The Daily Bulletin Archive

Intersemester and Winterim weren’t the only options for exercising the mind during the winter break. From January 3 through 5, nearly 20 faculty and staff members participated in a series of workshops designed to create a team of diversity trainers on campus.

Gail Wells, director of student life, and Joyce Shabazz, a consultant and associate with the National Coalition Building Institute, led the training in Butler Library 210. An eclectic group of participants experienced small-group sessions, role-playing exercises, and deep-listening techniques as part of NCBI’s Welcoming Diversity Train-the-Trainer program.

While participants ultimately learned how to lead the NCBI’s “Welcoming Diversity Campus Program”—a one-day session designed to diminish prejudice—the effects of the three-day series will be far more reaching, according to Kevin Railey, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School. Railey worked with Wells to organize the sessions; together, they will lead the new team of facilitators.

“This training was very different than the traditional academic model,” he said. “As opposed to what we’re accustomed to—being persuasive and argumentative, and being quick to judge and criticize—the activities taught everyone how to respect people across differences and to build coalitions through support and acceptance.”

In the long term, Railey and Wells hope the skills learned will influence academic curricula and lead to NCBI-related research. In the short term, the series served to reenergize Buffalo State’s status as an NCBI campus affiliate and lay the foundation for a new Coalition Building Team composed of dedicated faculty and staff.

Buffalo State has been an NCBI campus affiliate since 1995 and has hosted Shabazz before for various trainings, but this is the first time this decade that the college has offered the Train-the-Trainer program. Plans to bring the program back to campus began nearly two years ago; the Provost’s Office agreed to provide investment funds last fall.

“There’s no quick fix for diversity—it needs long-standing relationships,” said Wells. “We need to build teams, and have all layers invested in the solution.”

The training was a resounding hit among attendees, who described it as “extremely useful,” “eye-opening,” and “phenomenal.”

“We were all close to tears once we had to say goodbye—it’s really great to have so many new connections throughout campus,” said Maureen Lindstrom, associate director for information commons in Butler Library. “I learned why people react the way they do to certain situations, learned to respect people’s differences, and learned about the magnitude of people’s differences. I think, inherently, all people are good inside—it’s just that their reactions sometimes reflect what [limited information] they’ve learned.”

Laura Hill Rao, coordinator of the Volunteer and Service-Learning Center, sees many applications for her department. “We can use the NCBI model to better prepare our students for engaging in a diverse community,” she said. “From there, we can help them relay what they encountered back to other students, in an effort to help even more people learn from these experiences.”

Program organizers think the campus’s commitment to diversity has never gone away, but rather that the recent training program complements college goals. The program, they say, was an invaluable experience that created “transferable communication skills.”

“Buffalo State’s relationship with NCBI is an opportunity for us to create a culture that fully supports the development of relationships among different groups of people across campus,” said Wells. “Through the Coalition Building Team, people now have a place where they can explore people’s differences and learn how to respect them.”