Learning to care for our community: diversity work and cultural competency
The UW Bothell/Cascadia Community College Campus Library’s Diversity Team conducts cultural competency trainings which encourage the development of healthy coworker relationships around inquiry, empathy, and a commitment to social justice. Here, we will discuss our design process, our assessment philosophy, and the effect of this work on staff wellness
Awareness to Action: Supporting Our Communities Through Cultural Competency Work
In 2012, ACRL released its Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries, aiming to “provide a framework to support libraries in engaging the complexities of providing services to diverse populations, and recruiting and maintaining a diverse libraryworkforce.” In response, the UW Bothell/Cascadia Community College Campus Library’s Diversity Team conducts trainings designed to foster a healthy workplace environment around inquiry, empathy, and a commitment to social justice and encourage critical reflection of current practice in an effort to optimize facilities, resources, and services for users of diverse backgrounds and circumstances. Here, we will discuss our training design process and assessment philosophy in addition to strategies for implementing diversity programs at both academic and public libraries.
Flickr.com photo, from the photostream: David Grant
Opening our Information Literacy Classrooms to Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
As our college campuses grow increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, it is essential to the sustainability of our library instruction programs that we understand teaching and learning in a cultural context. Librarians at the University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia Community College strive to design information literacy instruction that facilitates an inclusive, diverse space where multiple modes of communication are developed and rewarded. In this presentation, we will share examples of our own successes and failures designing culturally responsive information literacy sessions and discuss strategies for introducing culturally-grounded participation, problem-solving, and discourse styles into library instruction. We encourage participants to bring lesson plans, worksheets, and assessment activities to the workshop where we will provide time and guidance to revise those materials with reference to culturally responsive pedagogy. Together, we will compile ideas and examples of culturally responsive teaching, assessment, and communication practices in the information literacy classroom.
Flickr.com photo, from the photostream: Rosay Say
University of Washington Bothell & Cascadia College
Campus Library
Box 358550
18225 Campus Way NE
Bothell, WA 98011-8245
425-352-5340 (Voice & Relay)
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Land Acknowledgment: The University of Washington Bothell & Cascadia College Campus Library occupies Land that has been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples since time immemorial. Specifically, this campus is located on Sammamish Land from which settler colonists forcibly removed Coast Salish Peoples to reservations in the mid-19th century. Today, descendants of the Sammamish are members of several Coast Salish communities.