“Disrupting Inequality in the System” Keynote Address on In-Service Day
Publish Date: Jan. 30, 2023
and staff.
At the all-day faculty and staff in-service on January 12, keynote speaker Dr. Regina Stanback-Stroud spoke on the complex reality of inequity in higher education and how to reduce such unfairness.
Stanback-Stroud is an anti-racist activist and committed practitioner, who has dedicated 35 years of her life’s work to higher education, serving as a CCC chancellor, president, vice president of instruction, dean and professor of nursing.
“We need to understand how the systems are set up,” Standback-Stroud stated, “… the historic systems of oppression that have been set up perpetuate the status quo in regard to race.” One way to disrupt this system, she shared, was the importance of “giving each other permission to be imperfect and feel uncomfortable” when discussing systems of oppression in higher education.
She also offered ways for a college to further become an anti-racist institution, including diversifying faculty. Stanback- Stroud added that increasing faculty and staff diversity increases the ability to integrate multicultural and culturally responsive pedagogy into teaching practices. She also suggested creating a safe environment to engage in diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) conversations, not hiding behind the bureaucracy and using positions of influence and consequence, and finally auditing policies and processes for structural racism.
Stanback-Stroud ended her keynote address by praising CHC for making antiracism, inclusivity, and equity a priority for the campus, as well as being recognized as the 2021 Equity Champion for Excellence in Transfer for Latinx students.
