Meeting Facilitators: Dr. Ryuko Kubota and Dr. Meghan Corella
This caucus will focus on experiences with and practices related to faculty and student hiring/admissions and retention.
In advance of our meeting, please take a few moments to look over and reflect on the below discussion questions.
Focus and discussion questions for January 29 caucus: Our website states: “The Department of Language and Literacy Education is a community of educators committed to social justice in scholarship, teaching, and service” (https://lled.educ.ubc.ca/about/). Based on your own experiences and observations, do our practices reflect this commitment to social justice?
Here are some sub-questions to guide this discussion:
- Why are you here? Why are these conversations about race/racism important for us to have with each other and our students?
- What makes conversations about race and racial justice challenging?
- What, in your experience, helps to keep people engaged through the difficult places?
- Do you feel a sense of belonging in LLED? At UBC? In the Vancouver area more generally? What practices, structures, discourses, and other aspects of your experiences have contributed to your sense of (not) belonging?
- What practices and structures need to be rethought, investigated, or improved, especially with regard to attracting/admitting and retaining excellent faculty and students committed to racial and social justice? What concrete suggestions or ideas do you have? In developing recommendations, we can start by focusing particularly on the following areas:
- Graduate student admissions (e.g., criteria and required documents for applications; suggested interview questions and recommendations for how to assess answers to these questions)
- Graduate student mentoring practices (e.g., both faculty–student mentorship and peer advising)
- Faculty recruitment and hiring practices (e.g., criteria and required documents for application packages; suggested interview questions; recommendations for specific ways to assess candidates’ racial literacy and commitment to social justice)
- Faculty tenure and promotion practices (e.g., what kinds of scholarship, teaching, and service are recognized vs. what goes unrecognized or undervalued)