The future of community engagement work requires a framework that is strengths-based, centers historically underrepresented groups working towards justice on their terms, and includes an analysis of power, positionality, systemic causes of disparities, needs for institutional changes, and critiques of inclusion assumptions. This session will provide decolonizing practice resources, concrete examples, and a chance to reflect on how to apply the practices to your context. Examples include an interactive session focused on how instructors, trainers, and supervisors can create environments that feel relevant, welcoming, and safe to all participants. The session is relevant to instructors, researchers, AmeriCorps Vista trainers, and Campus Compact employees and administrators in both predominantly White institutions as well as contexts with a majority of first-generation college students and large percentages of minority students, employees, and volunteers.

 

Presenters:

Laurie worked as a community organizer, in after school programs, in treatment centers, and with college student leadership development in student clubs prior to becoming a professor. Laurie’s current work with the ACLU seeks to address discipline and achievement disparities for minority populations in Montana’s public primary and secondary schools. Laurie was awarded the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration Emerging Scholar Award in 2014, the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement in 2017, and the Nancy Borgmann Diversity Award in 2019. Laurie regularly trains AmeriCorps Vistas, Campus Compact staff, and Lynton Colloquium attendees on integrated frameworks for entering and exiting community partnerships that includes decolonizing approaches to engagement.

 

Turquoise is a first generation descendent of the Salish and Blackfeet tribes in Montana. Turquoise works with students and institutions on resiliency, diversity, equity, inclusion, and trauma-informed approaches to support Native American, low-income, and first-generation high school and college achievement in rural and urban settings. Turquoise works at the intersections of direct support to students, conducting organizational process consulting, program evaluation, and training for school staff, teachers/faculty, administrators, and community members in Tribal and non-Tribal educational settings. Turquoise was the Montana Indian Education Association’s American Indian Support Staff of the Year Award in 2017.