Strategies for Success
“Heart Work”: The Embodied Experiences of Diversity Workers in the United States Public University System
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephanie Cork
“Heart work” is labor that is both social and biological. This refers to both the emotional expectations of certain bodies at work and the biological impacts these expectations can have on the (cardiovascular) health of the individual laborer. This is most acutely obvious in job-roles that require deep emotional labor, such as diversity and inclusion work. Diversity workers are those individuals who are explicitly tasked with doing both the public and private labor of fostering greater inclusion within their community. This includes a multitude of activities: events, policy and committee work, grant writing, and holding space for those in need. Based on research at a four year public institution in the United States this study highlights the pitfalls and potential of diversity work in the post-secondary context. Exploring the responses of the participants in this study includes findings from critical qualitative analysis as well as narrative “interludes.” These interludes were created to help anonymize and universalize some of experiences of diversity workers in this context. These stories showcase the ways in which diversity workers navigate exclusive standards of higher education, and provide recommendations to better support these workers and their health.
Integrating Community-based Research and Critical Pedagogy to Support Older Adult Transmigrants in Toronto, Canada
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shamette Hepburn
This paper discusses the merits, opportunities, and challenges of campus-community partnerships by drawing on a recent community-based project, titled “Building Connections: Engaging and Supporting Older Adults Through Communication Technology”, which involved instructing thirty Cambodian and Spanish-speaking transmigrant older adults on communication technology use. Communication is integral to the maintenance of a transnational livelihood, therefore the project was followed by a qualitative exploration of how the extent to which these technologies impact participants’ everyday life using semi-structured interviews. The Toronto-based initiative was supported by the York University Global and Community Engagement Collaborative Project Fund and was conducted at the Jane and Finch Family and Community Centre’s “Unity in Diversity: Aging at Home” program, a mobile day program for individuals aged 55 and over. As a team, researchers and practitioners from fields of social work, education and communication studies collaborated with the centre’s staff to develop and deliver a series of modules to participants and sought their feedback on efficacy, affect and plans for future use. Participants’ exhibited variations in learning goals, literacy levels, personal access to technology hardware, and literacy levels (in their first language). The diverse needs and capacities of participants provided inter-professional collaborators with the opportunity to synthesize theoretical concepts, methodologies, relational skills, and professional practice into effective action. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on the role of institutions of higher learning and community-based organizations in supporting collective knowledge production, citizen engagement, and inclusion.
Canada's Dimensions Program: Hopes and Challenges to Academic Inclusion
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Claudia Malacrida
Precipitated by a human rights complaint against its prestigious Canada Research Chair (CRC) Program – a program to recruit and support over 2000 high-profile ‘academic superstars’ – the Canadian government struck the Federal Science Review Panel to examine the state of research funding and support across the country. The Panel’s extensive consultations exposed broader concerns, indicating deeper systemic problems of inequality and exclusion in the academy. The Panel found significant gaps in recruiting, retaining, celebrating and supporting women, Indigenous people, disabled people, and racialized people in the Canadian academic system. As a result, significant interventions have occurred within the CRC Program, including setting equity targets, and threats of withholding funding for universities that fail to meet those targets. Additionally, the government has piloted the Dimensions program, a made-in-Canada version of Athena Swan, which supports universities and colleges to develop equitable practices and cultures relating to women and other gender and sexually marginalized groups, disabled people, Indigenous people and racialized groups. As a member of the Federal Science Review Panel and a disability studies scholar, I am both pleased and concerned about these initiatives. In this paper, I examine some of the challenges and hopes of the CRC and Dimensions programs. Paying particular attention to disability inclusion, I argue that equity targets and promoting culture change may be destined to fail for disabled scholars, unless coupled with grassroots activism at the very earliest stages of one’s academic career.
Geographic Clusters of High and Low Quality of Life in the USA: Associations with Diversity, Race, and Upward Mobility
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raid Amin
Our research identifies significant clusters of high and low quality of life in US counties based on twenty-nine demography metrics. This is followed with studying associations between quality of life and the covariates diversity, race, and upward mobility. We then adjusted the identified clusters with a regression analysis to study the effects of the chosen factors.
