April 2023

Happy end of Spring Semester to you all! May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. About 24 million Americans – about 7% of the US population – have family roots from more than twenty countries across Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Each country has its own unique history, culture, and language. About 1.6 million Americans identify as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Asian American individuals of years past literally helped build this country and today help make UK a better place to work and learn. 

Here are some additional resources:

1. If you are interested in joining UK’s Asian and Asian American affinity group, follow this link. 

2. Asian Americans continue to face racism and microaggressions in the US, in Lexington, and on our campus. If you see this happening, say something. We all need to support one another. Here is a great resource for how to be an effective upstander when harassment happens.

3. For online speakers, exhibits, and historical perspectives about AAPI individuals, click here for excellent resources from Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Click here for documentaries.

— Dr. Christia Spears Brown
Associate Dean of Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion

March Toward Inclusion Recap

Throughout the month of March, the Arts & Sciences Office of Inclusive Excellence in partnership with the Office for Institutional Diversity held special programming to raise awareness of the different areas of  diversity that are often overlooked, and celebrate what makes our campus community unique.

The Office of Inclusive Excellence collaborated with faculty from MCLLC, Linguistics, and the Appalachian Center to facilitate student outreach across campus and develop Lunch & Learn sessions that allowed students to congregate, discuss diversity, and engage in a variety of creative works that emphasized the power of place, community, and culture in finding each of our own identities.

Students wrote their names in Hebrew and Arabic, located their homeplace on our local and world maps, contributed to the Linguistics Department dialect survey project, and decorated cookies with icing colors that affirmed their gender identity. Students also created their own version of George Ella Lyon's Where I'm From poem, learned about the Jewish holiday of Purim and made their own groggers to use in the retelling of Esther, and received LGBTQIA+ resources on allyship and gender identity.

As we work to arrange more programming and outreach opportunities, Associate Dean Dr. Brown encourages faculty planning inclusive excellence projects and events to reach out and share more information with our office to let us know how we can further support and amplify the impactful work already taking place in their home departments.

Please email information on inclusive excellence projects and events to Dr. Christia Brown at christia.brown@uky.edu.

Partnering with CELT

To further support our faculty and teaching assistants this semester, the Office of Inclusive Excellence has partnered with the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) to create the Inclusive Teaching Program.

Through this partnership, faculty and TAs will have the opportunity to earn a digital Inclusive Teaching badge that may be used on email signatures, FMERs, and resumes to show completion of inclusivity workshops, CELT consultation, student feedback, and reflection.

We are excited to work with CELT to provide new opportunities for meaningful engagement that will positively impact our student population. More information about the AS-CELT Inclusive Educator badge will be shared as the program is developed and registration comes available. In the meantime, check out the many services CELT has to offer!

Call for Race & Ethnicity Requirement Course Submissions

In an ongoing effort to expand our course options for students and promote inclusive excellence, all faculty are encouraged to submit courses with content that addresses one of more of the following Race & Ethnicity Requirements:

• the changing meanings of race and ethnicity across time and space
• processes of racialization and analyses of race and racism, such as structural, institutional, scientific, and symbolic racism
• how race and ethnicity become the basis of inequality, oppression, privilege, identities, and agency
• critical analyses of discrimination based on race and ethnicity as they intersect with religion, social class, gender, or sexuality

Every course satisfying the requirement should devote at least 50% of class contact hours, student assignments, and course material (readings, films, other media) to the required content.

To submit a course for R&E Requirement review, please click the button below to access the form (must be logged in with linkblue to access the form). If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact Billie Haley (bethany.haley@uky.edu).

Access the DEI Digest Archives for past editions!