2
FIELDING INCLUSION | 2019
FIELDING GRADUATE UNIVERSITY | www.fielding.edu
3
FOCUS Summer 2019
President Katrina S. Rogers, PhD Associate Director, Media & Communications Starshine Roshell
A Letter from the President
Art Director Audrey Ma FOCUS is published by Fielding Graduate University 2020 De la Vina St. Santa Barbara, CA 93105 FIELDING.EDU Please send reader responses to Starshine Roshell at sroshell@fielding.edu © 2019 Fielding Graduate University. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from Fielding Graduate University.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
4
10
16
24
5
11
18
25
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
ABOUT FIELDING
6 7
SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS
45 GATHERINGS FOR 45 YEARS
FPO
8
INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE
9
UVI’S FIRST GRADUATE
MAKING FIELDING ACCESSIBLE
NEW SOCIAL JUSTICE & DIVERSITY CONCENTRATION
12
ADVOCATING FOR SPECIAL NEEDS KIDS
13
ADDRESSING WOMEN’S INEQUALITY
14
IN THE NEWS
STUDYING TRANSGENDER ISSUES
SEEKING VETERANS’ VOICES
19
PROMOTING EQUITY INSIDE & OUT
DEVELOPMENT
20
ACHIEVED WITH YOUR SUPPORT
22
FIELDING SUPPORTERS
THEIR MOTIVE: OUR MISSION
MASTER’S & CERTIFICATE GRADUATES
26
DOCTORAL GRADUATES
A
t some point in our lives, we have all experienced the pain of feeling excluded – whether it be from a play group, a conversation, a career opportunity, or even consideration in decisions being made on behalf of our communities and societies. Significant academic research demonstrates that people who routinely experience such marginalization evince higher stress levels and, often, poorer health. In America, this can be true for anyone who isn’t white and/ or economically secure.
“Inclusion is an essential component of academic excellence”
That’s why so many organizations are waking up and making efforts to weave inclusion into both their values and their dayto-day functions. Initially, these efforts often focus on diversifying the environment. The next evolution is to create a culture that welcomes diverse thinking, as well as diverse people. Fundamentally, this means a shift in behavior by everyone in the organization. It happens when there is a willingness to engage with people different from ourselves in meaningful ways. In one organization I worked with, inclusion efforts meant bringing in Native American people and perspectives. Eventually, this led to the organization being entirely transformed, newly capable of holding complex ways of thinking about the world, and approaching issues from indigenous, rather than western, worldviews.
Inclusion is an essential component of academic excellence, too. The habits of mind that graduate learning develops, particularly critical thinking and cognitive complexity, encourage us to be open to new ideas. Sometimes these new ideas require us to question our assumptions, and lead us to new ways of understanding. At Fielding, we are engaging community members in conversation about what it would look like to be a more diverse and inclusive university. These programs and events focus on bringing to life our strategic inclusion plan, which includes building a more inclusive culture, increasing the intercultural and global competence of all faculty, administration, and staff, and bringing more diversity to the faculty and student body. Throughout these pages of FOCUS, we share the various ways in which the Fielding community is living out its values of inclusion, from scholarship to practice, from education to nonprofit, and from military to corporate settings. I hope that these stories inspire us all to a greater understanding of how inclusion work leads to stronger scholarly research, practice, communities – and ultimately, societies.
KATRINA S. ROGERS, PHD President
