Students aim to ‘create a positive climate’ surrounding diversity through social media
University of South Dakota Health Science students are working to bring about campus diversity awareness through the Internet.
After participating in 10 hours of the Voices of Discovery program, Dean of Health Sciences Laurie Lind said she wanted her students to take what they learned and disseminate that information, which is how the idea of a Facebook page — Voices of Discovery: Supporting Unity — was born.
[notification type=”grey” title=”What is Voices of Discovery?”]Voices of Discovery: An Intergroup Dialogue Program was started by Jesus Trevino, associate vice president for diversity, in spring 2013 to create a safe space for students to talk across their differences. A program to increase diversity dialogue between University of South Dakota students, its membership more than doubled this semester.[/notification]
Because the Facebook page had never been done before, Lind elicited the help of her students and Jesus Trevino, associate vice president for diversity, to get the ball rolling.
“We had discussion in class on what we wanted to do with the page,” she said. “We asked ourselves what it should be called, what was our philosophy.”
Lind teaches Pre-Professional Communication and Relationship Centered Care. Per graduation requirements, Health Science majors are required to complete 68 hours of community service. Out of the 20 hours required for Lind’s class, 10 of them came from the Voices of Discovery program.
Trevino was responsible for organizing the Voices of Discovery events.
“Voices of Discovery is an inter-group dialogue program,” Trevino said. “Small groups of different nationalities come together to try to educate each other about their cultures.”
As result of uncharted territory, HSC 305 was scouting out help Lind said. Lind said she noticed initial resistance from a few of her students to begin the project.
“With this project the students were not given rigid guidelines or rubrics, which was hard for some personalities that liked to have everything laid out,” Lind said.
Spencor Luze, a student in HSC 305 admitted to being hesitant at first.
“At first everyone was kind of hesitant, but once we started going along everyone started to enjoy the page a lot more. Everyone got a lot more involved then I think we were expecting,” Luze said.
However, with time, the feeling of ownership swayed the students opinion of the page, Lind said.
“The students started to feel good about being the first ones to create this page,” she said. “When students started to feel some ownership is when they really started to get on board with it.”
Trevino praises the Facebook page because he said it expands the Voices of Discovery inter-dialogue by executing an “essential piece to the puzzle.”
“What Professor Lind’s students are doing is really awesome. It’s the important action piece — taking what they have learned and turning it into an action of, ‘What can I do to make this a better place?'” Trevino said.
There are several aspects to the Facebook page students are allowed to choose and then create. One of these projects students added to the page included an iMovie with the concept of being born a certain way.
“Two HSC 305 students went to the MUC with Trevino and they asked other students how they felt they were born a certain way,” Lind said. “They wrote down how they are different and how they were unified and then the HSC students took their picture. An example would be, ‘I was born Lebanese but am through and through a Coyote.'”
Everybody from HSC 305 took part in creating the Facebook page, Luze said.
“Everybody in the class was made an administrator to the page so we could add and delete stuff,” he said. “We posted on the page what we have completed from the list of 50 actions Dr. Trevino gave us to help spread the idea.”
Luze complete action No. 1 on the list of suggested actions to practice inclusive excellence at USD.
“I did action No. 1 which was to participate in a course on diversity. I participate in Voices of Discovery. I like Voices of Discover because it opened up my mind to the view of different cultures and how we think about each other,” Luze said.
The HSC 305 students plan to put all the pictures together to create the movie and upload it to the Facebook page. Other actions that are on the page or will be added to the page in the near future include brochures, posters, a list of hotlines and interviews.
As for the future of the Facebook page, Lind said she hopes to see the page grow, going from a campus-wide page to a page the general public interacts with.
“We hope that people will ask their friends to like it and share it, and we are going to keep adding to it with projects,” Lind said. “The Facebook page is really awesome to be able to see student s take the initiative to create a positive climate here at the university.”
Luze said he hopes other classes will continue the page.
“As a class we discussed removing ourselves as administrators from the page, leaving only Professor Lind as the administrator. Our hope is that the new classes continue our goal to reach around the campus, community and beyond that,” Luze said.
Voices of Discovery: Supporting Unity was founded March 19 and is open to the public.
