Workshop: Social Identity- Back to Basics

Samantha Kennedy

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Conference: 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Publication Date: July 28, 2024
Start Date: July 28, 2024
End Date: July 30, 2024
Page Count: 3
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--48654
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48654
Download Count: 64

Paper Authors

biography

Samantha Kennedy University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

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Sam Kennedy is the Assistant Director of Student Engagement & DEI Initiatives at the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering (CSE). With nearly a decade of DEI and higher education experience she specializes in designing and implementing programming that focuses on professional development, academic success, and community development. In addition to her role responsibilities, Sam has collaborated with the CSE First Year Experience Curriculum Committee to revamp and enhance their DEI and Implicit Bias lessons to better support students. This is her fifth year and seventh section of teaching this course and she is proud to also have led this workshop for professionals across her university. Prior to her role in CSE, Sam held positions in collegiate recruitment and national student success initiatives. She is a passionate higher education disrupter who works on expanding access and support programing for her students and colleagues. Sam is proud to join FYEE as a first time presenter to share her experiences as a Latina, a first generation college graduate, and dedicated member of her community. She is her ancestors’ wildest dream.

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Abstract

First year students arrive at our schools with vastly different levels of exposure to – and fluency in – the core concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion education. When the Curriculum Committee for our First Year Experience course began developing a lesson to ground our STEM students in these concepts, we faced a big question. How can we meet each member of a diverse student body where they are while also fostering their growth? As a predominantly white institution, we wanted to challenge our students to reflect on their own identities and how that ties them to other students in the college. We designed a lesson that focused on individuals’ social identities and how those identities affect their comfort levels in different scenarios, then used guided reflection to connect this mindset to other course lessons. This allowed our students to then tackle more complex topics such as implicit bias, structural racism, and how to be social justice accomplices – while also creating space for marginalized students to explore these issues in new ways. As this lesson has evolved over the past few years, we have been especially focused on preparing our instructors to guide this work in ways that does not require BIPOC students to take on additional work in educating their peers. This initiative required collegiate buy-in, educating 40+ instructors, and ultimately implementing these activities for 1600+ first year STEM students each fall. By taking it “back to basics”, we create an opportunity for attendees to play with the building blocks themselves and discuss their own experiences in the classroom. I will demonstrate two classroom activities that will challenge participants to reflect on their own identities and how to grow beyond their comfort zones.

Citation
Format

Kennedy, S. (2024, July), Workshop: Social Identity- Back to Basics Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--48654