Lessons in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

By Joan Slattery Wall 
Glenn College Writer and Editor

 Ardent about issues of fairness and justice, the Glenn College provides space for diverse voices and perspectives, particularly regarding race and equity.   

“Our mission is to inspire citizenship and develop leadership by ensuring that the students who come through our degree programs will all become citizens and leaders that are aware of the power they as public servants will have to, on the one hand, do harm to disenfranchised groups and those without means,” said Dean Trevor Brown. “But then simultaneously, we want them to be able to raise up and improve the circumstances of those that are disenfranchised and disadvantaged.”   

“We have been systematically undertaking improvements in diversity, equity and inclusion across all operations within the college with the intention of driving long-term change,” said Kate Hallihan, the college’s diversity officer and assistant dean of students and instruction.    

In the past year, the college has redoubled efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in its curriculum and teaching; diversify the faculty, staff and student populations; foster a culture inside and outside the classroom to confront bias; pursue programs to impact the community on issues of racism and structural inequity; and, with guidance from its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, find ways to further incorporate these efforts in the college’s strategic plan.    

Across the curriculum, students deserve credit for many of the changes.   

“It is our students who are saying we need to incorporate more diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the curriculum,” said Professor Russell Hassan. “They are the ones moving it forward.”   

The college offers a “Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy” class and partners with the Departments of Comparative Studies and African American and African Studies to offer another class on “Race and Public Policy,” both at the graduate/undergraduate level.  

At the master’s level, the college this past spring offered a capstone class, taught by Hassan, focused on social issues, and last academic year 10 doctoral students put together a readings class, “Toward a Theory of Racial Justice in Public Administration,” taught by Associate Professor and Graduate Studies Chair David Landsbergen. At the undergraduate level, the college is discussing the creation of new coursework that would fit into the university’s new General Education curriculum. The courses would focus on topics such as ethics and justice, civic engagement and law, and managing diversity.   

“To be a citizen in a diverse society, and also thinking about citizenship from global perspective where we have to work with people from different cultures, this is the knowledge and the skills we need,” Hassan said.   

“In my courses, given my background and what I teach, I try to confront these issues head on,” Hassan said. “Students come forward to me and have said, ‘It is refreshing to see you are talking about these issues openly.’”   

In summer 2020, Assistant Professor Megan LePere-Schloop received a fellowship from the HistoryMakers archives, the largest repository of interviews with African American leaders and trailblazers in the country. She found it an incredibly valuable resource for exposing students to the lived experience and wisdom of African American leaders in their own words. 

Undergraduate students in her public management course last fall focused on reform in police organizations. They made connections between course materials on public values, managing diverse teams and organizational change and hours of interview content from two African American police officers, Howard Saffold and Lee P. Brown, who led efforts at reform both within and outside of their formal organizational structures. LePere-Schloop intends to take a similar approach to integrating the archive into her course this fall and beyond.   

Her graduate students this spring did in-person public/non-profit leader interviews and watched HistoryMakers interviews, a concept she intends to incorporate in her Managerial Leadership course moving forward.    

“By pairing their in-person leader interview with a HistoryMakers interview, I saw that I could provide an opportunity for students to examine how personal and social identities shape management and leadership practice,” she said.   

In his environmental policy course, Assistant Professor Chris Rea’s students study how committed activists and advocates push for environmental protection even in a world where so often our accounting of economic growth overlooks the importance of sustainability. They also examine the complex and sometimes quite problematic histories of environmental policy in the United States and around the world.   

“We dedicate substantial time to understanding the more recent environmental justice movement, driven forward largely by working people and people of color fighting to obtain equal life chances and safe and healthy environments to live and thrive in — all the while interrogating common assumptions that poor people are too busy to focus on environmental concerns, or that environmentalism is a ‘rich person’s’ game,” he said.   

In classes focusing on policy research, Professor Stéphane Lavertu’s students address inequality in areas such as education, housing and immigrants’ access to government programs. Equity-related topics that students in his capstone course have researched include a statistical analysis of disciplinary practices in Ohio schools, an assessment of the challenges that refugees living in Columbus face when accessing social programs, and the extent to which Ohio college-access programs benefit students who need the most help.   

Kim Young, the college’s chief administrative officer and a senior lecturer, teaches a course on public budgeting and finance policies and noted that those topics are not neutral on issues of race, ability, LGBTQIA+, gender and economic class.    

“Throughout the semester, students read news and journal articles that discuss income and wealth disparities exacerbated by federal and state income tax policies or local government property tax assessment practices. We discuss takeaways through Carmen (the university’s course management system) and in class before applying them to the summative budget and finance analyses,” Young said. “Central to our conversations are the practical, immediate actions we can take to address problematic policies and advance equity by promoting representation, valuing diversity and practicing inclusion.”   

Assistant Professor Katie Vinopal teaches “Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy,” where her students explore themes including racism and gender discrimination in poverty policies related to food assistance, education, health, the tax code, the criminal justice system and more.   

Vinopal pointed out that Glenn College students and faculty explore the very systems, policies, laws and institutions that can perpetuate racism and socioeconomic inequality.    

“These are the objects of our study, and they are at the core of both the problem and the solutions to racial and socioeconomic inequality,” she said. “We are responsible, then, as students of these systems, for seeing policies and institutions clearly, carefully, thoughtfully. We are responsible for working hard to move beyond our own limited worldview, our inherent biases and myopia. We are responsible for changing unfair and unjust systems and policies.”  

This story was originally published in the Fall 2021 edition of Public Address, the Glenn College alumni magazine.