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Heart Touch Program, Chemistry Grad Student Collaboration Designed to Eliminate Career Stereotypes and Spread Cultural Diversity

By Peter Mullins
CCBP Student Assistant

Two university graduate students have begun a collaboration designed to change the stereotype of science and engineering as a career for white males only. While doing so, they also seek to educate the community about different cultures.

Fan Yang, a native of China, is a graduate student working in UA’s Crossroads Community Center. She is also a doctoral student in Social Work, who, along with Pandora White, an African-American graduate student in biochemistry, seeks to promote career opportunities in science regardless of race, sex and country of origin. Their efforts are part of Heart Touch, a program begun and directed by Yang for the past two years to enhance cultural competency and create greater understanding and knowledge between and among different ethnic groups.

Their most recent effort, on Oct. 12 in Shelby Hall on the UA campus, was entitled “#welooklikeresearchers.” Attendees were treated to dinner and a talk by White on career opportunities in science open to both men and women and to all racial and ethnic groups. White’s principal interest is in diabetes research.

“If people are rarely exposed to female or minority scientists,” she said, “they tend to think all scientists are male, white Americans. There are far too few female professors involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) research at the university. Our collaboration is designed to address that image.”

White got the idea for the collaboration at a conference she recently attended where conferees were using the “#Ilooklikeanengineer” Twitter hashtag to raise awareness of white male domination in the sciences and engineering.

To emphasize the diversity of looks and interest within the science field, White reported on her trip abroad in Taiwan, where she was conductng research, and her subsequent trip couch surfing in Japan.

Following White’s talk, the audience was treated to a Tai Chi performance led by local instructor Ping Shi and her students.

Yang said future programs that address stereotypes and enhance cultural competency across race, gender and nationality are being planned.

Photos by Jianlong Yang

FanYang
Fan Yang, originator of the Heart Touch Program, prepares the next event designed to overcome stereotypes in career opportunities.
PandoraWhite
Pandora White tells of her personal experiences during a symposium overcoming stereotypes in career opportunities.

 

Local instructor Ping Shi demostrates the art of Tai Chi to the students attending Heart Touch program.
Local instructor Ping Shi demostrates the art of Tai Chi to the students attending Heart Touch program.

Crossroads Community Center’s Lane McLelland honored with National Dialogue Award

  • October 29th, 2015
  • in News

LaneMcLelland_NDA

Crossroad Community Center’s Lane McLelland was honored at the Second Annual National Dialogue Awards on October 9th, 2015  at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Presented by the Sustained Dialogue Institute, the National Dialogue Awards honors those whose lives have been powerfully marked by the principles and values of the organization. The mission of the Sustained Dialogue Institute is to help people to transform conflictual relationships and design change processes around the world.

Better Together

  • April 23rd, 2014
  • in News

SERVE Better Together 2015

PaintingThis year’s Serve Better Together took place on November 14th, 2015 at Holt Elementary School. The event was a partnership between Crossroads Community Center and the Center for Service and Leadership to bring students off all different religious groups together to dialogue about their faith and give back to the community.

Volunteer students from the Muslim Student Association, local church groups, and education students worked together on painting a new lending library and reading lounge for students. The lending library is an opportunity for students to help grow their book collections at home, as there is no due date on the books. It also a chance for students to donate books to their fellow classmates. Many of the Better Together team was set to work on organizing the large amount of books donated to start the lending library into different genres and reading levels. Another group of students helped paint Holt’s bathrooms with college logos and inspirational quotes to encourage students to pursue a future in academics.

Returning to campus, students came together for lunch and dialogue after a hard morning’s work. Gathering in small groups in the Ferguson Center Great Hall, students of all walks of life came together to discuss their differences and similarities of faith. New friendships were formed over the breaking of bread and the hard and good work of the day.

PLAY Better Together 2015 CNNecgOUsAAnzKh.jpg_large

Play Better Together was a unique event hosted on 24 August, 2015 in Gorgas 205 that featured speaker Ben Spears from Ultimate Peace. Crossroads Community Center partnered with UA’s Ultimate Frisbee team to show students across campus how they can be brought together through the power of play.

Students were taught some of the basics of Ultimate by the UA team, and were invited out on a warm fall afternoon to practice throwing the Frisbee around with each other. Learning names, sharing stories, and ducking the occasional Frisbee thrown with a bit too much force lead to a lot of laughter and new friendships formed on the quad.

Spears talked to the group about his experience working to give youth in the Middle East a chance to build friendships by playing Ultimate Frisbee. He shared his experience of bringing Palestinian and Israeli youth together in the sports camp and how they would learn to work together on teams, and would gain communication skills that helped bring their communities together as a whole.

SERVE Better Together 2014

IMG_1094On March 15, 2014, Crossroads Community Center and the Community Service Center joined forces with Authentic Renovations Ministries and Love, Inc., to promote appreciation for diversity and community service. With funding from Target, an interfaith group of students came together to work at homes of families in need of repairs and wheelchair ramps.

Calling the event SERVE Better Together, this event was initiated by Better Together, a student organization at The University of Alabama. Better Together unites students of different faiths and philosophies by engaging them in service and community engagement projects. By giving to their community, individuals make new friends and foster new relationships for increased interfaith understanding.

By serving the public selflessly, the Common Good nature of the project helps alleviate conflicts these groups might have regarding religious differences and begins to lay the foundation for interfaith dialogue. Over 50 volunteers from Crossroads, The Community Service Center, the Crimson Secular Student Alliance, Bama Hillel, various Christian congregations, and the Muslim Student Association were able to serve Tuscaloosa residents by renovating these families’ homes.

Following a successful and rewarding day, students enjoyed dinner and interfaith dialogue at the Hillel Student Center. As the day began to wind down, students were able to strengthen new friendships formed throughout the day and discuss the importance of diversity on campus, in the community, and in our daily lives.

SERVE Better Together video

Inclusive Leadership through Sustained Dialogue UH 120 or NEW 120 Fall 2014

  • April 21st, 2014
  • in News

Sustained Dialogue Course – Fall 2014[1]

1.0 hour Pass/Fail credit

Thursdays 4:00 – 4:50 pm

In an increasingly globalized world, leaders need the skills to resolve conflict across difference. Sustained Dialogue is a five-stage dialogue-to-action model that requires participants to take the time to focus first on transforming change-blocking relationships, and then on solving problems. This course will explore the theory behind this innovative model and ultimately consider how Sustained Dialogue applies to visions for positive change at the University of Alabama.

Participants will receive an introduction to the Sustained Dialogue model and then meet in dialogue groups of the same 10 participants weekly to work through the 5 stages to address specific issues on campus.

REGISTRATION INFO: Students may register for the same course via:

• UH 120-019 (CRN 50498) Or • NEW 120-001 (CRN 50742) Non-Honors option

(Student does NOT need to be in New College to enroll in this course.)

For more information, contact:
Lane McLelland, Director,
Crossroads Community Center at lane.mclelland@ua.edu or call 205-348-6930

A new document, “UAct: Working together to create an ethical community defined by respect and civility,” has been placed on the UA website at http://www.ua.edu/uact.

  • April 4th, 2014
  • in News

The document provides UA students, employees and visitors with a list of reporting channels they can use to report incidences of illegal discrimination, harassment, sexual assault, sexual violence, retaliation, threat assessment or fraud. Using information from the site, any UA student, employee, job applicant or visitor who has concerns can seek the assistance of the appropriate University official designated in the UAct document.

UAct was created as part of UA’s commitment to provide a safe environment for students, employees and campus visitors.

Dr. Jonathan Holloway of Yale University Is the 2014 Realizing the Dream Distinguished Lecturer

By Kirsten Barnes
Center for Community-Based Partnerships

TUSCALOOSA — Stillman College will host Yale University professor of history and African American studies Dr. Jonathan Holloway as the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing the Dream Distinguished Lecturer, a project jointly sponsored by the Tuscaloosa Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Shelton State Community College, Stillman College, and The University of Alabama.

Holloway

The lecture is the climax of a series of activities held on each campus throughout the day. The title of his lecture is The Right Kind of Family: Addressing the Silences in a Civil Rights Memory and will be held Tuesday, March 18, 7-8:30 p.m. in the College of Education Building on the Stillman College campus.

Holloway is professor of history, American studies and African-American studies, chair of African American studies, and master, Calhoun College at Yale University.

Holloway is author of Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940. He will address the audience about national racial issues and his own family’s experience. Holloway, who is in his 15th year at Yale, said his discussion will be based on part of his book, that evolved from a personal historical search of his own family and their Southern roots in North Carolina and Virginia.

“It’s part of a personal family story,” said Holloway, who was raised in Maryland, but lived in Montgomery, Ala., while his father studied at Maxwell Air Force Base when he was 5 and 6 years old. “That’s really where my memory begins. I don’t remember much at all before that time.”

In his book, Holloway discusses how African Americans struggle with remembering the past; therefore, many worthwhile stories, which are critical parts of their history, have been lost.

“The book deals with how African-Americans have told stories about their past; and in writing these stories I discovered my own family’s personal stories and I will weave some of those in the talk,” said Holloway, who published his first book, Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris, Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche 1919-1941 in 2002.

Holloway’s lecture will be followed by questions from the audience and is open to the public.
The Realizing the Dream program began in 1990 at a time when many communities were just beginning to celebrate King’s legacy. Today, the program includes a concert, a legacy banquet and the lecture series.

“The Distinguished Lecture Series represents a critical component of our efforts to raise consciousness about injustice and to promote human equality, peace and social justice by creating educational and cultural opportunities for growth, empowerment and social change to enable every person to experience the bounty of life’s abundant possibilities,” said Dr. Linda R. Beito of Stillman College, chair of the Distinguished Lecture series.

In addition to Holloway’s presentation, there will be additional events on both campuses for students and faculty. For more information, contact UA’s Office of Community Affairs at 205-348-8376 or visit www.communityaffairs.ua.edu.