Goal 4: Engage with diverse perspectives to cultivate cultural competence and an
appreciation of difference

One of the many things that being in the Honors program emphasized is the importance of thinking widely and exploring diverse perspectives. As a Social Work major, cultural competence is a key aspect of the profession; therefore, being in the Honors program reinforced the importance of appreciating differences, being culturally competent, and engaging with diverse perspectives. I selected three artifacts from my time in the program that align with this goal.  

Outcome 1: Analyze current and historical international issues and aspects of global culture

     This outcome was achieved through my artifacts from the HON 395H citizenship and service class. In this class, we had to read the book called “Civically engaged reader” as well as some other readings from various sources that were printed for us, and write journal reflections about these readings in relation to our discussions in class. Some of the topics we discussed in class were differences as a result of race and culture, whether that is good, bad, an opportunity, or an experience. We also talked about marginalization and discrimination and assumptions, and perceptions of certain races by society. One of the biggest impacts of analyzing these historical issues for me was observing the patterns of injustice throughout history and a strong sense of awareness in my interactions with marginalized communities. Through these discussions, readings, and reflection in these journals, I was able to analyze historical issues and the global culture and its impacts.

Outcome 3: Collaborate actively with diverse local and global partners

      My next artifact is the final paper and presentation from the HON 391H community problem-solving class. In his class, we had to come up with a community need or problem we wanted to address. Our goal was to partner and collaborate with local agencies to achieve our goal of solving a community problem. Finding a community problem took us a lot of time, brainstorming, and investigation, but we finally decided to focus on our observation about the strained relationship between the police and the Minot community, and the stereotypes people have about police officers we could also relate to as students. Our main goal for this project was to correct the label people have about first responders by putting members of the community and police officers in a position to relate with one another like normal humans. We proposed having two events to make this possible. We decided to have an educational event first, and then something more fun next, which was a dodgeball tournament. This project taught me firsthand how to plan an event from scratch and took me out of my comfort zone by enabling me to find, reach out to, and collaborate with community partners.

Outcome 4: Appraise issues from multiple viewpoints

My final artifact is a persuasive speech from the HON 264H Thinking Outside the Box class. For this project, each student in the class had to defend another perspective on a certain concept, and as someone who believes in note-taking. I had to do the difficult job of speaking against the concept of note-taking during class, and one of the things I realized was how limited the resources that were not in support were. I can remember it took me a lot of research to be able to find articles that fit my topic of why note-taking is not necessary. This presentation helped me meet the outcome of viewing certain issues and concepts from multiple viewpoints because even though research was scarce and my opinion on note-taking has not changed, it helped me see why people may be against note-taking and why, to an extent, their reasons are valid.

Summary

In conclusion, the artifacts above show how I was able to meet this goal. The Honors Program helped me build on what I was learning as a Social Work student about the need to embrace diversity and show cultural competence. These artifacts made me more intentional about appreciating differences in the global culture.