Workshop Opportunity — Civic Learning Through a Lens of Racial Equity

Civic Learning Through a Lens of Racial Equity Workshop

Wednesday, May 21, 2025
8am to 4pm at Buffalo State University

Facilitator Dr. John Reiff, is

• Director of Civic Learning and Civic Engagement, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education.
• Equity and Engagement Fellow, Campus Compact.
• Co-editor of Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices (2023), for which he and his colleagues were awarded the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. 

The workshop’s objectives:  Faculty will –

• Articulate the importance of civic identity, active listening skills, and racial equity in academic course content, regardless of discipline.
• Incorporate racial equity, active listening skills, and applied learning (learning by doing) into an existing syllabus. Non-faculty participants will use active listening as they collaborate with faculty to tailor faculty members’ syllabi.

Participants will practice ways of incorporating racial equity into syllabi so that their students understand and can advocate for racial equity in their personal and professional lives.  In so doing, we meet –

• At least two of SUNY Chancellor John King’s Four Pillars-
  • Student Success
  • Research and Scholarship
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Economic development and upward mobility

Method.  The event uses discussion, activities, and group work across four sessions:

• Creating a civic identity – “Who Am I as a Citizen?” Each participant explores their individual civic identity as a step in helping students develop their own civic identities.
• Skills for a Multiracial Democracy – “Who Are My Students?” Participants identify ways in which their syllabi include skills for a multiracial democracy.
• Democratic Knowledge and Levers of Change. Participants analyze syllabi for civic learning content and methodology.
• Shaping Syllabi. Faculty workshop their syllabi to incorporate racial equity and civic learning with an applied learning approach.   

Notes

• To register, email Dan Blum (blumdm@buffalostate.edu) and (faculty) attach, as a Word document, the syllabus that you would like to work with.
• Participants are expected to engage in the full workshop.
• At the completion of the workshop, participants will receive a certificate acknowledging their work.

This event is sponsored by Buffalo State University and the SUNY System Administration’s Civic Fellows.  It is made possible through a generous grant from the SUNY Impact Foundation and the Ibis Group.