For our faculty to better understand and consider how to implement best practices for pedagogically engaging adult students in the classroom.

TBD - the topic is broadly above, but it could be more specific depending on your suggestions. We have a session scheduled for Monday, January 9th 4-5pm online (via zoom) - during our orientation week for faculty. The audience would be mostly full-time and part-time faculty. If that day/time doesn't work, we could also look at future opportunities.

Southeastern Community College would like to provide a professional developement opportunity for our Board of Trustees related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our institution has a renewed focus on this initiative and would like for DEI to be infused in our daily practices and culture at the institution and we recognize that it will need to start at the leadership level, including our Board of Trustees.

We will have a Board of Trustees Retreat where the session would be provided in July. The actual date in July is TBD at this point. The length of the session could be as long or as short as needed 1.5-3 hours. The audience will be the SCC Board of Trustees and Leadership Team. Other details to be determined through conversation with the Belk Center.

The WTCC English Department is seeking training on Culturally Relevant/Responsive/Inclusive Teaching for our faculty. We have a smaller group of leadership and designated faculty who would like to have training in the summer. We then hope to bring similar training to the entire English and Academic Foundations Department faculty in Fall 23. We are asking faculty to implement CRT/CIT strategies to help improve success, retention, and equity for our students. I am currently gathering information on availability, scope of the training, and cost to present to my leadership colleagues as we determine who will hire to conduct the training.

The request for training is a result of the English Department and Academic Foundations working to improve RISE courses as part of the WTCC strategic plan. We would potentially like a training in the summer for leadership and a small group of faculty and then training in the fall for both departments. A potential third training could be done in the spring as a follow-up.

Hi there,

I hope this message finds you well! My name is Joseph Lowe, and I'm a graduate student pursuing my master's degree in clinical mental health counseling at N.C. State University.

The reason I'm reaching out is because I'm focused on pursuing my Ph.D. in psychology soon after graduation/gaining experience in the counseling field. I just spoke this week with Dr. Kappus about those pursuits, and he mentioned your organization might be a good place to start looking for research volunteer opportunities.

While I realize that some of my psychology research interests do not directly align with each of your initiatives, I do believe there is some overlap and a lot to be learned through a volunteership with the Belk Center. Furthermore, after reading through your Trailblazer profiles, I'm honestly just curious to learn more about your initiatives in the first place.

In light of this, I'm hoping I can borrow a moment of time to speak with your team about working with the Belk Center in any way possible.

Would this be feasible?

Details to be determined through conversation with Belk Center.

Our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Acceptance committee continuously provides professional development to support employees within their roles in meeting diverse learner, coworker, and community success. This will also help the broader campus have a variety of opportunities to meet SCC's required 8-hours of DEI professional development annually, support employee personal and professional goals, prepare training aligned with our faculty professional development plan, ASPIRE, and ultimately support student success. Our ASPIRE DEI theme for this year is Becoming a Student-Ready College. As part of this effort, we give employees an opportunity to attend a DEI professional development session presented by a guest speaker. We would like to see if the Belk Center has any speakers who would be available to present virtually in the early spring semester.
As a college, we have been hosting common-read discussion sessions on the book Becoming a Student-Ready College each month and at our professional development days based on chapters in the book. However, reading the chapter is not required to participate.

Topic: Anything that supports Becoming a Student-Ready College and supports equity
Length: 1 hour, virtual. We will provide the Zoom link.
Number of Presentations: One topic with a repeat session. (Two sessions total.)
Potential Dates: Friday, January 26th at 10 am, and Wednesday, January 31st at 12 pm
Audience: SCC Faculty and Staff - attendance will be optional
Presenter: Looking for Belk Center speaker to present with possible interaction build-in

Inquiry: Climate and Engagement Survey Services for Higher Education

Key areas of focus include:

Campus climate and engagement across all stakeholder groups.
Community and belonging questions that address Title VI considerations.
Specific Title IX-related questions that meet current compliance standards.
A survey design that is inclusive, actionable, and suitable for full census distribution.

Looking into doing an employment engagement survey for our college.

We have been using our local chamber for our survey with great results but looking to build off of it to get further results.