South Seattle College
PA-4: Diversity and Equity Coordination

The South Seattle College Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion cultivates a learning environment that champions social justice. The goals of this office include; 1) provide the campus learning opportunities to enhance critical social justice understanding, 2) provide equitable, diverse, and inclusive program opportunities for student success, 3) develop and promote equitable, diverse, and inclusive practices in order to create institutional change. The EDI Department includes a Cultural Center, Veterans Student Center, and the Gender Equity Center. EDI is a network of departments working together to foster an inclusive campus community by providing education about diversity, social justice, gender equity, and multiculturalism. We advocate for the persistence and success of student, faculty and staff of color and underrepresented groups through academics, leadership opportunities, support services, programming and college-wide initiatives.

STUDENTS Student Life student employees (approximately 20-50 depending on the year) are brought to campus for an orientation prior to the beginning of the school year. Diversity and equity training is always included in orientation as South Seattle is a culturally, socio-economically, and otherwise diverse campus. The Student Life training includes activities like the "Privilege Walk," understanding social justice, student populations at South Seattle, sexual harassment training, and others. South Seattle celebrates Lunar New Year, Black History Month and Women's History Months through speakers, workshops on identity and culture, open microphones, and other activities. More recently, DACA workshops have been created to support immigrant students. Additionally, South Seattle strongly supports (i.e. funds) students to attend the Multicultural Students Services Director’s Council’s Students of Color Conference annually, which includes multiple days of diversity and equity workshops, speakers, trainings, activities, and more. The goal of the 2018 conference is to “support Washington State students to become more active proponents of their own education and life choices, and expand the opportunities and possibilities for students to become agents of change.” FACULTY/STAFF South Seattle College utilizes the Intercultural Development Inventory to help measure and advance cultural competence at the institution. The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) is a statistically reliable, cross-culturally valid measure of intercultural competence owned and copyrighted by Mitchell R. Hammer, Ph.D. The IDI v3 is rigorously back translated into other languages, and is widely used in corporate, government, military, not-for-profit organizations and educational institutions (e.g., K-12; universities) throughout the world. While the IDA program is not mandatory for faculty/staff, it is strongly encouraged and many managers require their staff to participate in the program.