Breaking the Ice: Using the Cephalonian Method to Create Inclusive Learning

Many educators’ goal is to create an inclusive atmosphere of inquiry that provides an avenue for all voices. This session presents the Cephalonian Method as an active learning technique that can help educators and presenters create learning experiences that are inclusive, stimulating, and engaging.

Join us for an asynchronous discussion to learn about the Cephalonian Method, how it was used to discuss scholarship as a form of communication and information privilege, and review the student experience with this active learning technique.

Stigma in Basic Needs

Obstacles to achieving basic needs impact a large portion of UCSD students. This presentations seeks to address these stigmas, provide solutions, and educate the community on the resources UCSD offers. Tackling food insecurity, housing insecurity, and achieving financial wellness are central to this mission.

WELCOME CEREMONY

Saeed Jones

Changing the Narrative about Arabs on our Campuses

The presentation highlights the Arab American student experience in our schools and how educators and peers can enrich their learning experience. Due to the fact that Arabs in America are classified as White, they have fallen into neglected minority of students. Holistically, Arab students are doing well academically, but the same cannot be said about how they are doing socially and emotionally. These students feel disconnected from their Arab culture and struggle with the dichotomy they live with at home and at school. Although schools have started to incorporate more Arab content into the curriculum, there is much work to be done to help these students develop a positive sense of cultural identity. Presenters will discuss three ways that campuses can begin to include the Arab American voice on their campuses to help this population of students feel a sense of belonging.

The Kumeyaay Community Garden: Learning Through the Land

UC San Diego is built upon the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation which contributes to settler-colonial violence. This session centers around the student and community advocates who founded the Kumeyaay Community Garden at UCSD. The Garden aims to indigenize spaces around campus to promote the resiliency and continued presence of the Kumeyaay people. Students who are involved in this project will share their experiences with creating and maintaining space on campus that advocates for decolonization. Community members will also share the importance of student projects and Native representation on campus, explaining the positive impacts on Indigenous land, sovereignty, and environmental systems.

Reckoning with Contradiction in First-Year Writing Programs: How Can Assessment Support an Antiracist Pedagogy?

This session will focus on the inherent contradiction between antiracist pedagogy and the assessment of student writing in higher education. The presenters will share about their own experience of assessing student writing on racial formation theory and intersectionality, two concepts taught in the Dimensions of Culture Program at UC San Diego. They will emphasize how their experience might support assessment in other classes and programs across the university, guiding participants to develop preliminary strategies on implementing assessments that center student engagement and antiracism.

Building Community and Inclusivity: Using Talking Circles and Expressions of Gratitude in Higher Education

This workshop teaches two practices that build community and inclusivity-- talking circles, with roots in restorative justice pedagogy, and gratitude-- and explores how these practices are used in academic spaces to co-create community expectations, deepen engagement with academic material, and build trust in community-engaged research. Participants will be introduced to the strategies and engage in an activity that can immediately be used in a variety of education settings. While these practices alone cannot facilitate social justice transformation, if conducted in combination with jointly developed goals, they can foster greater understanding between university and community partnerships and between faculty and students.

Is It Just Me? Stress and Institutional Perspectives From a Graduate Writing Consultant

Grad students frequently experience severe mental health issues, and these concerns have worsened during the pandemic. Now, graduate students face even more challenges in the institutions that they depend on. Using my experiences as a graduate writing consultant and Asian American woman, I show how the university creates stresses for graduate students and frames these stresses as personal failures through the deficit model. The deficit model connects to existing racial and gender inequalities that presents severe challenges for women and students of color. Ultimately, the university absolves responsibility to invest in services that can support the most vulnerable grad students.

Must Students EARN the Right to LEARN?: A Case Study and Facilitated Discussion of TMC’s Honors Program and the Pitfalls of Academic Metrics

UC San Diego claims to accommodate all students and immerse them in a well-rounded education, preparing them for success at the university and beyond, but what does it mean to succeed in education? When are academic metrics appropriate prerequisites for “honors”-designated courses and programs? Geared toward university faculty and staff, this session examines TMC’s honors program with student, faculty, and administration voices, emphasizing how the misapplication of academic metrics opposes UCSD’s responsibilities to empower students and mitigate institutional barriers. Through facilitated discussion, attendees will consider alternative measures that both recognize academic merit and provide equitable access to educational opportunities.

Teaching for Justice Connections in and Beyond the Classroom: Success Stories of Transfer/Honors Students at UCSD from Low-Income Backgrounds

How do we support networks of care for transfer students that are committed to learning/teaching for justice? This session will illuminate anti-hierarchical connections and collaborations across campuses of higher learning in the San Diego region, specifically through San Diego Miramar College and UCSD by highlighting the success of community college transfer students at UCSD at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Transfer students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, experience unique challenges in higher education settings. We plan to elucidate the importance of networks of care for transfer students and how to foster these connections in our classrooms and across campus.

Triton Transfers PATH Program

Supporting Activists through Intentional Dialogue and Collaborative Spaces: Introducing A Participatory Model of Well-being

This interactive workshop teaches how an international curriculum, The Wellbeing Club, is used to support intentional dialogue among students and faculty to promote equity, agency, and positive wellbeing. The Wellbeing Club critically examines how young adults from around the world experience wellbeing in their daily lives and what strengths and challenges they document. You will learn how the model is being used at UCSD and with international partners. Participants will dive into two virtual activities using the model and will discuss the ways that contextual understanding of multidimensional wellbeing can promote advocacy and allied partnerships.

Fuera del Binario: A Discussion on Recontextualizing Third Gender Recognition

This session will begin with an overview of how to approach a legally recognized third gender identity in Mexico through policy-making mechanisms, highlighting the history of the country’s LGBTQ+ progress and the cultural acceptance of muxes, third gender identifying individuals from the indigenous Istmo Zapotec culture. The second half of the session will feature discussions in breakout rooms to brainstorm and create policy solutions to address issues facing third gender identifying folks in the United States. Participants will leave with a better understanding of third gender identities and a framework to approach elected officials with identity-related policy solutions.

Handout

Tell Us How UC It: Understanding the Past and Creating a Student-Led Future

Tell Us How UC It is a living archive for student activism at UC San Diego. It consists of: 1) a timeline of events where students were compelled to act or react, 2) student creative work on campus climate, and 3) in-the-moment responses to prompts. This session will 1) share the timeline to demonstrate how students have changed the university and facilitate a conversation about how past events shape the present and impact the future, 2) examine how student voices are represented, and 3) create space for students to share how they can be further represented within the project.

Breath of Fresh Air: How Including Mindfulness Practices in the Classroom Benefits Everyone

This session includes experiential practices (breathing, body scan, reflective writing, visualizations) that participants can weave into their professional and personal lives. Honoring the embodied nature of social justice work can help educators and students face tough emotions that may arise during discussions, direct action campaigns, and individual reckoning. Rather than bypassing the ways our bodies react to and hold onto the violence experienced by fellow humans, which social justice seeks to remedy, this approach makes space for common humanity and compassion. This session draws on the work of Resmaa Menakem, Bessel van der Kolk, Brené Brown, and lineages of mindfulness.

Translating Student Voices into Instructor Action: What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Basic Needs, Mental Health and Academic Achievement

This presentation highlights research findings about the financial, familial, health and academic challenges faced by undergraduate and graduate students at UC San Diego during the past year. This information was collected via a comprehensive survey (n=847) and qualitative interviews (n=20). We will discuss how these challenges intersect with class, race, gender and other social identities. After we highlight our findings, session participants will be given space to share their experiences. Finally, we will ask participants to help us finalize our call to action, which involves radically reimagining our classrooms and campus policies.

Performativity & Justice

This session is dedicated to enhancing and developing strategies for incorporating performativity in the face of injustice. The session will include a short performance of a piece titled They Will Rise and it will serve as a point of departure in how we imagine our creative spaces, as well as a methodology for mobilization.

Found Space Theatre Co.

Conceptualizing Student Diversity in the Classroom

When we hear the word diversity, what comes to mind? With increasing calls for equity and inclusion in higher education, diversity seems to be at the forefront of national conversations. The classroom is one space where we, as educators, communicate our values and invite students into the scholarship of our disciplines. In this interaction session, we will discuss the different ways in which diversity can be conceptualized in the classroom and how these conceptions inform instructors’ approaches to teaching and learning.

Expanding climate justice education through anti-hierarchical collaboration (and you can too!)

How do we ensure all students graduate with the knowledge, skills, and confidence necessary to advance climate justice in their future careers and communities? Over this past year, Prof. Karl Gerth and student James Riddell have been building a scalable model to integrate climate justice education into all UCSD academic programs.

Join us for a brief presentation about teaching climate justice through anti-hierarchical collaboration. Following the presentation, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with attendees to build your own climate justice module for your classroom, extracurricular organization, or any space where you facilitate learning.

The Plant-Based Movement: "Meat"-ing the Problem, Milking Solutions, and Acting Beyond Our Plates

We envision a Plant-based LLC, a residential community on campus that is 100% meat and dairy free to help students cultivate a plant-based lifestyle and learn about environmental consciousness. Through the LLC, we will engage in collective dialogues about environmental racism and animal agriculture, witness the farm-to-fork pipeline at local farmlands, promote permaculture by nurturing Seventh’s Edible Garden, and, most importantly, live with others who collectively stand up for human health, animals, and the planet. Our ultimate goal is to bring the LLC to UC San Diego, setting the precedent for all the other UC’s in building a sustainable future.