DIVERSITY STATEMENT
As a teacher of a wide range of art, design, and architecture courses, I work to engage diverse learners with one another and with me through projects that resonate with their individual identities and interests and that engage them in multifaceted positions. I always attempt to foster an environment of mutual respect in the classroom, so as to instill in students a sense of safety, which makes possible the kind of risk-taking and thoughtful dialogue that leads to growth and transformation. The hope is to create an environment that is intellectually rich and inclusive, an empathetic space for students.
As we live in a highly complex culture, there is no one way of engaging diversity effectively. With that said, my commitments and capacities to contribute to a school’s plans for inclusion and equity are through my work, scholarship, teaching, service, mentoring, and advising. I actively search out articles, literature, media lectures and classes that aim to educate and bring lasting, positive change to our broken systems. I reference comprehensive curriculum at universities around the country, and work to create inclusive curricula in my classrooms. Intersections of gender, race, class, sexual identity, age, ability, and other institutionalized systems of inequity and privilege are always considered. I help to facilitate focused and productive engagement with my students through contemporary, multidisciplinary scholarship. I search out and intimately study course development resources so that I can speak to inclusion and equity through critical discourse, and continuously update my curriculum so as to stay engaged and prove my dedication to our ever-evolving students, classrooms and world.
I became a mother six years ago. This profound experience, along with a devoted meditation practice, are recent experiences that have significantly helped to reshape my perspective on life, living and in turn, teaching. They have had a transformative effect on informing the nurturing, benevolent framework I try to provide for my students in academic settings, and on my commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in the classroom. In order to address moments where issues may surface, I pause, create space, and offer time to move through the complexities at hand. Promoting open, respectful communication is a way to honor each person and allow for everyone to be seen and heard.
I also have directly experienced economic uncertainty, which manifested in many ways over the years as I put myself through undergraduate and graduate school, and became one of the 0.1% creative directors and business owners that is female. It has become crystal clear to me how social inequities affect opportunities and security. I am deeply committed to improving the experience of the classroom for my students, and as an educator, to help cultivate diverse dialogue and practice that can lead to professional opportunities outside academia.
Along with this, I further my approach to considerations of diversity in course designs by using a range of assessments, preventing bias in grading, diversifying course content, using inclusive language in the syllabus and classroom, and utilizing student feedback to improve the culture or tone of the environment. As a faculty member, I would welcome the opportunity to help as part of a larger whole in the college setting. In my many years of teaching, I have personally observed the many ways that diverse teams make academia stronger, as a cross-curricular effort. This helps to legitimize the discussion of systemic inequities across campus and shares the responsibility of teaching about power structures throughout the community.