Cultural humility is an approach to our lives where we take an introspective look at ourselves and allow ourselves to be open to new cultures, experiences, and ways of being. As we develop this approach, we no longer retreat to the familiar or shut down when things get difficult. Instead, we create space to turn to wonder – we begin to wonder where these feelings and thoughts came from, what experiences we have normalized, and ways we can begin to open up our lives to ways of being that we may not have experienced before.
Cura personalis is a key tenant of our mission as a Jesuit institution. However, we cannot care about the whole person if we do not understand who a person is. Our university has continued to move away from a tolerance perspective – where we co-exist but do not recognize each other’s humanity – to one where we humanize one another. To do so, we must incorporate cultural humility into our daily practice.
Going along this journey on your own is not easy, and with so many opportunities to learn and develop, it is hard to know where to go and how to do this work. Recognizing this challenge, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is expanding our capacity building offerings to offer Transformation Today. First established as Transformation Tuesdays in the Student Housing Office in spring 2021, Transformation Today is a series of workshops that centralizes some of the workshops provided across campus to promote cultural humility. Open to all students, staff, and faculty across LMU, this series of workshops aims to bring together the community to further develop a coalition of care centralized around cultural humility and cura personalis. Although change often occurs slowly at a systemic level when working toward justice, let us make a transformation beginning today.
This fall, Transformation Today will consist of three workshops created and facilitated by LMU community members. In October, Jenn Leal, assistant director of Student Involvement, and Isabel Villalobos-Galeana, resident director of Palm North Hall, will facilitate a discussion surrounding Universal Design and the ways we need to create inclusive spaces in and out of the classroom for people with disabilities. Under the leadership of Stuart Moskovitz, director of LGBT Student Services, Lindsay Anderson, fellowships advisor, Joseph Bernardo, director of Capacity Building, Isaac Cardenas, senior administrative coordinator, Miguel Reyna, BCLA academic advisor, Liz Zepeda, university archivist, and myself will lead a Safe Zone 1.0 Training in November to create co-conspirators for LGBTQIA2S students, staff, and faculty. Finally, this December, Marieclare Sia, senior wellness strategist and advisor, will orchestrate a workshop that centers radical rest, sacred pause, and how we can establish wellness from a social justice perspective in our everyday lives. Learn more about Transformation Today and register here.
Transformation Today, one of the newer programs offered by DEI that augment our continuing capacity building programs for faculty and staff, is offered with Cultural Consciousness Conversations (CCC) and the Anti-Racism Workshop Series (LAWS).
Cultural Conversations is a yearlong program that aims to bring our community members closer together via dialogue. CCC brings a cohort of faculty, staff, and administrators together once a month to share stories, learn from one another, examine societal norms and cultural differences, and deepen connections across all sectors of the LMU community. The Anti-Racism Workshop Series is another cohort-based model that brings faculty, staff, and administrators together over the course of the semester for two day-long retreats in October and November, where participants develop skills and strategies to effectively combat racism in their spheres of influence. Previous participants in the spring 2023 LAWS cohort shared, “I gained some positively challenging insights into how white supremacy impacts my work and how my work may be upholding white supremacy. I already had areas of concern about how my work (not set by LMU, but by outside sources) may be upholding white supremacy, but this really put it into stark contrast about how some of my work that is set by LMU does this, as well. I appreciated the challenge of thinking through these topics.”
While we continue to expand our cultural humility and DEI efforts at LMU, actual change must be accomplished together as a community. As the African Proverb reminds us, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Through these workshops and many others offered across the university, we hope to build a coalition of change agents that can allow us to create new systems that incorporate the voices of those who were not part of the original narrative so we can move together to liberate our university, society, and world.
To register for any/all of the Transformation Today workshops, please visit this link.
Please visit our website If you are interested in learning more about Cultural Consciousness Conversations or registering for the 2023-2024 cohort.
For more information on the LMU Anti-Racism Workshop Series, check out our page or register for this fall’s cohort prior to September 15.
