LIS scholarship and practice. The principal focus is to explore how uncritical attachment to core values like neutrality, objectivity, color-blindness and diversity serves to entrench practices that marginalize and exclude racialized groups in public libraries. Arguing that LIS must adopt a model of service based in anti-racist participatory and community-based engagement, public libraries are called to trouble current responses to racial injustice that respond to the causal effects of racial oppression, as opposed to the centering of institutional and systemic practices that allow them to perpetuate.

Recent months have seen unprecedented sales of books on how to be anti-racist, talk about race or interrogate whiteness. Numerous lists of documentaries, podcasts and media have been posted. Well-meaning faculty, schools, instructors, faith communities and libraries are forming book or film discussion groups informally or in classes. Often, the first question such groups ask is: What should we read? What should we watch or listen to? But before these questions there is a more essential question: How can we engage in transformative dialogue that leads to anti-racist actions and change? The Anti-Racist Reading Collective for Justice (ARRC for Justice) was formed to support people who come together to establish critical, authentic discussions of books and other texts and to achieve transformative change through actions that combat racism.

This session will cover:

1. The purpose, guiding principles and goals for anti-racist reading collectives
2. A definition of transformative dialogue, and principles and practices for engaging in dialogue related to race, racism and anti-racist actions
3. Resources to get started
4. Practices to facilitate dialogue
5. Reverent listening as part of dialogue
6. The importance of action plans

This session is guided by environmental justice and critical race theory to unpack anticipated impacts of environmental issues in our local context. Environmental justice approaches to STEM teaching have been found to be engaging and empowering for educators and students. Environmental justice has been impactful for diverse audiences from privileged to disadvantaged to increase environmental stewardship to combat systemic oppression that has constructed unjust environmental conditions. Participants will engage in a dialog and activities to explore the ways that environmental justice can shape your work as a practitioner. Be prepared to critically engage and participate with peace, love and liberation.

When marginalized, traditionally underrepresented or differently advantaged students drop out of our classes or perform poorly in them, we faculty members often curse the failures of our K–12 systems and wring our hands at the seemingly insurmountable structural inequalities that keep our students down. Then we throw up our hands and pass the buck. I mean, what are we supposed to do? Make up for K–12 public education failures in our own classrooms? Dismantle the structures of societal oppression on the weekends, superhero style? We have lives, families, research projects, endless committee work and the list goes on. So, what do we do? This session explores how we can create cultures of inclusion at our institutions by beginning with our classrooms. Dr. Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller is an associate professor of history who formerly served as associate dean of undergraduate education and director of honors at UB. She has spent ten years thinking about, developing, piloting and assessing innovative approaches to inclusive and transformational teaching and learning.

This session will present the story of an intervention by a collective of teacher educators on New York State’s adoption of edTPA. Too often in education policy analysis, issues of race are discussed briefly, if at all. This session describes how constructions of race specific to settler colonialism offer an important approach to education policy analysis. Further, participants will have the opportunity to explore how policy and practice interact to perpetuate inequity and to identify how all members of a learning community can engage in participatory policy analysis to interrupt injustice.

This presentation is designed for participants interested in how policy influences practice and how educators and researchers can collaborate to identify and interrupt inequity.

Given the rapidly changing demographics of the American population over the past two decades, cultural competence has gained national attention as a means to improving the quality of and minimizing racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare. Within this time, all medical and healthcare education accrediting bodies have mandated cultural competency training to be included in their respective discipline-specific curricula with minimal guidelines. This session will present the current practices and barriers among healthcare/medical education programs in fostering environments that successfully develop culturally competent entry-level clinicians. The presenter will conclude with facilitating an interactive discussion that lists alternative cultural competency training activities that might occur outside of a classroom.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to: define cultural competency; describe cultural competency models that medical and health care providers currently use when providing culturally responsive services; discuss the barriers in producing culturally competent entry-level clinicians in medical and health care education; summarize the current practices of cultural competency training within medical education; identify the connections between culturally competent clinicians and the factors that affect their patient’s health (using the biopsychosocial model); and develop a list of alternative cultural competency training activities that would occur outside of a classroom.

Dr. Amanda Pileski will present on the importance of activism and allyship in the North Georgia Mountains and rural towns throughout the United States. She will share a brief introduction to the process of her White Identity development and how she evolved from an uncomfortable, skeptical student in multicultural classes to an activist speaking out about racial injustice and the impact of systemic racism. Dr. Pileski shares how she uses the aspects valued most in her community (religion/historical pride) to promote cognitive dissonance and highlight the pathology of Southern tradition. She will also share ways she continuously strives to grow as a white ally.

Many faculty members and higher education professionals continually seek to align their social justice values with their professional practice. However, such commitments are not enough to dismantle systems and practices embedded in the inequitable and oppressive structures in higher education. The Multicultural Change Intervention Matrix can help faculty and staff advance social justice and multicultural transformation on campus. This program will apply the concepts of first-order and second-order change to demonstrate how a shift in paradigms and deliberate actions can lead to sustained and meaningful change.

Professional staff member details experiences, challenges and barriers to success in higher education for an educated black male. Also gives insight and steps that can be implemented to help break the culture of comfort.

Among the unintended consequences of algorithmic decision making is the potential for harm. Digital justice is the attempt to use the legal system to mitigate harm. It is based on a concept of algorithmic accountability. In this talk, the concept of algorithmic accountability will be subject to critical examination that will conclude that is an inadequate basis for grounding digital justice. Alternatives are proposed.

Over the past several decades, faculty and staff have increasingly been asked to prove their worth by making themselves always available to the institution—or, to use Joan Acker’s (1990) language, by being “ideal workers”—those who are working all the time and have no family responsibilities in the home. These norms reify traditional gender roles, leaving caregiving responsibilities to women and, in the process, penalize people of all genders. These penalties have only increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as many parents are trying to fulfill their work and home responsibilities—often at the same time.  Drawing upon the author’s original research, this interactive presentation will discuss the ways in which ideal worker norms have negative consequences on the professional and personal lives of faculty, staff, and students as well as create a space for participants to brainstorm how they can challenge ideal worker norms on both individual and institutional levels.

In this workshop you will learn what bias is, recognize where it comes from and gain insight on how to recognize the impact of bias on yourself and others. This workshop provides an opportunity to broaden your understanding of relational groups beyond the obvious groups to which you feel you belong. You will become more prepared to push bias attitudes aside at the individual level of your own thoughts, words and deeds and improve your capacity for engaging in and promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

• Identify common “kinship groups”
• Develop a sensitivity to bias by exploring what it is/is not
• Recognize the difference between intent and impact
• Learn strategies to become more “diversity fit”

When individuals purposefully think about their talents, they are more likely to notice how these talents contribute to their success. This workshop seeks to explore the strategies and implications for recognizing and applying one’s strengths in different settings. During this session, participants will:

• Identify key milestones of one’s strengths development and the possibilities for overplaying it
• Explore opportunities for individuals and teams to intentionally promote diversity and inclusion in their workplace
• Expose participants to global and diversity mindset scenarios in practice for a more inclusive society

One in five High School graduates in New York State will be Latinx students this decade. Latinx students make up a growing percentage of post-secondary students as a whole. At UB, Latinx students are a growing student body, and an ever more important presence on campus as learners, leaders, and activists. Yet, institutions throughout the nation are grappling with how to build the structures and environment where students can survive, and thrive, in places that have been exclusionary or hostile to students of color, first generation students, and others.   

This interactive session presents the opportunity for participants to discuss their experience as teachers and students, and to envision how to build the structures of inclusion Latinx students and faculty need to thrive in schools and Universities, and at UB in particular. We will also engage in a critical analysis of the category of Latinx itself—and the need to acknowledge diverse histories and experiences among Latinx students, including Afro-descendant and Indigenous Latinx students, and how these nuances can inform a model of critical pedagogy.

This conversation is based on my 25+ years as a classroom teacher, school administrator, and now professor of educational leadership. It was inspired by nine Harlem mothers who, in 1958, desegregated several public schools located on NYC’s upper west side. They also challenged deficit paradigms of Black women, Black motherhood, and communities of color.

Positive school racial climate is associated with Black high school students’ belonging, grades, and academic self-concept, while poor racial climate is a predictor of disproportionate exclusionary discipline and grade disparities. Few K-12 interventions target racial climate as a malleable factor in education reform. This presentation will share current strategies to improve racial climate in schools, including structural changes and student-level interventions. We will highlight a specific intergroup program piloted in Western New York with implications for racial climate interventions in diverse suburban schools.

In this session, fundamental features of mentoring and academic networks are discussed in terms of how faculty and staff (particularly White faculty who are in the majority at UB) might more effectively support Black, Indigenous, and other students of color given the current state of UB in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion. We will also examine how UB's current state poses unique challenges for Black and other students of color in establishing and deriving benefit from mentoring relationships, and how mentoring and sponsorship practices affect the composition of universities generally. I hope that in this session, we will share ideas and feelings about how we can all strengthen our relationships and rely on those relationships in our anti-racism efforts.

As a new faculty member of color at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), I often found myself facing unexpected challenges in the classroom. But none would test me as much as the challenge I faced when I was asked to teach a course on privilege and equity in library and information science (LIS) in a program that was predominantly White. The experience challenged not only my views of privilege in academia, but also my views of privilege within the world we live in. In this session, I will share not only my experience with the privilege and equity course that I taught, but also the lessons I learned about the intersecting layers of privilege that may impact all of us in the classroom. In addition, I will cover the importance of identifying and recognizing privilege and how this knowledge can influence the higher education classroom setting and the dynamic between students and teachers. 

This presentation shares the digital work of teachers and students from multiple rural districts who came together in a community film festival. This annual event is the yearly culmination of a professional development institute called Writing with Video (WWV). In this institute, the teachers formed a long-term community of practice around the use of digital tools. In addition to learning how to compose with Digital Video (DV), they also planned and developed curricular applications of these tools for their shared classroom use. This presentation situates the ways in which their students used the available resources of their ruralities as they composed their video projects. Implications from this study include situating student identity with place, the need for teacher mediation, and exploring liminal spaces. Examples of student and teacher work will be presented.

What, to Black women, is the doctorate? Is it a marker of intellectual prowess, an access point for the proverbial seat at the table, or perhaps a reminder of the barrage of microaggressions emanating from the nexus of race, class, and gender? These questions call into focus the integral relationship between race/racism, gender, and capitalism as it pertains to the academic industrial complex and its deleterious effects on Black women. This session delves into the post-colonial capitalist structure(s) within American (US) higher education settings that replicate the racialized and gendered exploitation of Black women’s labor - ultimately relegating them to the bottom rung of its socio-political hierarchy. What can the doctorate mean to Black women when the university is "a site of social reproduction” that offers little room for Black women’s resistance, and liberation (Sánchez & Patel, 2017, p. 344)? Utilizing the work of Black feminist scholarship and historical materialism, this session prompts participants to question our assumptions and biases about Black women in academia and what is possible when we reframe the landscape of American academia.

This session will introduce an empirically supported and mindfulness-based approach to self-care and activism. First, theory and research on how mindful self-care has been shown to decrease risk for burnout and support personal well-being will be presented. Next, this session will review the importance of explication of and alignment with your personal sense of mission in activism. Last, a model for how mindful self-care and activism work together to create value-oriented and sustainable plans and goals. The mindful self-care scale will be introduced, and an interactive web-based assessment will be shared so that participants can get individualized feedback.

Restorative practices, when implemented with fidelity and joined with other strategies for achieving racial justice, hold promise for achieving racial equity and transforming schools into more supportive, nurturing, and relational environments in which students and staff can thrive and learn. This workshop will provide participants with an introduction to the continuum of restorative practices that can be implemented in educational settings.

This presentation provides recommendations for conducting research with digital storytelling – a methodology within a critical paradigm that has the potential to address issues of inequality and inequity when working with underrepresented communities. Rooted in a movement to increase access to art for marginalized communities in the 1970s and 80s, digital storytelling is an arts-based research method that captures first-person narrated accounts of peoples’ lives through the use of stories, photos, and videos, and empowers communities to be a part of research to create social change. I provide recommendations for using digital storytelling in psychological research as outlined through five phases, including Phase I) digital storytelling’s critical paradigm, Phase II) project development, Phase III) implementation, Phase IV) data analysis, and Phase V) dissemination. I draw on examples from two digital storytelling projects I was a part of, Immigrant Stories and OrigiNatives throughout the presentation.

The criminal justice system evolved from the abolishment of slavery, as a measure to privatize free labor. Mass incarceration is federally sanctioned enslavement, post emancipation. Racialized policing are practices that serve as a feeder into the criminal justice system, disproportionately affecting communities of color. Oftentimes, race and social class are used interchangeably. Other times, race is irrespective of social class. This presentation will examine three racialized policing practices: “The Rockefeller Drug Laws,” “The Three Strikes Rule” and “Stop and Frisk.” The establishment, application and dissolution of these practices will be explored. The goal is to demonstrate the devastating effects of mass incarceration on the individual, the family, the community and the country.

The LAI-GSA Anti-Racist Reading Collective (ARRC) for Justice brought LAI graduate students together for authentic discussions of multimodal texts to achieve transformative change through action. Our primary goal for the summer was to read about, understand and learn how to take action against anti-Black, institutionalized and systemic racism. In making this commitment, we built a cohesive community where we continue to engage in authentic conversations and transformative action. This panel discussion will address how our collective was formed, what we did to work toward an action plan, and what the ongoing impact has been individually and collectively. This session will be useful to anyone interested in working collaboratively towards an anti-racist agenda.

African American male students are disproportionality disciplined, as they are more than three times as likely as White students to receive one or more out of school suspensions. This discipline gap has many implications, including the school­-to­-prison pipeline and the achievement gap, which impede the academic success of African American students. Social skills are important academic enablers, which can lead to fewer problem behaviors and more prosocial behaviors, such as academic engagement. These factors in turn counter exclusionary practices such as time out of school. As such, there is a need for culturally-enriched social skills programs explicitly aimed at providing African American males with the social skills needed to successfully navigate the school environment and reduce their contact with punitive discipline and the juvenile justice system. This presentation shares findings from a study that included a culturally enriched social skills program titled, Black to Success (B2S), combined with Afrocentric mentoring. The study examined the academic engagement, social skills, racial identity, and discipline referrals of African American male students in an urban school. Results indicated an increase in academic engagement following B2S implementation, as well as mixed results for racial identity, social skills, and office discipline referrals. Findings from this study suggest that culturally enhanced Social Skill Instruction combined with Afrocentrism and mentoring may increase prosocial behaviors while reducing problem behaviors for African American males.

Racism and White supremacy continue to have negative effects on the well-being of Communities of Color. Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander communities bear the burden of navigating a society in which their own safety, intelligence and humanity is questioned, ignored, dismissed and/or threatened. In the classroom and on college campuses, Students of Color face the unique challenge of learning in environments that reinforce systems of White supremacy in subtle and overt ways. This shows up as microaggressions, lack of inclusiveness/representation, White-centered curricula, favoritism, missed opportunitiesand various additional markers that position Whiteness as the standard. The impact of these chronic stressors is seen in the mental, emotional, physical and academic wellness of Students of Color. In this workshop, we will highlight the impact of racism on Students of Color and discuss action steps to create anti-racist environments that openly affirm the value of diverse and inclusive learning communities.

Undergraduate students in higher education are experiencing our world in new ways. Specifically, our Black students and students of color are making meaning of their world around them, and navigating what it means to find and assert their voices, engage in activism and advocacy, and learn how to address some of the social inequities that deeply affect them. This presentation will discuss how higher education professionals and social justice activists can support students who are engaging in activism and advocacy work and help them prepare for long-term sustainable change.

This presentation will be focused on the issue of microaggressions and the idea of implicit bias. We will spend time discussing and defining microaggressions, the process by which they tend to occur, the experience of the individuals who engage in them as well as those who feel targeted by them, and how to cope with and address microaggressions when they occur. In discussing these ideas, we will be talking about implicit bias with time devoted to exploring and clarifying the topic of intentionality in diversity work. The presentation will include a brief didactic component but a significant amount of time discussing examples and breaking them down.

Katell will discuss his work analyzing and intervening in the adoption of algorithmic surveillance and decision-making technologies in Seattle. Central features of this work include, first, recognizing the historical legacies of racialized uses of technology that motivate some current technology policies, and second working to broaden the epistemic practices of a data science lab using participatory methods that promote the active inclusion of communities of color and otherwise marginalized folks in technology design and decision making.

We investigated how information and communications technology (ICT) have influenced students’ performance during the COVID-19 pandemic era, by paying focused attention to underrepresented minority (URM) students. By applying moderated mediation SEM models, we analyzed the data from URM and non-URM students who experienced online transition during 2020 spring semester in one university in western New York.  Regrettably, this study identified the performance gap between URM and non-URM students during this pandemic era. Also, we found the differential effect of ICT access on GPA between URM and non-URM students. While the effect of ICT access was more pronounced among URM students, URM students were found to display lower level of ICT access than non-URM students. We discussed the implications of these findings in view of the digital divide and inclusion during the (post) COVID-19 pandemic era.

Hosting book discussions and/or community conversations can be daunting when we are not equipped to manage certain aspects of a conversation. “How to Talk about Race” is a brief but insightful introduction to moderating discussions relating to race. Conversations about race are deeply personal and can be polarizing; the content we have created serves as a guide to navigate these discussions while maintaining a respectful environment. The purpose of this webinar is to walk away with applicable tools to utilize in book discussions and community conversations, learn how to establish ground rules for a group discussion, understanding an identity wheel and its purpose, and develop strategies for disruptive participants.

There is a growing body of critical and interdisciplinary scholarship on the traumas inherent in forced migration and the corresponding educational and mental health needs of displaced youth. Yet, there is limited empirical research on how political and normative culture affects this relationship. Presenters share published findings from a larger multi-method qualitative case study that utilized observations, document collection, interviews, and focus groups to investigate how U.S. high school personnel leveraged available policy and programmatic supports to address displaced student educational needs.  Building on literature concerned with the politics of education and ways to address structural oppression through culturally responsive and trauma-informed practices, this research develops a framework for understanding important intersections between schooling practices, context-specific resettlement culture, and student experience.

The United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, yet it incarcerates over 20 percent of the world's prisoners. As with most dominant market segmentations, the implicit goal is to create customers early. The school to prison pipeline is evidenced research that directly links the U.S. education system’s policy of over suspending, over disciplining and expelling brown and black youth (starting in preschool) at disproportionate rates and the corresponding connection to incarceration. This presentation will focus on the brief history of targeting communities of color to unjustly create a labor pool for industry and demean communities of color in the process.

We seek to enhance the current body of literature on mentoring and STEM postdocs to encourage institutions to adopt reflective, culturally responsive practices, and cultivate supportive and sustainable research environments for STEM postdocs. Such research demands a critical examination of the regimes of thought that have percolated higher education institutions through the lens of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. This examination identifies underlying values, discrete elements, frameworks, and practices that promote exploitative practices which in turn negatively impact mentor-mentee relationships, research culture, the sense of belonging (to STEM), and the overall wellbeing of those working within and across the fields (Camacho & Rhoads, 2015; Fisher et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2012).

Blakeney (2005) defines Antiracist Pedagogy as “a paradigm located within Critical Theory utilized to explain and counteract the persistence and impact of racism using praxis as its focus to promote social justice for the creation of a democratic society in every respect” (p. 119). In her discussion of a democratic society, however, Blakeney treats “American society” as a monolith without considering how place/region impacts cultural practices that impact teachers’ beliefs and values. This presentation discusses the results of a multiple case study that investigated the impact of rural out-migrant teachers’ place-connected identity development on their practices. One of the findings of the study was that movement across and reflection on their cultural participation across rural and sub/urban places influenced teachers’ antiracist beliefs and practices. In discussing the experiences of these rural out-migrant teachers, this presentation will invite attendees to consider how their own connections to place have influenced their beliefs and values concerning racial equity as well as present concrete ideas for ways teacher education can provide opportunities for preservice teachers to develop place-conscious teacher identities that facilitate and foster their growth in antiracist teaching practices.

This presentation provides a sharing of resources that inform anti-racist teaching based on the framework of literacy as situated social practices, specific to Black girls and boys within and across domains of their lives. With an intended audience of teachers, researchers, and anyone else invested in the success and well-being of youth of color, this presentation will provide a road map for exploring classroom- and community-based work that aligns with anti-racist teaching and learning. Attendees will be given access to the presentation materials, including a PDF bibliography of the resources shared.

One of the great and insidious myths around oppression and inequity is that there is a system that is broken and in need of repair. However, in reality, we are living in a system that very much operates exactly how it was designed — to reproduce inequities that favor one segment of the population while marginalizing others. This session will explore this unbroken system and will discuss the importance of first breaking it and then reconstructing it in a way that privileges all voices and experiences.

• Odette Reid (Department of Learning and Instruction)
  
• Jaleah Greene (Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology)
• Charice Thompson (Department of Information Science)
  
• Angelica Soto (Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology)
• Chazz Robinson (Department of Educational Leadership and Policy)

Graduate school provides important educational, social, and personal experiences, and yet not all students have the same experience. This panel, made up of UB Graduate School of Education (GSE) Students of Color from different programs and departments will provide participants with insight into their unique experiences and challenges. They will also offer some suggestions and recommendations about how to make GSE a more inclusive, affirming, and equitable environment. 

If education is to be used as a tool for furthering the goals of equity, diversity, justice and inclusion (EDJI) — we will need resources. Unfortunately, traditional educational resources are often problematic or out-of-date with contemporary needs. However, Open Education Resources (OER) are copyright-free education materials that anyone can use and, most importantly, change. Anyone (i.e., teacher, student, public advocate) can change and use an OER! This means that OER are a possibly never-ending supply of educational resources that can be used to support EDJI education. This session will detail what makes OER an EDJI tool, where OER can be found, and some basic steps for using them, both as resource and as a pedagogy.

This presentation highlights Lois Weis’s own research process with respect to the genesis, conceptualization, and results linked to a two year ethnographic investigation carried out in three top-tier secondary schools in the United States (Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top Tier U.S. Secondary Schools, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, & Heather Jenkins, University of Chicago Press, 2014). Highlighting her theoretical work with Michelle Fine (Harvard Educational Review, 2012; Anthropology and Educational Quarterly, 2013, among others) and specific elements linked to highly unequal structural arrangements and outcomes for varying racialized and classed groups in the US, she explicates the ways in which “critical bifocality” both scaffolds and contextualizes the initial project as well as enabling the recent introduction of a ten-year longitudinal component to the project. In her presentation/discussion, she will highlight: 1)  actions and activities associated with the research process; 2) select findings with regard to racialized and classed preparation for and admissions to the postsecondary sector, and 3) affordances gained by introducing a longitudinal component to qualitative research. This is all discussed with an eye towards research that has “legs” both substantively and methodologically. Any and all questions will be welcome.

In Spring 2020, Mizzou professor Jason Alston launched a course in cultural heritage for the University of Missouri’s library and information science program. Alston’s approach on cultural heritage instruction focused on de-centering normative whiteness from such topics as heritage acquisition and ownership, as well as revealing white supremacist and white nationalist elements of heritage commemoration, especially as it pertains to commemoration of the Confederate States of America in the present day United States.

The history of organizations points to a bureaucratic and hierarchical model aimed at control and domination. The dominant model which images many organizations (including US institutions of higher education) tend to marginalize efforts aimed at racial and ethnic equity, and diversity. For example, college authorities may enact policies and guidelines for equity and diversity with little or no participation by those (students and communities) affected by those policies and practices. I will argue in my presentation for a more collaborative and participatory model based on respect, trust, openness and humility. 

For too long, mathematics has played a key role in institutionalized racism and systemic inequality. In the 1970’s, while more African Americans gained access to higher education, more education stipulations and quality controls were put in place.  Math requirements increased exponentially, and low-income minority students were disproportionately placed in non-credited remedial and prerequisite courses. Thereby, leading to substantially lower four-year college graduation rates and few students of color pursuing lucrative STEM career paths. Historic math exclusionary practices have led to generations of poverty resulting in the “haves” being white and well-resourced and the “have-nots” being low-income people of color. Dismantling racism and white supremacy must begin in the classroom.

As the Black Lives Matter movement and other powerful organizing by BIPOC-led organizations for racial justice have shifted the U.S. consciousness on race over the past decade, more and more white people are grappling with their own racial identity, and role in white supremacy. Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a national organization with local chapters throughout the U.S. and Canada, organizes white communities to end white supremacy. This session will provide an overview of the role of white people in the fight for collective liberation.

This session will be a hands-on, interactive session where we will examine a media text and deconstruct the various production elements. In doing so, we will explore how studying these codes allows for a number of different ways to read media, including implications for gender and racial representation.

Part of the problem with undergraduate STEM courses is that they often have a classroom climate focused on the interests and backgrounds of the student majority (i.e., White, Asian, males). Due to unconscious biases, teachers or instructors often unintentionally leave underrepresented students (e.g., women, ethnic and racial minorities, students with disabilities, etc.) working on projects with low interest for them or, alternatively, clustered in groups based on their minority status. In this presentation, two studies will be shared to show the efforts to create more inclusive learning environments for historically underrepresented minorities in STEM. The efforts include re-designing an introductory college CS course by understanding different student motivation and developing a diversity-focused online professional development course. Although the example studies were conducted in higher education settings, anyone who is interested in designing inclusive classrooms and/or diversity-focused teacher professional development will be able to gain knowledge and insights from the session.

In higher education today, students are watching their world evolve and transform, all while finding their place within a constantly changing college campus. Specifically, our students of color are often juggling various priorities and responsibilities, focused on performing well academically, and growing into the fullness of their potential. With all they are holding, our students of color are also making meaning of their various social identities, especially their racial/ethnic identities. This presentation will explore the unique developmental and academic needs of our students of color, and discuss how best to support, encourage and guide them along their educational journeys.

What, to Black women, is the doctorate? Is it a marker of intellectual prowess, an access point for the proverbial seat at the table, or perhaps a reminder of the barrage of microaggressions emanating from the nexus of race, class, and gender? These questions call into focus the integral relationship between race/racism, gender, and capitalism as it pertains to the academic industrial complex and its deleterious effects on Black women. This session delves into the post-colonial capitalist structure(s) within American (US) higher education settings that replicate the racialized and gendered exploitation of Black women’s labor - ultimately relegating them to the bottom rung of its socio-political hierarchy. What can the doctorate mean to Black women when the university is "a site of social reproduction” that offers little room for Black women’s resistance and liberation (Sánchez & Patel, 2017, p. 344)? Utilizing the work of Black feminist scholarship and historical materialism, this session prompts participants to question our assumptions and biases of Black women in academia and what is possible when we reframe the landscape of American academia.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are powerful tools to ensure racial and gender diversity in recruitment for faculty and staff positions at your institution. This session will explain how UBJobs, UB’s ATS, can be used to monitor and assess racial equity in hiring decisions. Potential demographic availability data sources and how they may be used as a comparison metric to recruitment data will be discussed. Current and future hiring managers, current and future search committee members, and anyone interested in using recruitment data as an accountability metric is encouraged to attend.

Black Girl Magic is a movement that was popularized in 2013 to "celebrate the beauty, power, and resilience of Black women" and to congratulate Black women on their accomplishments.

Drs. Bain, Charway and Gilford will discuss the barriers, challenges and successes faced during their academic tenure and professional careers. They will provide insight into specific limitations in the psychology field, such as the lack of Black mentors, professional recruitment and retention, and cultural limitations in assessment and counseling. Drs. Bain, Charway, and Gilford will also provide tools for academic success and professional development.

Recently there has been an enormous push to hold book/video/article groups to explore racism and anti-racism. This 60-minute online workshop is for people who would like to facilitate these types of conversations with colleagues in a professional setting. It will introduce strategies for facilitating conversations about race, explore ways to reframe difficult conversations and include facilitation practice for participants.

Acknowledging the multitude of unique pathways through Higher Education, this presentation will focus on effective advising, mentoring, and program planning techniques designed to support underrepresented college students. Sharing lessons learned from the Federal TRIO Programs and a large-scale database study on first-generation college students, this discussion highlights practical strategies for successfully working with students for whom Higher Education was not traditionally designed.

As a service and research profession, practitioners in library and information science may approach information transactions from a deficit lens – what users don’t know about a subject, search strategy, resource, etc. However, each user brings to the interaction assets and capital based on their lived experiences that may be applied to call them into the experience. This session introduces Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework as the backdrop for taking an asset-based approach to LIS work through an examination of services to first-generation students. Participants will explore forms of capital as applied to the population of their choice.

knoDespite current research that demonstrates people’s ways of knowing and thinking are shaped by their culture and context (Banks, 2007; Gutiérrez, 2012; Nasir, 2002; Bang & Medin, 2010) most research practices and methodologies used to understand the ways of thinking and knowing continue to be grounded in Eurocentric/ traditional/ epistemologies (Kovach, 2009; Chilisa, 2011; Wilson, 2008). As a result, there is a need to focus on local ways of knowing and thinking while conducting research within communities of color.

This session focuses on the following goals and objectives:

• Participants will discuss the current state of research practices and methodologies that are being used while conducting research in communities of color.
• Participants will be engaged in understanding how to align research practices and methodologies with local ways of knowing and thinking.
• Participants will be engaged in understanding how to build research partnerships with institutions and communities of color that focus on equity and empowerment.
• Participants will discuss how researchers can be better informed about research practices and methodologies that are focused on local ways of knowing and thinking.

“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” —Malcolm X 

Conversations within education and throughout society about the experiences of Black/African American women are greatly needed. Given the intersection of racism and sexism, the experiences of Black/African American women are unique. Thus, it is necessary to create a space to have this discussion about these experiences, including the realities of being a Black woman in GSE. Black women in higher education experience unique challenges and barriers that impact their experiences and academic performance. The current sociopolitical climate has finally began to shed light on understanding Black students' experiences within GSE. We will discuss the supports we have created or utilized on social, organizational, and intrapersonal levels. Additionally, members of this roundtable will explore other concepts within our discussion such as White Allyship and Colorism. This roundtable will employ a discussion-based format where participants and discussion leaders can speak openly about unique experiences and challenges. 

For many white-identified people, white privilege and white supremacy culture are difficult to identify because they permeate so much of our lived experience. From the language we use to our group and organizational norms, whiteness is deeply ingrained (Johnson, 2017). While we may be aware of racism and power structures that benefit white people, recognizing the values on which these structures rely takes more reflection and exploration. As white allies, it is essential to recognize and work against these values in ourselves and our communities. In this workshop, we will discuss aspects of white supremacy culture, such as objectivity and either/or thinking (Jones & Okun, 2001), and the ways culture keeps us from recognizing our participation in anti-Black racist structures. Each participant will make an action plan for challenging internalized white supremacy values in themselves and their communities to move towards greater justice and peace.

The University at Buffalo is located on the traditional territories of the Seneca Nation, one of the six-member nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — and is in close proximity to a majority of the federally recognized tribal nations in New York State, as well as one of the largest First Nations communities in Canada just across the border. Led by distinguished visiting scholar Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Seneca/UCLA) and associate professor Theresa McCarthy (Six Nations Onondaga/UB), this workshop highlights responsibilities associated with teaching and learning on Indigenous lands as an important step to dismantling systemic racism and advancing social justice. Our discussion will address what it means to be educators on Haudenosaunee homelands, and what can be learned from how Haudenosaunee educators enact responsibilities to the land while working on the homelands of other Indigenous nations. Our presentation will also engage the making of public universities from land dispossession on a national and local scale. How might this ongoing acknowledgement contribute to research and teaching excellence on our campuses today? We will offer direction regarding current educational resources and the possibilities for future educational resource advancements that will emerge with the new Indigenous Studies Department at UB.

For decades, San Francisco has been touted as a liberal bastion that champions cultural diversity and progressive political ideals, yet Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander residents continue to face structural and systemic racism not unlike that which operates in more conservative locales. In this session, participants will learn about San Francisco’s history of racial politics and urban development, the contemporary challenges faced by antiracist teachers and administrators working in the city, and the lessons that can be drawn out by looking critically at the impacts of so-called “progressive politics” on underserved populations. With takeaways for future teachers and administrators, University faculty and staff, and community-based activists and organizers, this case study reveals the limits of well-intentioned, Left-leaning approaches to addressing race and racism.

This presentation will focus on the role of bystanders who witness bullying, harassment, and discrimination. Findings from a program of research examining the behavior of peers in bullying situations and the factors that predict the likelihood of actively defending (directly or indirectly) in bullying and harassment will be highlighted. The measurement, validation, and application of a five-step model of bystander intervention in bullying and sexual harassment will be shared. Approaches for shaping social norms and bystander intervention training will be shared, including multiple options for addressing bullying, harassment, and discrimination when it occurs.

Neighborhoods of color have inequitable access to affordable, fresh and healthy food. Drawing on action-research in the city of Buffalo, this presentation will discuss the ways in which community-led action is forcing systemic change to promote food justice.

• Ayse Cobanoglu
• Winston Martey
• Aiko Minematsu
• Fang Xu
• Lei Zhu

Graduate school provides important educational, social and personal experiences, and yet not all students have the same experience. This panel, made up of GSE international students from different GSE programs and departments, will provide participants with insight into their unique experiences and challenges. They will also offer suggestions and recommendations about how to make GSE a more inclusive, affirming and equitable environment. 

This session will address racial and socio-economic inequities in literacy achievement for children and adolescents traditionally underserved by public schools, especially Black and Hispanic/Latino students, and students from low-income families. Participants will examine data showing the causes and effects of inequitable outcomes in literacy achievement. Participants will learn about a theoretical framework for addressing these inequities by integrating evidence-based and culturally responsive literacy instruction. Based on the four-layered equity framework proposed by Muhammad (2020), this session will focus on practical solutions for addressing inequities though the development of identity, literacy skills, knowledge, and criticality. Implications for reframing elementary and secondary literacy instruction will be considered.​

Restorative Practices focus on building, maintaining, and, when necessary, repairing relationships among community members. In this workshop, we will examine ways in which RP can dismantle the system that impacts racism and decrease the school to prison pipeline.

Michael Apple (2002) wrote that “all too many current school reform efforts are beside the point. They are often based on a misrecognition of the realities both of schools and teachers’ lives, and even more damaging, on an ignorance of the daily realities of the children who come to these schools.” Cultivating and centering youth voices around issues of racial and educational equity has transformative potential, especially at a time when our collective focus has shifted to building back better. This session will introduce principles of Youth Participatory Action Research and present the framework for a project focused on cultivating youth voices that GSE intends to launch this fall. In this session, we’ll seek input to refine the project and map the way forward, with the hope that some session participants will remain involved throughout the upcoming academic year.

The academic, business, and social value of diversity and inclusion is well documented. Schools of engineering must admit, retain, and graduate diverse students who become engineering professionals that are able to work effectively in a diverse, multicultural and global environment. This presentation will detail the efforts of the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) to increase the numbers of under-represented (Black, Latinx, Native-American) students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Our programs seek to create positive change by offering high impact educational practices, an array of support services, community engagement with K-12 organizations and a safe space for students to discuss their aspirations, struggles and triumphs. By leveraging state and federal funding, we have created a number of initiatives to realizethese goals. To inform our programmatic structure and choices, we examined best practices from the literature on students of color in STEM as well as conducted our own qualitative research studies. UB SEAS received bronze level exemplar recognition fromthe inaugural American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Diversity Recognition Program, highlighting our commitment to diversity goals. In measuring inclusive excellence, the most successful universities have implemented at least three diversity initiatives. To date, UB has implemented eight such initiatives.