Provost’s Diversity Institute for faculty kicks off May 10

The Provost’s Diversity Institute for Faculty Development, which kicks off next month, will features five events focused on anti-racist curriculum and praxis.

The institute was created in 2015 to offer Pitt faculty the opportunity to increase awareness about diversity and develop skills needed to teach in a diverse, multicultural environment.

This year’s classes are:

May 10: Classrooms as Catalyst for Racial Justice Centered Activism

The inaugural session for the Provost’s Diversity Institute for Faculty Development will explore how the classroom can be a space that catalyzes student activism for racial justice. #BlackLivesMatter, #DREAMers, #StandWithStandingRock, and #NODAPL among many other social movements have shaped youth activism for racial justice on our campuses. The session showcases insights and reflections from faculty who support critical and creative activism in their teaching of racial justice.

May 11: Abolitionist Pedagogy in Practice

This foundational session will introduce and outline the core philosophy of abolitionist pedagogy to inform a purposeful engagement with an abolitionist framework in the classroom. We envision this session to create a space for faculty to consider and conceptualize a teaching practice rooted in abolition.

May 16: Decentering Whiteness: Intersectional Curriculum Creation

This critical conversation featuring recipients of the Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Curriculum will share curricular lessons, experiences, and insights on the approaches used to disrupt the hidden curriculum of whiteness and opportunities and tensions encountered in centering racial justice in the curriculum.

May 17: Public Pedagogy and Hip-Hop: A Teaching Tool for Racial Justice

Engaging with public pedagogical practices asks us to consider how learning can occur outside formal sites of education and beyond traditional educational practices. We seek to explore public pedagogy by centering Bettina Love and Regina Bradley’s writing Teaching Trayvon: Teaching about Racism through Public Pedagogy, Hip Hop, Black Trauma, and Social Media (available through Pitt Passport). We will discuss how hip-hop music and culture can serve as a culturally sustaining tool to examine language, power, and identity in the classroom.

June 9: Applying Trauma-Aware Pedagogical Practices

Given our present reality of violence and continued racial trauma, drawing on pedagogical strategies that affirm our students’ lived experiences and identities is essential in fostering an equitable classroom. This workshop provides a broad introduction to the application of trauma-aware teaching practices as a step towards validating and supporting students. Grounded in the recognition that racial trauma manifests in the classroom, we seek to consider how faculty can realize, recognize, and resist retraumatization.

Click on the link for each event to register.