Out of the Margins https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/proposals-2018/out-of-the-margins https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/@@site-logo/sitelogo-75x75.png

Out of the Margins

Additional Information
Used for	We request renewed support for a third year of the highly effective internship programs created two years ago with the support of the Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation. The foundation support has provided: 1) additional Peer Mentor Program resources focused on the needs of entering students from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups; 2) paid civic engagement and social justice research and education internships in collaboration with college offices; 3) paid internships and career development opportunities for Reed students who identify as Black/African American and low socioeconomic status, with a focus on students who also identify as women, transgender, or gender non-conforming; and 4) paid summer research projects with professors on topics related to power and privilege, equity, critical race theory, and social justice.
Benefits	This grant will help Reed continue its efforts to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for students from historically marginalized groups, especially transgender and gender nonconforming students and students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. We seek not only to support these students as they navigate our current academic and social spaces, but also to give them opportunities to develop skills to transform Reed and other institutions through research, education, and civic engagement. Our ultimate goal is to provide transformational opportunities for students that will help them to become productive, effective agents of change and help Reed to become an institution that consistently meets the needs of its increasingly diverse student body.
Proposal Description	Two years ago, Reedies Against Racism, a group of student activists, made clear the need for additional resources to support students from historically marginalized groups, especially transgender and gender non-conforming students and students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. We appreciated the opportunity to get your guidance about the amount to request during our recent phone call, and understand that a grant of $8,000 to $15,000 may be more feasible this year. That said, we are at an important moment in our efforts to create sustained cultural change and ensure that we have the capacity to better support students from historically marginalized groups. For this reason, we deeply appreciated the renewed grant of $30,000 from the Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation for this purpose in 2017. Now we invite you to consider contributing at the $30,000 level in 2018, once again during a time when our efforts are gaining momentum and will benefit tremendously from the Dougherty Foundation’s renewed support. With the support from the foundation and a trustee and his wife over the past year, we have 1) strengthened and enhanced the Peer Mentor Program (PMP), in which entering students from historically marginalized groups are matched with returning students who share some of their life experiences; 2) supported paid social justice research, education, and civic engagement internships supervised by college staff; and 3) funded paid, external internships for students who identify as Black/African American and low socioeconomic status, with a focus on students who also identify as women, transgender or gender non-conforming, and 4) funded summer research projects with professors on topics related to power and privilege, equity, critical race theory, and social justice. We continue to experience great success with all of these activities. 1) Peer Mentor Program (PMP) activities During the past year, we have continued our efforts to strengthen mentors’ capacity to help their peers become successful members of the student body. We once again offered the in-depth training for mentors that we developed last year and hired two additional paid student PMP interns during the summer. PMP summer interns had different areas of focus: the Trans Equity and Inclusion Intern helped to facilitate the Trans Inclusion Working Group and worked on other initiatives; the Financial Wellness Intern led the newly created Financial Wellness Advisory Board and helped to implement new programming focused on financial literacy, financial wellness, and support for basic needs. PMP also offered a community BBQ in the fall, and will do so again in the spring. We continued to engage and involve the PMP alumni board formed last year by facilitating a second PMP student-alumni summit in January 2018, which brought a small group of alumni from underrepresented backgrounds back to campus for programming with current students. The event included a community engagement project with the Reed Community Pantry and a lunch discussion/workshop focused on career development. Dayspring Mattole, Assistant Dean for Inclusive Community and director of the PMP program, continues to coordinate this work. Mattole has commented that the additional PMP activities are proving tremendously beneficial for students. 2) Paid summer internships for students, supervised by Reed staff, focused on civic engagement and social justice research and education. OID coordinated and funded six such projects, including one in which sociology major Jessica Riaño ’20 worked as a social justice intern in Reed’s Center for Life Beyond Reed (CLBR). CLBR director Alice Harra noted that career centers are rarely seen as agents of institutional equity and social justice, and yet career service professionals have a crucial role to play in ensuring that opportunities and funding are accessible to all students, especially those for whom social capital and conventional work experience needs more purposeful intervention. During her internship, Jessica Riaño researched, developed, and published online resources that address the specific career advancement needs of LGBTQ+ students, disabled students, and students of color. Jessica also led many conversations about language, attitude, unconscious bias, and other topics with CLBR staff members that encouraged them to think deeply about how to better engage and serve historically marginalized populations. She is now a very positive ambassador for CLBR with her communities. Harra added that this internship program fills a very specific need at Reed, which is to grow the capacity for social justice through students who also need to experience workplace environments and be developed as leaders. CLBR staff expect to see an increase in engagement among students of color, students with learning differences, and LGBTQ+ students. 3) Paid internships and career development activities for students who identify as Black/African American and low socioeconomic status, with a focus on students who also identify as women, transgender, or gender non-conforming. For example, 2018 recipient Aaliyah Hoffman ’21 obtained funding to spend the summer of 2018 working for a nonprofit organization called Girls Rock C¬harlotte. Girls Rock Charlotte is a nonprofit that amplifies the confidence and voices of girls and women through the power of music. Aaliyah spent the summer presenting workshops that she had created for young and high school-aged girls. For this internship, Aaliyah managed programming for the workshop’s camps. In addition, she networked and developed professional ties and deeper connections to a region in which she lives, and enjoyed the opportunity to give back to the community. 4) Paid summer research internships with faculty on topics related to power and privilege, equity, critical race theory, and social justice. This year, OID funded five such internships. For example, Jeri Brand ’19, a comparative literature major, worked with Tamara Metz, Associate Professor of Political Science and Humanities, to develop two new courses that would diversify the curriculum and make Political Science offerings more inclusive, both in terms of material and pedagogy. The team revised one existing course, African American Political Thought, to focus the curriculum on the question of slavery and race and to include texts from W.E.B DuBois and Angela Davis. This course will now be co-developed and co-taught with LaShandra Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. The second course, Introduction to Western Political Thought, will be revised to be more inclusive and critical. Jeri will review syllabuses from a range of institutions, find new readings, and structure the assignments to be as inclusive of different learning styles and social backgrounds as possible. We propose to continue all four opportunities for current Reed students. As it did last year, the Office for Institutional Diversity (OID) will administer this grant. Continuation of the expanded support for the PMP program is estimated at approximately $10,000 and will be managed by the Office of Inclusive Community (OIC). The on-campus civic engagement and summer research internships with faculty will continue to be managed by the OID. The external social justice career development internships will continue to be managed by the CLBR. Spending will depend on the capacity of staff and faculty to supervise well-crafted and meaningful internships and on the number of applications received for each program. We anticipate that we will be able to fully spend the $40,000 grant between January 1 and December 31, 2019. Past grants from the Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation have funded the restoration of the Reed College canyon and helped us respond to heightened student demand for career-related work experience and research opportunities with faculty members. We seek your partnership once again to help us continue to strengthen our resources for students from historically marginalized groups and ensure that their education is not only intellectually rigorous, but also provides serious opportunities to engage in service and to learn about social justice inside and outside of the classroom. Thank you for your consideration.