Office of the Provost & Vice President
Congratulations to the 12 teams who submitted the projects selected this year for funding through the Diversity & Equity Innovation Grant Program! Total funding awarded this year was $500,000.
1. Highlighting Our Original Stewards
o Author: Mirna Sawyer (Faculty, Health Sciences)
o Purpose: To make visible the knowledge, resilience, and strength of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians (Tataviam) through curated moments and designed installations at CSUN.
2. Disseminating The Keys to Digital Equity: The CSUN Digital Grapevine
o Author: Helen Heinrich (Staff, IT)
o Purpose: The program calls for recruitment of student leaders, or Digital Ambassadors, to create technology-related content and share with their social media followers thus becoming digital equity “influencers.” The content will also be disseminated through the existing institutional channels, such as YouTube, social media, and student-facing web pages.
3. Establishing the Foundation for a Multi-Institutional Consortium to Promote Diverse Leadership in Science
o Author: Priya Ganguli (Faculty, Geological Sciences)
o Purpose: To build a system of mentorship and modest financial support for undergraduate and graduate students from minoritized backgrounds to engage in environmentally related research projects (i.e., Green-STEM) and professional development training.
4. Collectively Understanding Carcerality and Building with Formerly Incarcerated People
o Author: Martha D. Escobar (Faculty, Chicana/o Studies)
o Purpose: To provide learning opportunities for the CSUN community and others. There are three components. The first is an educational series on understanding education as a site where power is (re)produced and contested. The second is an educational series on how to build with formerly incarcerated people grounded in four pillars of social justice-consciousness, policy, direct service, and power/community building. Finally, the third component is community engaged learning opportunities for Project Rebound students.
5. The Ethnic Studies Education Pathways Project
o Author: Nicole Blalock (Faculty, American Indian Studies Program)
o Purpose: To increase CSUN student retention through student-faculty-community practitioner mentorship and towards K–12 education careers in teaching, counseling, and social work.
6. The Black Matadors Rise Recruitment Initiative
o Author: Vera Hampton (Staff, Outreach & Recruitment)
o Purpose: To open the door of opportunity for Black students and their families by promoting access to CSUN through outreach, educational workshops, events, mentorship and major/career driven programming. The proposal aims to continue to enhance our recruitment program that uplifts, prepares and educates Black students and their families for entry into CSUN.
7. Bridge to the Future (B2F): Black Scholars Matter (BSM)
o Author: Theresa White (Faculty, Africana Studies)
o Purpose: The B2F-BSM program is a creative and collaborative enterprise that has involved over 40 members of the CSUN community from units and divisions across the campus, as well as established partnerships with three intentionally selected high schools (based on strong representation and support systems for students of African descent) from three geographically desirable locations in Los Angeles County (Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley and Pacific Palisades).
8. Africana-Asian Collaboratory for Inclusive Excellence Project (AACIEP)
o Author: Yi Ding (Faculty, Library)
o Purpose: To promote cultural solidarity within and across our communities of difference by providing safe spaces for dialogue, collaboration and celebration. While open to the broader campus community, these workshops will target African American and APIDA (Asian Pacific Islander Desi American) students, whose numbers at CSUN have been declining over the last 10 years.
9. White Anti-Racism Faculty Learning Community (WAR FLC)
o Author: William Garrow (Faculty, Deaf Studies)
o Purpose: To engage a community of white faculty to explore the history and social conditions that contribute to white supremacy through readings, discussions, and reflections. We will meet to discuss and dissect our own racial pasts and reconstruct new practices. We will also explore best practices in engaging others on campus, especially students, in dialog around white contributions to anti-racist actions.
10. Essential Talks: Providing Brave Spaces for the CSUN Campus Community 2nd-Year
o Author: Freddie Sánchez (Staff, USU)
o Purpose: Operates as an umbrella term that is comprised of three programs designed to provide a combination of opportunities: (1) Black Chat, a processing space for African American/Black students to verbalize their concerns around racial issues, (2) Multicultural Speaker Series, a speakers’ series highlighting cutting edge research on anti-racist and multicultural engagement, and (3) Anti-Racist Learning Network, a rotating training and facilitation program focused on various marginalized groups, with a primary focus on Black/African Americans. Essential Talks collectively addresses the swelling need for cultural humility in the face of racial trauma during an era when Blacks are living examples of being discarded by American society.
11. The Asian American Studies Peer Involvement, Recruitment, and Education (AASPIRE) Program: Towards the Restoration of AANAPISI Designation
o Author: Margeaux Gamboa-Wong (Faculty, Asian American Studies)
o Purpose: To offer a modest, student-initiated effort towards the restoration of CSUN’s federal designation as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI), which we lost due to APIDA under enrollment. DEIG funding would support the hiring of Student Assistants to work with campus partners to (a) develop outreach and recruitment initiatives targeting Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American (APIDA) K–12 and community college students, (b) provide community engagement opportunities for current CSUN APIDA student volunteers, and (c) host and support campus-wide programming that illuminate the invisibilized educational equity issues faced by APIDA students.
12. Antiracist, Just, Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Clinical Social Work Practice Curriculum Video Project
o Author: Allen Lipscomb (Faculty, Social Work)
o Purpose: To create clinical practice videos for both foundation and concentration year social work practice classes. These videos will raise critical consciousness regarding anti-blackness and antiracism and will explicitly model the development of antiracist positioning while teaching skills critical to social work practice: engaging, assessing, treatment planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination.