Coming Together for Racial Understand & DEI ECOPAction Teams Fellow: Rachel Wellborn, Mississippi State University Crystal Tyler-Mackey, Virginia Cooperative Extension, has agreed to serve as the DEI Fellow for the project, helping to guide efforts toward these priorities. The team consists of Extension administrators and directors as well as specialists throughout Extension with experience in DEI efforts. The team welcomes others to join. Roadmap CTRU Fellow Report: The purpose of this project is to create a dialogue-to-change process for communities seeking new pathways for working together across racial/ethnic lines that seeks to guide understanding and build trust in order to make informed collective action for meaningful change, unlike required DEI training alone which seldom seeks to develop trusting relationships among participants. During this second quarter, many of the initiatives were launched or expanded. Under Objective One: The virtual upskill workshop series dates were finalized, and initial recruitment began, the Training Team Learning Lab was launched with two groups, and the CTRU Mini-series for CES leaders (4 sessions) was launched and completed. For Objective Two, the new state training teams were identified, and preview sessions were conducted. Under Objective Three work is underway to finalize a list of research deliverables. This team designed evaluation tools for each of the stages completed. Under Objective Four: The ECOP DEI Program. Evaluation tools are in place for each of the completed or in-progress segments, but the analysis is not finalized on those yet. Attendance at the CES Leaders’ mini-series was between 12-19 for the four sessions. This group also identified some potential next steps that can dovetail with the ECOP DEI efforts. As noted above, two Learning Labs are in process and will be completing in the next quarter. The new state cohort includes three new states (WV, NE, and SD) plus five states replacing members or expanding teams (NM, MI, WA, KY, VA) for a total of 18 new potential training team members. During quarter three, participants for the Virtual Upskill Workshop will be finalized and an analysis of the Learning Labs will be conducted. Analysis of the CES Leaders series will also be conducted, and opportunities to dovetail those findings and suggestions into the DEI Program Action Team’s efforts further explored. New state training will be completed, and teams set up with peer mentors for launching. Research deliverables, timelines, and evaluation tools will be in place or in progress. DEI Team will progress toward its identified action steps.
59
Powered by FlippingBook