What is WAYS 103: Talking About Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion First Year Seminar?
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are topics that can evoke intense and visceral emotions. These are difficult conversations and many of us—students, faculty, and staff—may often avoid them for fear of saying the wrong thing, being misrepresented, or not having an adequate understanding. In the WAYS 103 Talking About Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, students will learn about populations that have been marginalized in the United States. The goal of this course is not for students to become culturally competent, but to become more comfortable having discussions about DEI issues. To accomplish these goals, students will be asked to explore opinions/beliefs/issues with which they may not have had much exposure or that make them uncomfortable in hopes we aid them to become better equipped at understanding positions different from their own.
If you want to contribute to one of the most innovative parts of the new General Education curriculum, here is what you need to do:
Submitting a proposal to the Potsdam Pathways Curriculum Committee to teach a WAYS course for the first time is the culmination of a process beginning a year prior to first offering the class. That year involves professional development in skills pedagogy, consultation with skills experts, the appropriate WAYS Coordinator, and fellow WAYS faculty, as well as support in course preparation and approval.
After consulting the WAYS Getting Started materials and speaking to your department chair, please submit the WAYS Course: Intent to Design form to initiate the process, or reach out to the appropriate WAYS Coordinator. At the completion of the course development process the WAYS Coordinator will instruct you to formally apply for WAYS designation by submitting the WAYS course: Intent to Teach form and supporting documents to the PPCC.
In the semester before you teach WAYS 103, there will be 3 professional development workshops. These workshops are designed to provide you with the training, support, and time that you need to prepare your course. Early in the semester, we will hold a full day workshop run by an off-campus expert in teaching speaking and diversity. It will be a chance for you to refine your ideas, think about course structure, learn about best practices, and collaborate with other WAYS 103 faculty. Several weeks into the semester, an on-campus expert will hold a half-day workshop to help you shape and develop your syllabus. Near the end of the semester we will hold a 2-hour workshop so that you can share your syllabus with other new WAYS 103 instructors (and faculty who have already taught WAYS 103) and receive final feedback before submitting your course to the WAYS 103 Coordinator and the Potsdam Pathways Curriculum Committee for approval.
Note: There are a small amount of professional development funds for faculty who successfully complete the training.
In the semester that you teach your WAYS 103 course, we will hold bi-weekly meetings with other WAYS 103 faculty (new and experienced). These meetings will offer the opportunity to share experiences, techniques and developing pedagogies with other instructors. Pilot faculty found these meetings (approx. 6-7 over the course of the semester) to be very helpful.
After you develop and teach your course once, we ask that you share your experiences with other WAYS 103 faculty so that the program can continue to grow and thrive. To help facilitate that, we ask that instructors attend the bi-weekly meetings every time they teach a WAYS 103 course and to take part in the training process every time their course is reviewed (there is a three-year review cycle)