Karen L. Gordes,  PT, DScPT, PhD received a $10,000 innovation grant for Faculty Educational Training Program - Fostering inclusion through a trauma informed pedagogical framework.  The contributing faculty and staff include Courtney Jones-Carney, DPA, MBA; Mary Jo Bondy, DHEd, MHS, PA-C;  Shani Fleming, MSHS, MPS, PA-C; Shannan Delany Dixon, MS, CGC; and Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD, MA, MDE, BCPS, CPE. 

Many health profession educators are not formally prepared to provide a trauma informed approach to their teaching despite a significant population of their learners experiencing traumatic and adverse events prior to and during their educational experience. Given the negative impact trauma has on learning, there is a need for educators to understand how to recognize and effectively respond to these issues in the learning environment. A trauma-informed educational approach aims to support learners by recognizing the impact of trauma, avoiding re-traumatization and building resilience in learners. We must recognize that marginalization is a fundamental trauma and re-traumatization in higher education is often related to marginalized identity status. Exclusion, minimization, and shaming based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and more generate trauma in the individuals experiencing these directed behaviors. Further, the confluence of historical, societal and systemic trauma before, during, and after higher education is a critical problem in the health professions. The features, practices, and policies of environments and institutions that generate and maintain trauma create a loss of sufficiency and diversity in the healthcare workforce. A trauma informed pedagogical framework focuses on systems and individuals and provides consideration for how our teaching and learning policies and practices can either challenge or facilitate success in learners who have experienced trauma. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) has outlined six equity-centered trauma informed principles congruent with inclusive pedagogy to foster a supportive environment for all learners. The six key principles include safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration-mutuality, empowerment-voice-choice, and cultural-historic-gender issues. A trauma informed approach recognizes the intersection of trauma and adversity and outlines instructional practices (such as representation, engaging intersectionality, mitigating bias, and pedagogical partnerships) to support authentic belonging, equity and inclusion in the classroom. The trauma informed lens is grounded in the concept that effective teaching depends on deep and caring relationships fostered through a community of support and respect where individuals can share their authentic self. Through the formalized training sessions on trauma informed practice, we will be building a cadre of faculty knowledgeable of the principles of an equity centered trauma informed approach and prepared to create course content, course policies, and make systemic reform grounded in an inclusive and belonging framework. Faculty participants will garner skills in justice-oriented teaching that foster learning spaces that support learners who have experienced trauma, adversity, crisis, and inequality as well as how to employ strategies for reforming policies, practices, and culture within their academic programs to a trauma resilient perspective. 

Projects/initiatives must:

Up to $7,000 will be dispersed in two installments for a 13-month Be JEDI (Belonging, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Innovation Grant. Grant recipients must present at a Fall 2024 convening and in Fall 2025, with a Final Report due in August 2025 (before the final Grant Convening).

All funded projects will be required to present progress to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and other grant awardees 6 months after receiving the award. The final results will be presented to the campus community at a Be JEDI Innovation Grant Convening in Fall 2025. If community-based elements were funded, the grantees would present to the target communities in addition to the campus community

●    Grant Application Opens: Monday, February 12, 2024
●    Application Deadline: Monday, March 11, 2024
●    Award Notification: By Monday, May 6, 2024
●    Funding Awarded (half of funds): By Monday, May 20, 2024
●    Be JEDI Progress Convening: Fall 2024 (Date TBD)
●    Funding Awarded (remainder of funds): Fall 2024
●    Final Report Deadline: Friday, August 9, 2025
●    OEDI Be JEDI Innovation Grant Convening: Fall 2025 (date TBD)

BELONGING: Belonging is the quality or state of being connected as an essential part of the UMB community and culture and having a meaningful role in achieving the UMB Mission and Core Values. Projects may address participants’ experiences of being welcomed, invited, cared for and being provided education, experiences, services, interpersonal relationships, and professional development opportunities relevant to their intersectional positionalities and identities as whole people; for example*, hosting culturally relevant events or creating identity-based faculty and staff affinity groups. 

JUSTICE: Justice is equal rights and equitable opportunities and access for all members of the UMB community. Projects may address innovative sustainable solutions to advance greater access to resources and opportunities given UMB’s systemic challenges or historical associations with injustice; for example, leveraging institutional resources to systemically and sustainably redress historical and structural oppression, disparities, and barriers.

EQUITY: Equity is both a process and outcome that ensure fairness and equal access to opportunities, supports, and resources for UMB’s students, staff, and faculty. It differs from equality in that it takes into account structural factors and historical precedents leading to disparate outcomes for groups, and develops targeted measures, so that the end result is equal. Projects may address opportunities to assess and address organizational and population disparities, barriers, and access; for example, providing innovative and culturally relevant professional development opportunities for specific populations of UMB faculty, staff, and students or increasing opportunities for specific groups.

DIVERSITY: Diversity is all the individual and intersectional differences in our identities, such as age, carceral status, caring or dependency responsibilities, caste, culture, disability, education, ethnicity, family, gender identity and expression, immigration status, language, nationality, neurodiversity, occupation, political beliefs, race, relationship status, religion or belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and more. Projects may address barriers that limit diversity at any level of participation or membership in the UMB community or in groups served by UMB; for example, addressing barriers in hiring or admissions practices or policies, or innovatively decolonizing academic programs.

INCLUSION: Inclusion is the full engagement, welcoming, valuing, and integration of all the diverse members of the UMB community; and it equitably distributes power while incorporating and recognizing brilliance, assets, opportunities, and perspectives in the design and implementation of activities, assessments, decision-making, policies, practices, and processes systemically at all levels within an organization. Projects may seek opportunities at UMB to create or further advance inclusive cultures, policies, and practices; for example, shifting assessment policies to address unconscious bias, providing professional development to reduce leadership barriers, or, the transformation of institutional policies, structures, and activities in order to maximize the diverse talents, backgrounds and perspectives of all students, faculty, administrators, and staff.

In sum, diversity refers to representation; inclusion to behaviors; equity to systems; belonging refers to; and justice relates to results.

*Examples to inspire, not limit.

For this grant, interprofessional/interdisciplinary:

• involve at least 2 disciplines/schools/units at UMB; and
• include a combination of UMB full-time exempt staff and faculty in the creation of the project

Primary applicants must be full-time exempt staff and full-time faculty. Leadership of this grant can be configured in any way as long as there is at least one primary applicant and a lead partnership between full-time exempt staff and full-time faculty.

The Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion will disperse fund*and will be available for consultation and

advice as needed. The Office will organize the Early Fall 2023 Be JEDI Progress Convening and the Fall

2024 Be JEDI Innovation Grant Convening.

* Funds are drawn from State funds.

A rubric will be used to evaluate submissions in 5 categories worth 10 points each.

Funds will be dispersed to the SOAPF provided to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion by the lead
applicant’s School or unit. The grant-receiving team will manage the funds.

At the conclusion of the grant, unspent funds will be returned to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Depending on funding, impact, and new projects/initiatives submitted in the next grant cycle, grants may be eligible for a 1-year funding renewal. Please contact OEDI prior to the end of the grant if there is a possibility you may want to renew.