For Cortland UUPer Mecke Nagel, diversity and social justice aren’t just pretty words or pie-in-the-sky sentiments.

They are a way of life.

And over the next two years, she’s hoping that a diversity leadership training project she was instrumental in launching this year will come alive for more than 180 UUPers over the next two years.

Call it professional development of the diversity kind.

Nagel, director of the college’s Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, is co-director of the Diversity Leadership Train the Trainer Institute. A three-year program funded with grants from the UUP’s Joint Labor/Management Campus Grants (JLMC) Committee and the SUNY Office of Diversity and Educational Equity, the institute teaches faculty leaders how to train colleagues to incorporate diversity and social justice into their classrooms and teaching styles.

“The goal is to increase diversity education on the three campuses,” said Nagel. “The (Institute) develops and deepens the curriculum and pedagogy of training and teaching to the trainees. To enrich undergraduate student learning, we provide lectures that can be replicated in different disciplines and used in undergraduate classrooms.”

Working with Seth Asumah, a SUNY Cortland UUPer who chairs the college’s Africana studies department, Nagel invited 16 UUPers—four from Cortland and six each from New Paltz and Oneonta—to take part in the first phase of the program.

“The goal is to increase diversity education on the three campuses,” she said.

The intensive, three-day workshop offered lectures on diversity and social justice, informal talks and discussions, classroom role-playing exercises and focus groups.

“When you deal with diversity, you’re pursuing a hot-button issue,” Nagel explained. “You’re getting out of your comfort zone; it hits you on a personal level, much more so then you’re accustomed to. It’s pretty risky what we’re doing.”

It’s also quite unique.

Nowhere else in SUNY has such an initiative taken place, said Nagel. That will change next year in the program’s second phase, when Institute participants stage training session on their home campuses. Through those sessions, as many as 45 more UUPers are expected to receive training.

“It was wonderful meeting like-minded colleagues and sharing concerns about inclusiveness that we all have in our classrooms and our professional life,” said Gowri Parameswaran, chair of the Department of Educational Studies at New Paltz, an Institute participant. “The thing I valued most was getting resources from other educators, such as personal reading lists, lesson plans, questions for reflection and other resources. I will definitely use what I have learned with my students and in my writing and research.”

Another Institute attendee, Mette Christiansen, agreed.

“The opportunity to meet with such a diverse group of colleagues was wonderful,” said Christiansen, Concentration in Human Services director at New Paltz. “The activities were very positive, and even when there was tension at times, this is the type of thing that can happen in a classroom when you try to introduce diversity.”

That the Institute was free to attendees—thanks in part to a JLMC grant—was a bonus for UUPers like Christiansen who are at campuses where professional development funds have all but evaporated due to state aid cutbacks.

Funds for JLMC programs were negotiated in UUP’s 2007-2011 agreement with the state. JLMC programs support professional development, promote diversity, safety and health skills, assist employees who have been retrenched or are at high risk of being retrenched, and provide access to technological tools.

“These dollars are extremely important because there is no (campus) money for travel or conferences,” said Carol Braund, chapter president at Upstate Medical University. “Professional development dollars are critical for professionals here who need CEUs (Continuing Education Units) to maintain their New York state professional licenses.”

SUNY Plattsburgh UUPer Becky Kasper used a JLMC grant to host “Discovering the Joy of Teaching,” a one-day April conference that focused on how teachers can foster good classroom relationships with students and improve the learning environment. Admission was free for UUP members.

More than 130 attendees from campuses as far away as Purchase, Albany, Brockport and Potsdam took part in the conference, said Kasper, a new leader who was elected as a delegate at the Spring DA.

“There is a higher premium put on teaching because of the state’s financial crisis,” said Kasper about choosing to stage a teaching conference. “Students are not going to pay for a college without good faculty.”

Another new UUP leader, Fredonia Chapter President Bridget Russell, spotlighted another side of professional development; she accepted an invitation to present papers in February at the XVII Annual Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation at UCLA in Los Angeles. Her trip was funded by a $1,000 JLMC grant.

Russell attended the conference in part because it offered opportunities to locate research partners and obtain major national grants for research, including one to study speech ventilation in spasmodic dysphonia patients—research she believes could attract funding to (Fredonia) and include students in directed study and thesis projects.

For Nagel, Russell and Kasper, professional development opportunities are essential—as is funding for professional development through the JLMC grants. One must continue to learn to be the best, they said.

“Professional development is absolutely critical,” Kasper said. “It’s so depressing when you talk with faculty who are financially under the gun and their tenure depends on professional development. Scholarship, teaching and service; a (teaching) conference like ours hits all three.”

— Michael Lisi