OL 205 - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion *

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Some might argue that today’s professional environments present us with greater challenges related to diversity than in any other time in U.S. history. Others might say that the challenges facing our rising professionals today are essentially the same tensions that they have unsuccessfully struggled with for the last several hundred years: power, access, and equity. This course provides students an opportunity to explore those tensions through the range of dimensions in which diversity is manifested among organizational leaders, staff, and stakeholders in today’s professional environments. Students will examine organizational and professional access and equity in the contexts of culture, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, ability, and gender-viewing these contexts through connections among divensions of labor, class structures, power relationships, group marginalization, cultural images, residential patterns, health, family life, employment, education, and values. In addition to the challenges related to diversity, participants will also explore aspects of diversity as potential assets in creating rich and productive professional environments. Students will then apply the knowledge they gain from these explorations to the framing, analysis, and generation of solutions to contemporary educational problems.