Report Publish Date: January 2024
This journal article describes work at Oregon State University to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
By borrowing concepts from social justice organizing, members of university communities can begin to address structural racism and historical trauma, build belonging, and bridge differences.
The authors used the concept of a “container,” commonly used in social justice work, to create agreed-upon norms and a common purpose meant to bring together a diverse group of participants from across the university to build trust, mutual respect, and cultural humility.
The authors write, “With the use of a container, we experimented with alternative ways of being and working together within an academic system to test in a small form what we wanted to see on a larger scale in our institution, communities, and society.”
Participants established community guiding principles, worked on collaborative art projects, and checked in with each other emotionally. They aimed to “develop an evidence-based action plan drawing on stories of oppression to transform our college,” and through the process of working together, they came to “collectively understand the need for an asset-based approach.”
"This reflective essay is grounded in literatures describing boundary spanning from two perspectives: academic–community engagement and social movements advancing social justice.”
—Jonathan Garcia, Ashley Vaughn, César Arredondo Abreu, Jey Blodgett, Erika Carrillo, Ricardo Contreras, Frida Endinjok, Stephanie Grutzmacher, Kathy Gunter, S. Marie Harvey, Brianne Kothari, Cynthia M. Mojica, David Rothwell, and Katherine MacTavish, University of Georgia
“By continually acknowledging how” histories of exclusion and oppression are “embedded in our relationships, power dynamics, and institutions,” the authors write, land-grant universities can “can disrupt harmful hierarchies and exclusionary practices that limit diversity efforts, redress the injustice that is inextricably tied to origins, and realize our ... mission.”
$175,000
Awarded on: 02/13/2024
Timeframe: 2024-2025
Grant number: 81585
Location: Corvallis, OR
This essay reports on engaging academic and community partners whose positionalities spanned diverse lived experiences and power structures. Using groundwork from several literatures, we reflect on developing, nurturing, repairing, and expanding a container as a critically reflective space for experimenting with new ways of being and doing. A well-curated and nurtured container creates processes and spaces where group members feel they belong; they commit to practice a shared set of agreements, and work through interpersonal and organizational conflict that will inevitably arise. The container can be an instrument for identity, organizational, and tactical boundary spanning. As a microsystem, a container can mobilize collective engagement when team members reflect diverse identities, hierarchies, and roles within the academic system and partnering communities. Theorizing the container as an opportunity structure for boundary spanning may help those advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) within academic land-grant institutions, university–community collaboratives, and community-based organizations.
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Volume 28, Number 3, p. 97, (2024)
Table 1. Asset-Based Questions Focused on Equity and Belonging Page 102 Table 2. Meanings of Equity and Belonging in Our College Page 102
This journal article was created by the following people:
