Eruptions & Transformations: Navigating Hot Moments & Difficult Dialogues In Our Courses

Eruptions & Transformations: Navigating Hot Moments & Difficult Dialogues In Our Courses featuring Dr. Tasha Souza

This interactive workshop is free and available to all members of the University of Pittsburgh

Date: Friday, October 3rd

Time: 9 am - 12 pm EST

Location: Alumni Hall Ballroom

About:

Are you worried that issues will come up in your courses for which you will not know how to respond? Have you ever been frozen when a student has made a problematic statement? In this interactive workshop, participants will learn how to lay the foundation for, and facilitate, meaningful and transformative conversations across difference in any instructional setting, even when hot moments arise.

Workshop Goal: To have frameworks and tools to incorporate into your instructional strategies in response to challenging moments.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this session, you should be able to:

Describe strategies for creating fertile ground for transformative learning in conversations across, and about, difference. (BEFORE)
Utilize strategies one can use during hot moments to transform eruptions into learning opportunities. (DURING)
Summarize strategies one can take after a hot moment to ensure learning. (AFTER)

About the Guest Speaker, Dr. Tasha Souza:

Dr. Tasha Souza, formerly the Vice Provost for Faculty Success, is a semi-retired Professor of Communication at Sacramento State University and communication and DEIBJ consultant. Previously, she was the Director of BUILD at Boise State University. She founded the BUILD (Boise state Uniting for Inclusion and Leadership in Diversity) certificate program in 2017 for faculty and staff which, upon her departure, had over 500 participants. She has also been the Faculty Associate for Inclusive Classrooms in the Office for Diversity and Inclusion and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ISADR) at Humboldt State University. In 2014, she spent half a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of the West Indies in Barbados developing programs and offering faculty development workshops. Previously, she was the founding Coordinator for HSU’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) and also served as an Instructional Consultant at CIDR at the University of Washington.

Souza has received multiple awards for her inclusion work with students, faculty, and staff at HSU, BSU, and Sac State. She has taught courses such as intercultural communication, communication in organizations, diversity in the workplace, communication training and consulting, gender and communication, conflict management, interpersonal communication, and instructional communication. In addition to teaching at universities domestically, Souza has taught in Barbados, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Singapore.

Souza is a consultant on communication, inclusion, and pedagogy broadly and has provided workshops and presentations at over 20 institutions of higher education in the U.S. and abroad. She has also consulted/provided training on topics such as responding to microaggressions with microresistance, navigating difficult dialogues, inclusive leadership, effective conflict management, workplace communication skills, intercultural communication, and effective work teams with numerous organizations including the Yurok Tribe, Girls Inc., M & M/Mars, and United Indian Health Services.

She has published in the areas of difficult dialogues in the classroom, addressing microaggressions with microresistance, decision making for equity, service-learning pedagogy, social justice education, discussion-based teaching, conflict in the classroom, and intercultural conflict.

Event Sponsors:

This event is sponsored and made possible by:

The Pitt School of Social Work
The Pitt School of Social Work's Center for Race and Social Problems
The Pitt School of Social Work's Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (JEDI)