Issue Corps Project Submission

The original proposal was submitted December 2016, it required answers to a few questions in a very brief format.  The eXtension Foundation sent an email of acceptance for the project to be part of the 2017 Diversity & Inclusion Issue Corps in December as well.

This is the project submission in it’s original form.

What is the issue your proposal will address?

The goal of this proposal is two-fold:

1) Internally the aim is to help foster a work environment that is fully conducive to collaborating, understanding and providing a deeper sense of belonging within departments and units. As it relates to diversity and inclusion, for employees to have the best opportunity for professional success they need to be work in an environment where they feel safe, secure and comfortable to communicate and share their ideas.

2) Externally, as it pertains to doing research and conducting outreach in the community, employees need to be able to relate to a variety of people in their community. As it relates to Cooperative Extension, agents are conducting research to share with populations like nutritionists, crop growers, food safety policy makers which means they are interacting with a vast number of people. It is important for employees to feel comfortable in their own skin and interact in a diverse community. As employees at a university we represent our organizations both directly and indirectly when we’re engaging outside our office walls.

What is Your Proposed Solution?

Integrating critical social-emotional training opportunities will serve as the core component of professional development as it pertains to this project. These training plans will be developed as education modules stored online so they can be downloaded and used as needed by organizations. These modules will be designed to be easily replicated and allow for customization. The modules will have two audiences, the facilitator of the training and the employees participating in the session. These will be designed to include hands-on activities which will require engagement with the groups using them. The best way to truly learn and apply lessons is to be an active participant in the learning environment. These modules can be adapted in such a way that they will help enhance professional development which already exists or help to create additional training.

How will you measure the local change?

When it comes to measuring change on a subjective issue like social-emotional traits or emotional intelligence we will rely on feedback from the employees trained. It will be helpful to consider a “pre” survey to assess employee’s knowledge and views on social-emotional issues prior to the training so as to gauge new levels of understanding.

Immediately after a professional development sessions, employees will be asked to participate in surveys which will ask them if they learned something that will cause them to have a change in their current behavior or technique. These surveys will be created with guidance about actionable measurement from organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which published a resources on how to best assess social impact that can be found here: http://docs.gatesfoundation.org/learning/documents/guide-to-actionable-measurement.pdf. This tool provide a matrix and strategy for designing the best measurement score card.  Professional development facilitators of the modules will also be asked to provide feedback as they will be able to see what works best or what could be tweaked to work better.

Measurements obtained will help to improve the educational modules moving forward to provide new resources in the future.

About Author: Christy Mannering is a graduate student within the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. She is the chief operating officer of a local non-profit, 3B Brae’s Brown Bags and a Communications Specialist for the University of Delaware. Her research interests include issues of social justice, such as nutritional insecurity, community re-entry, and domestic violence. She also volunteers with her local school district and has a deep passion for education policy, as she believes many social injustices stem from inequitable opportunities in education.