SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning that supports you in navigating complex challenges in personal and professional life, helps you to increase your effectiveness, and to improve your relationships. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Your Role in Workplace Diversity (30 min)

To understand and appreciate diversity in the workplace, you must develop a deep understanding of yourself, as well as any unconscious bias you may have. Your ability to use a variety of strategies to effectively deal with diverse situations is very important. Equally important is the ability to share these effective strategies openly and leverage the diversity that exists within an inclusive organization.
In this course, you'll explore how to become aware of your attitudes toward diversity, understand the source of any cultural bias you may have, and increase your acceptance of diverse cultures, people, and ideas. You’ll also discover how to become an advocate for diversity and inclusion within the workplace.

SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Bridging the Diversity Gap (27 min)

Without a diverse workforce, organizations run the risk of viewing things from a very limited perspective. The organization provides the structure for operation, but it's the individuals within that organization who carry out the mission of the organization. To get the most innovative solutions from the individuals in your business, you need to create a workplace that embraces inclusion and avoids bias and stereotyping. This course focuses on what diversity is and how to leverage the diversity within the organization. You’ll also explore the barriers, such as unconscious bias, that must be overcome to create a diversified and inclusive working environment.

The LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff Association (FSA) is comprised of people from many racial and ethnic identities, and we represent and advocate for the interests of faculty and staff coworkers. As an executive board of white individuals, we stand in support of our Black colleagues, and are committed to putting in the work to end white supremacy in our communities, in our institutions, and in ourselves. We want to amplify the tremendous work that our colleagues across the campus are already doing, and we aim to center the voices of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. Therefore, we applaud and share thestatement, events, and resources from the UMBC Campus Life’s Mosaic, Interfaith, & Pride Centers, thelist of resources compiled by Amelia Meman, Assistant Director of the UMBC Women’s Center, and an upcoming event announced by Courtney C. Hobson for the Dresher Center with links to resources from the Dresher Center and from the Center for Social Science Scholarship. 

We are grateful to our colleagues for sharing their wisdom at this critical time, and we hear the calls to action. We want to follow the lead of theGender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Department, in making commitments. 

The current FSA leadership team plans to:

1. support faculty and staff events and speakers that center and honor the experience of BIPOC;

2. continue working in coalition with other campus affinity groups toward necessary change on campus, especially in the areas of hiring and retention of BIPOC faculty and staff;

3. advocate for tangible acknowledgement (such as grants, stipends, salary increases, paid release from work time, paid positions, etc.) of the invisible labor of our BIPOC faculty, staff, and students to build and maintain an inclusive culture on campus;

4. actively recruit LGBTQ BIPOC on campus to become members and fill leadership roles of the LGBTQ FSA.

In addition, we want to encourage our members and our allies, especially white people and those with privilege, to support our Black colleagues and community by attending demonstrations, donating to local Black organizers and bail bonds, educating ourselves through the many resources available, speaking out against racism in all its forms, and voting.

We want to underline the fact that, in June, we celebrate Pride month, because the Stonewall Uprising was a riot against police brutality that began on June 28, 1968. These protests were led by Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, and Storme DeLarverie, a masculine of center Black lesbian, and many other people of color who put their lives on the line to stand up for the right to exist and thrive as LGBTQ individuals, free from persecution and discrimination. We want to share this thoughtful PRIDE season post of our colleague Heidy George.

We want to say, as loudly and clearly as possible---

Black Lives Matter. Black Queer Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter.

In Solidarity,

Vicki Sipe, President, LGBTQ FSA

Tim Phin, Faculty Co-Chair

Elle Trusz, Staff Co-Chair