Olivia Badalamenti
ContributingWriter
obadalamenti@murraystate.edu

The ADVANCE Grant will be co-sponsoring a Zoom workshop, Ethical Orientations for Collegiality, Mentoring and Teaching, presented by Koritha Mitchell on March 3, from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. 

The event, also sponsored by the Murray State Office of  Institutional Diversity, Equity and Access, Black Faculty and Staff Association and funded by the office of the president, will be open to all faculty and staff. Mitchell will be teaching participants how to recognize unearned advantages and hold oneself to a higher ethical standard as a teacher or staff member.

“When Americans aren’t ignoring inequities altogether, we focus on cultivating empathy for other people’s hardships,” according to Mitchell’s website. “Unfortunately, this approach only reinforces the status quo.”

Often, the majority group assumes they are meeting the ethical standards of society; however, these standards are set low. This workshop helps participants realize unearned advantages. This understanding will compel faculty and staff to hold themselves to a higher standard in the workplace and the classroom. 

Mitchell is an associate professor of English at Ohio State University. She is also an award-winning author, cultural critic and professional development expert. She has won many awards for her literary work, including “Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance and Citizenship, 1890-1930” from the American Theatre and Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. 

In 2014, Mitchell spoke at the Library of Congress and received a certificate of Congressional Recognition. She continues to conduct workshops for various types of institutions including the Ford Foundation, the American Society for Theatre Research and Vanderbilt University. 

Maeve McCarthy, mathematics professor and assistant dean in the Jones College of Science, Engineering and Technology, is the director of ADVANCE. The ADVANCE Adaptation Grant: Leveling the Playing Field, Strategic Equity Initiatives at Murray State is a $1 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation to “improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and social science,” McCarthy said.  

This program began in 2016 after the University saw women faculty leaving after just a few years. 

“We want women faculty to stay and be part of the community of scholars here at Murray State,” McCarthy said. “That has a huge impact on students because the availability of good role models for students is crucial to student success.” 

This program hosts workshops and mentoring programs and will launch an interactive theater program in April.

“Theater model is to introduce bias in certain situations on campus and to ask faculty how would you address this and how would you make this a better situation for everybody,” McCarthy said. 

ADVANCE’s mentoring program has been an ongoing success since 2016. By forming peer mentoring circles, faculty can mentor each other through discussions on a particular topic. These mentoring circles have improved their social and professional networks. 

McCarthy was looking for a new workshop to address anti-racism and discuss racism’s impact on the workplace and classroom when Mitchell was recommended to her. 

“She talked a lot about this idea that there are objective standards to which we can hold ourselves,” McCarthy said. “It’s not enough to just think ‘I’m a nice person so therefore I’m not racist.’” 

McCarthy said Mitchell has specifically designed this workshop for Murray State and this will be the first time she is conducting this workshop.

“When she and I talked last year about how Murray State is a predominately white institution, we wanted to really open it up to the underrepresented faculty and staff,” McCarthy said.

Typically workshops are focused on faculty members, but the grant team thought it was important to open it to staff as well; however, they are expecting more faculty to participate.  The workshop is expecting 40-50 people to participate. Faculty and staff can RSVP by Friday, Feb. 26, at https://forms.gle/up9HX8yrug9W83Bx5.