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TLA Workshop: Understand Student Diversity, Increase Inclusion

Jan

31

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In this Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA) workshop, participants will investigate learning opportunities that acknowledge, draw upon, and are enriched by student diversity and create atmospheres of inclusion and understanding. Participants will:

• Reflect on what Valencia students say enables them to feel included and what makes them feel excluded.
• Engage in activities that identify the diversity that instructors bring to the classroom, power differentials in the classroom, ways to increase inclusion, and ways to minimize exclusion.
• Be introduced to some theoretical underpinnings of inclusion and diversity.
• Increase familiarity with Valencia’s inclusion and diversity competency and indicators.

This workshop is being offered on the following dates:

Inclusion and Diversity (INDV2151)

• Thursday, February 21, 2013, 2:00-4:00 p.m., East Campus 3-113, CRN1975
• Friday, February 22, 2013, 2:00-4:00 p.m., West Campus 6-202, CRN1976

Facilitator: Michele Lima, Valencia College

Valencia educator Michele Lima, who presents this workshop, describes the concepts of inclusion and diversity in the following way: “We all come with diversity; it’s how we use it inclusively that matters.” Michele believes that, as educators, we have moved beyond just recognition and tolerance of diversity to the understanding that we must promote inclusion by providing intellectual enrichment for all students through new ways of thinking and promoting democracy by ensuring that all voices are heard. She says the emphasis now is on the multicultural person. “As instructors, it is our responsibility to capitalize on our own diversity and the students’ diversity to enrich the learning environment.”

Michele Lima is a professor of communication at the West Campus. She earned a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a master’s in communication and cultural studies from Indiana University. She has been at Valencia since 2006 and became a tenured professor in 2009. Michele is also a member of the TLA team and serves as the TLA’s West Campus Coordinator.

Related Tags: ctli, excellence, faculty, faculty development