RAPP Community Connections

It's been a quiet week here on the RAPP blog, but not for lack of activity on campus.  Rather, RAPP and its staff/blog team have been a busy bunch.  As a chance to highlight some of the work we do, here's an overview of the community connections we've been involved in this week:

• Monday & Wednesday morning through early afternoon, RAPP partnered with the LGBTQ Center to provide campus diversity workshops to first year students in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business. Social Justice League member Bobby Filbin, LGBTQ Center graduate assistant B Carbonara, and Rebecca connected with almost 350 students in eight fifty-minute workshops.
• Monday evening, RAPP Public Ally Marjorie Bledsoe and RAPPORT Intern DeVorah YisraEL facilitated a RAPPORT workshop on multiple intelligences & planning inclusive learning experiences.  A dozen people came out to explore our ways of learning and sharing knowledge as well as how to include all learners in educational experiences.
• On Tuesday, Rebecca connected with one of the nearly one hundred First Year Experience Learning Communities for an outreach session.  Each year we work with at least a dozen first year learning communities, exploring campus diversity, self-awareness, and intercultural communication.
• Tuesday evening, we hosted one of our newer activities for RAPP XXVII Tuesday - between session conference calls.  The group asked to try phone check-ins between meetings, so we've set up multiple conference call sessions this quarter.
• In exploration of expanding our partnership with Emerging Ethnic Leaders, Rebecca worked with the advisor for EEL to begin sketching out a formal relationship between our programs for some exciting developments RAPP has in the works (stay tuned here for how to be involved in that!).
• International Education Week is a university-wide program spearheaded by UC International.  SALD participates annually in this great series of events that help our students build global citizenship.  RAPP staff and other SALD staff participated in the kick-off planning meeting for the fall 2012 program.
• As a Student Life staff member and UC alumna herself, Rebecca commits time to supporting some of our major undergraduate scholarships.  This week involved much work with the selection process for the Darwin T. Turner Scholars Program as well as preparing and presenting a Student Life session for competitors in the Cincinnatus Scholarship Program.  The latter program involved highlighting Student Life's countless connections with the University Honors Program.  RAPP XXV member Alyssa Roberts helped present about her leadership journey, including RAPP's contribution to it.
• Our campus community has experienced several racial incidents lately, some public and some not.  While RAPP no longer coordinates the Racial Incident Team (which we did in the late 1980s through mid-1990s), our staff do provide listening ears and responsive educational programming.  Work in this area has been underway this week, as well.

All of this came directly after Rebecca's return from the Social Justice Training Institute 2 & Celebration in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Marjorie's return from 2012 Tri-State Diversity Conference: Diverse Communities - Common Unity in the Cincinnati Airport Marriot.

Thanks to all the folks who keep RAPP hopping and deeply connected with our community in this way!

Social Justice League member Bobby Filbin helped present to nearly 350 College of Business students this week!