DDI Good News | January 2024

Tina Chapman DaCosta, director, Diversity Theater, reports Diversity Theater’s collaborative DEI work with RIT’s College of Science and the Inclusive Excellence 5-yr grant is featured in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 2023 Capstone Report, “57 Journeys | 57 Stories.”  Specifically, the use of Playback Theatre is highlighted as one of the innovative community building tools used in diversity and inclusion. Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded RIT and 56 other colleges and universities $1 million dollars each back in 2017 and 2018. The five-year grant is used “to build strong support systems for encouraging student participation in science.”

You’ll see a new face with the MCAS team this month. Oberlin College student, Ana Howard is a Winter Term Intern who is shadowing staff in MCAS. She is a second-year psychology and sociology major at the Ohio college, originally from McKinley Texas, but her family just moved to the Rochester area last summer. Howard says she is excited about the opportunity at RIT. “I decided to do a shadow experience with MCAS to learn more about the process of organizing a needs-based program in higher education. It is something I feel is pertinent to my experience at Oberlin, as well as after undergrad to make whatever organization, I am a part of, a more inclusive and equitable environment for the community at large.” Howard says she looks forward to taking her “newly acquired knowledge” and using it in Rochester and at Oberlin.

MCAS received an award for hosting a “do experience” called “Global Beads” for students in RIT 365 on two different dates in September. Jessica Saltzberg, associate director for Student Success and Engagement says, “Students answered questions about themselves and the people around them, then selected beads that corresponded to the race/ethnicity of the people they are surrounded by. Once they selected all of their beads, they strung them and then talked with their classmates about them.”  Four others helped lead the events: Robert Hoggard, director of Multicultural Center for Academic Success, Alexandria Collins, assistant director for MCAS: Student Development, Robert Bonfiglio, assistant director for Assessment and Academic Success, and RIT student worker Laylah Vital. The “do experience” is part of the overall RIT 365 “Plan, Do and Reflect” concept. Students focus on their learning experiences at RIT, interact with different people and offices at RIT, and then reflect on those activities.  In addition, several DDI colleagues won awards for their individual work- or- by teaming up with others in RIT 365: Jazzmyn Ivery-Robinson, former assistant director, Community and Belonging, Tiffany Terry, assistant director, TriO Upward Bound, Alexandria Collins, Robert Hoggard, and RIT students Aedan Frank and Maddie Tlachac.

Kristine Shamp, senior staff assistant, HEOP and her family have some good news to share. They are expecting their first grandchild in the new year. Kristine says, “We are SO excited and can’t wait.”