OU professor Meta Carstarphen spoke about her vision for the new Gateway to Belonging course during a Thursday forum hosted as part of the search for director of the program.
Joshua Nelson, chair of the search committee for the director, introduced Carstarphen as the second candidate in the webinar’s series. Adrienne Carter-Sowell, who has served associate head of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University, spoke during the first webinar on April 13.
According to an email sent by Nelson on Thursday, Adrienne Dixon – one of the candidates for director of the program – has withdrawn from the search. Her webinar on April 23 has been canceled while all the other webinars will proceed as scheduled.
Carstarphen is a faculty member in the strategic communications department of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication who researches “the intentional use of mediated communication to create transformative, collaborative and diversified social change,” according to her faculty page.
Carstarphen gave a presentation on how the Gateway to Belonging program can enlarge the campus community’s capacity for diversity, inclusion and equity.
“I'm here because I have become convinced through my own review, long thinking and close study, and even some conversations with colleagues here and beyond, that this course and the potential of it is so powerful,” Carstarphen said. “Don't get me wrong, it's complex, it's complicated, and it's challenging, but there is an amazing opportunity ahead for us as well.”
Carstarphen said the creation of the course is important for community-building, which is emphasized in the fourth pillar of the OU Strategic Plan. She said the program is an “exciting proposition” of extending OU’s skills “beyond regional and local borders.”
Carstarphen said her key core strategies for the course involve high-touch instruction, topical and focused lectures, small group discussions, think-pair-share assignments’ review low-stake assessments, including closed-ended questions to test basic knowledge of terms and facts, and media-rich assets to increase the students’ participation.
“Media-rich assets are going to be really important. Selected videos, podcasts, films, online news articles (can) help our students parse through difficult topics,” Carstarphen said. “We have a responsibility to help our students understand how to evaluate correctly the use of media and that involves media literacy.”
Carstarphen proposed different tools for the course. First, she said creating a “Pathway video series”, which will showcase OU scholars and their area of expertise, can be used across the course’s sections. She also suggested the use of Cultural Diversity, Inclusion and Justice, a textbook by George Henderson, the third full-time Black faculty member at OU and founder of the university’s human relations department.
“This book just came out this year, and (it) perfectly fits the arc of discussion that has been laid out for this course,” Carstarphen said. “It looks at terms and terminology, at history and cultures, and it ends with a call to action. I reached out to Dr. Henderson, he reached out to me. We've had some good conversations about our shared perspectives on this material in the necessity of bringing this to freshmen students at all levels.”
Carstarphen said she’ll develop the class with the needs of the students in mind.
“Freshmen, who are just coming into the college experience, need more intentional support to become the kind of students and scholars that we expect them to become,” Carstarphen said in the forum. “I think there has to be some consideration of rewards and incentives – what incentivizes the freshmen may not be the same thing that incentivizes a senior – the complexity of tests and the logistics of monitoring.”
Taking into consideration those differences, Carstarphen said she will divide the structure of the course into cultural fluency, or learning terms and concepts, collective history, or understanding the diversity of communities and the students’ social standing, and sense of informed citizenship, or preparing the students for meaningful community and collective service.
“I would suggest a personalized plan for service (that) could be on the campus or it could be a public rally, wherever (students) choose,” Carstarphen said. “(Students) can be inspired to do critical thinking about what it means to serve a community larger than yourself.”
Carstarphen said the final stage of the course lifts up the students’ accomplishments through a ceremony which she foresees as motivation for them to share their class experiences with their “cohort groups.” She said she hopes it will also increase the amount of students signing up for the course.
Carstarphen said the course could work “very well” online, and she plans to synchronously provide “consistent content modules” to all instructors while giving them individual spaces to develop their lectures and presentations.
Faculty training is essential for the course structure, Carstarphen said. She said she is looking for faculty in different stages of their teaching careers with passion for students and enthusiasm for fostering a sense of belonging.
“I do believe in faculty training. What I call the Gateway Guardians should be an annual retreat of training (that) allow(s) for sharing and cross fertilization of good ideas and creativity,” Carstarphen said. “I see the role of the director as shaping an outline and a structure. But if we hire people and people want to be involved in teaching, they have to have a space to bring what they offer to the class and I can work hand in hand. It's team building.”
Although Carstarphen said she is aware of possible signs of resistance from the students, she encourages faculty to have a teaching style that allows students to bring their “questions and anxiety” to the learning space.
“Resistance is going to reflect itself. First and foremost, in the behavior of students, which is why it is going to be so important to start the class with a message that says we're interested in who you are as an individual,” Carstarphen said. “We should go into this course understanding that some students will not (have) the academic enterprise but, the key is to be very clear and very transparent on what we're grading. We should always grade performance, not politics or personality.”
Lastly, Carstarphen said she believes in big visions and shared goals, collaborative relationships, logistics, expansive networks and appreciation for others’ success as part of her leadership approaches.
“When I looked more closely at what was being said and really acted on one, I became convinced of the university's serious intent and I can say, quite openly, I wasn't always sure,” Carstarphen said. “I am really really excited about the potential of this course. If I am chosen as the director, I'm not looking just to check a box, I want to go big. I want us to lead the conversation about what it looks like to help students join the community, and I believe we can do it."
