YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Like many planned in-person events in 2020, a program centered on racism, its history and ways to mitigate it, has moved online.
Facing Racism Institute, organized by the Division for Diversity and Inclusion at Missouri State University, is scheduled as an Oct. 1-2 virtual event via Zoom. School officials decided to transition the two-day session away from an in-person gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Wes Pratt, chief diversity officer and an assistant to the president at MSU, said the event includes speakers, videos and opportunities for conversations about racism and its impact on individuals and the workplace.
“It sort of uses a multimodal approach to diversity,” he said. “It’s not all lecture, but covers contemporary issues that are occurring in our nation and world today.”
Pratt said the October event will be facilitated by MSU faculty Leslie Anderson and Lyle Foster. The program attendance is typically capped at 25-30 people, but a slightly larger audience – around 45 – will be allowed for the virtual session. Registration is currently near 40, according to school officials.
“You want to keep it where there’s an opportunity for folks to engage,” Foster said. “A lot of times in large crowds, some people may not feel comfortable. Smaller groups can create a much more impactful and perhaps transformative experience.”
Pratt said MSU has hosted the Facing Racism Institute since 2016 and generally has sessions in the fall and spring semesters. The October program will be the first held in 2020. A one-day session planned as part of the eighth annual Collaborative Diversity Conference didn’t take place in April, due to COVID-19 concerns.
The three-day conference, which highlights best practices in diversity and inclusion in business, community relations, higher education and public service, is expected to return in 2021. However, Pratt said he expects it will be a hybrid or all-virtual event.
“This will be the first opportunity we have to look at how effective it’s going to be in a virtual context,” he said of next month’s institute.
Learning opportunity
Sutton Berry, product program manager at John Deere Reman, said he’s among nine registrants for the event from the Springfield-based company. Registration fees for non-MSU employees are $400 per person. Employees from its Springfield and Alberta, Canada, plants will participate. While personal interaction won’t be possible for virtual program attendees, he said several of the Springfield workers will be in a factory conference room during the event, which spans eight hours each day.
“This learning opportunity supports our commitment to diversity and inclusion at John Deere,” Berry said via email. “Through increased awareness and education, our hope for our employees is to gain a better understanding on racism and the impact it has on individuals, businesses and our community.”
The program generates discussions on subjects such as implicit bias, an unconscious attitude or stereotyping of people, Pratt said.
“Implicit bias is still very pervasive today and perhaps even more so in light of events over the summer,” he said, referencing, in part, the nationwide racial justice protests that followed the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Springfield City Manager Jason Gage said Floyd’s death and subsequent public outcry influenced his desire to have the city contract with MSU for a private Facing Racism Institute session this summer. The city spent $4,000 for the program, which he said is part of its employees’ professional development.
“We had about 25 people go through it and that’s pretty close to a full class,” he said. “It was not modified for our group. It was the same class. Quite honestly, we felt it was inexpensive for that level of training.”
Gage first attended the program last year and was impressed with the depth of its dive into racism’s history.
“It allows the attendee to connect the dots from the past of a time of forced slavery to a time of freedom without opportunity, without education and without respect,” he said. “Then finally it goes to a time of change in federal and state laws in the 1960s to today.”
The program also covers interactions with people of different colors, genders and cultures, he said, helping teach how to be sensitive and not let internal bias affect decision making.
Addressing issues
Pratt said racism has long been a subject people are uncomfortable discussing in and out of the workplace.
“If they were comfortable with dealing with it and addressing it, we’d be a lot further along in this nation than we are now,” he said. “In this particular area, it’s about trying to become more aware, to become more knowledgeable and then develop the skills to negotiate our cross-cultural differences that may exist in order to have a much more beneficial or effective work site.”
Research demonstrates valuing the inclusion of diversity in the workplace improves the bottom line, Pratt said.
According to a 2016 study by Washington, D.C.-based research firm Peterson Institute for International Economics, companies with 30% of its leaders being female earn 6% more in profits compared with those without female leadership.
New York-based management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. said in a 2015 study that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
Diversity also is being addressed on the city of Springfield’s staff this year. At its Sept. 21 meeting, City Council approved Gage’s request to add a director of diversity and inclusion for this fiscal year. A new hire is slated be made before year’s end.
It’s a move similar to Drury University and Springfield Public Schools, which each added a staff member in 2019 to address diversity and inclusion.
“As we start to think broader about understanding differences, being more welcoming, recruitment efforts and development efforts, and how we interact in our community, it didn’t take long for me to realize we need some more horsepower in our organization,” Gage said. “We just really don’t have someone that has that type of training that can help us.
“We need someone who can bring in that knowledge, experience and ability to work with people.”
Connected to Watkins Elementary School is a new storm shelter now under construction.
