The Diversity Academy published its first issue of “Transformations,” a magazine explaining the functions of the academy and the fellowships and faculty learning communities available to IUS faculty.
“The Diversity Academy is an academic affairs system for supporting faculty teaching, research and service in broad area of diversity,” Annette Wyandotte, interim associate vice chancellor of Academic Affairs and magazine editor, said.
The IUS mission statement defines diversity as characteristics, such as age, ethnicity, gender, marital status, religion and sexual orientation.
The academy offers semester or yearlong fellowships to full-time faculty interested in the services. These fellowships are visitation periods of time for teachers to research.
The Diversity Academy offers academic resources for faculty to use toward research and class curriculum to create a learning environment that promotes diversity.
“The goals are to promote diversity teaching, learning, as well as research and service to bring visibility to the resources the academy can offer in these areas such as consultation, workshops, conferences and fellowships,” Wyandotte said.
The magazine’s name was made after transformative education.
“Transformative education is a way of going about teaching that moves beyond just the intellectual and includes the whole person,” Wyandotte said. “This means the emotional and the ethical dimension of a human being.”
The magazine also has a Q&A and two success stories that tell how IUS faculty members have been given opportunities from the Diversity Academy.
“The Skin You’re In” was one of the stories featured in the magazine about postdoctoral fellow Huh who took part in a fellowship at IU Southeast from 2010 to 2011.
Huh researched the teaching methods and student response of five classes. From her research, Huh plans to help students to promote diversity to students and teachers in South Korea.
“The research will be used to bring awareness to effective ways to bring attention to transformative education,” Wyandotte said. “This started in the area of adult learning. Now, it’s spread to almost any higher education.”
Wyandotte lead a yearlong workshop during spring and fall 2011 called Faculty Learning Community. These workshops discussed curriculum transformation and ways to impact students emotionally, ethically and intellectually while teaching.
Kelly Ryan, assistant professor of history, was one of the faculty members involved in the FLC. She created new transformative material for her American History class. This class material covered slavery in American history and the Cherokee Indian removal.
“She found that when you have a transformative education unit, her students grew,” Wyandotte said. “It’s one thing to read about something, but to actually be able to empathize with what you are reading or learning is so different.”
Two of the five faculty members in the FLC did research in their own classrooms to improve them.
“Transformative education helps you become a better citizen by helping you care about human beings and their welfare,” Wyandotte said. “You can use transformative education to transform and make a better world.”
The Diversity Academy began in the office of Academic Affairs in 2007.
“The Academy was created in part of trying to get a presidential grant to expand campus diversity,” Wyandotte said. “It helps IUS get known in other places for their working diversity. We need to have diversity be taken seriously on campus.”
In 2007, IU Southeast received the Presidential Grant worth $100,000. This money allowed the Academy to hire two fellows. The Diversity Academy has future fellowship plans made.
“We are putting on a shared conference in 2013 with Ball State and IU Bloomington and offering a fellowship to assist the state conference in fall 2013,” Wyandotte said. “In the future there might be a fellowship for teaching. They will get course time off for a semester or two to gather research.”
By AMIRA ASAD
Staff
aasad@umail.iu.edu
