Infusing Social Justice into Your New Professional Role

Thank you for your interest in our course, Infusing Social Justice into Your New Professional Role, sponsored by the New Professionals and Graduate Students Knowledge Community. During this course, we will discuss topics related to incorporating a lens of diversity within your role as a student affairs professional. Our goal is to build upon NASPA and ACPA’s Competencies to help participants create a personal philosophy related to diversity, understand diversity on both micro and macro levels, and consider how this learning can be applied in professional settings. This course is self-guided with discussion space for dialogue boards to have interaction with course instructors and other participants to discussion questions and provide a space for dialogue with colleagues across our field. We hope that as you progress through this course, you will take away knowledge that will serve you in your role as graduate students and new professionals within student affairs.

Learning Outcomes

During the progression of this course, participants will:

• reflect on and develop a personal definition of diversity and a personal philosophy related to social justice issues;
• identify underlying assumptions that influence institutional culture and resulting diversity discourses/efforts;
• recognize deficit language and its role within higher education;
• develop an understanding of cultural wealth and its role within higher education;
• utilize personal philosophy related to social justice issues to understand individual role within participants’ institution; and
• develop strategies to address social justice issues and utilize resources to shape learning within professional role.