e-Cultural Competence for U

Imagine coming to a prestigious university like ours and having a peer question if you got in based on “racial quotas”. These types of comments predominantly come from white students, who unfortunately and unintentionally commit harm to students from racial minorities daily. 

While whiteness in and of itself, is not a bad thing, this project equips white college students to successfully navigate cross-racial interactions and prevent further harm. It aims to develop the awareness, skills and knowledge (ASK) encompassed in cultural competence, and it builds off a pre-existing training at Utah State. 

It lasts 1 hour/week for 4 weeks, and involves 3 major steps:

• One: knowledge building through education on racial diversity and White privilege.
• Two: Skill building through watching and reflecting on video role plays with common interactions in which things go wrong cross-racially and how to recuperate.
• Three: reflecting on the experience as a whole.

By providing students with ASK, they’re bettering their cultural competence AND learning to develop empathy, problem solve, and question assumptions. Through this training, which is currently running, we hope to see reductions in both conscious and subconscious racial biases. Funding for this project will go towards paying participants to go through the training. This funding will allow us to see if this kind of training is effective in building longer-term reductions in harmful racial biases, and importantly, help build a safe campus climate for all.

Situated in the birthplace of America at a time of national cultural division, William & Mary has the opportunity to be exemplary in seeking to nourish the diverse interactions that are fundamental to both a liberal arts education and the very foundation of our nation.

Agency: William & Mary (BOV)

Fund: Cultural Competence for U Fund

Purpose: To provide support for the Cultural Competence for U research project at William & Mary.

Goal Not Met: recruit fewer students for participation

Goal Exceeded: additional support for project, including upgrading software