"Inclusion Starts with Me" 3rd annual Teach In

Today I participated in three panels for Cal Poly's 3rd annual Inclusion Starts With Me Teach In, which is a day full of workshops, panels, and events related to diversity, inclusion, and social justice. After participating in the Teach In last year (you can click here to read about that experience), I was delighted to help support this program again this year. 

​The first panel that I participated in was titled "The Social Construction of Race: Reflections from the Cal Poly Multiracial Community" and was co-organized by me and a colleague of mine, Maggie Bodemer, who is a lecturer in the history department. We were joined by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti (Associate Dean for Diversity & Curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts), Kari Mansager (Program Director of the Office of University Diversity and Inclusion), and Alyiah Gonzales (an English major and one of my students who also works in the Cross Cultural Centers). The panel was a huge success, prompting rich discussion about multiracial identity and the history of race as a socially constructed concept in the United States. I was happy to see that we attracted a large audience of several dozens of people.

The second panel was titled "Crazy Rich Asians Discussion: Asian American Representation in Film and Popular culture" and organized by the leadership of the Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association. I was joined on the panel by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti, Grace Yeh (Professor of Ethnic Studies), Lisa Kawamura (Lecturer of Communication Studies), and Nisa Morey (Lecturer of Chemistry). We filled the room with close to 200 audience members who were eager to talk about the representation of Asian Americans in Crazy Rich Asians. Below is a picture of us panelists in the middle of discussion.

From left to right: Grace, Jennifer, me, Lisa, and Nisa.

The last panel was titled "Cluster Hiring and Organizational Diversity: A Report from the First Year" and organized by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti. The panel brought together most of the faculty who were hired as part of the diversity cluster search put on by the College of Liberal Arts in 2017. I was joined on the panel by Farah Basel Al-Nakib (Assistant Professor of History), Jay Bettergarcia (Assistant Professor of Psychology and Child Development),  Joan Meyers (Assistant Professor of Social Sciences), Emily Ryalls (Assistant Professor of Communication Studies), and Amber Williams (Assistant Professor of Psychology and Child Development). We had a great conversation about the success of cluster hiring and the sense of community we have formed as new assistant professors joining the Cal Poly community at the same time. 

From left to right: me, Jennifer, Farah, Emily, Jay, Joan, and Amber.