Missouri College and Career Attainment Network (MOCAN) recently participated in the American Association of College and Universities (AAC&U)’s 2022 Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT). The Institute focused on creating campus centers to dismantle racial hierarchies and build equitable communities. A team from MOCAN’s Postsecondary Equity Network (PEN) represented the organization and joined the work.
About TRHT Campus Centers
Among the most urgent challenges facing America today is the growing division across racial and ethnic identities. Increasing aversion to difference and rising distrust among communities nationally have left colleges and universities with the challenge of how to heal from the legacies and harm of racism and bias. AAC&U is partnering with higher education institutions to develop TRHT Campus Centers. The Centers are designed to 1) prepare the next generation of strategic leaders and critical thinkers to promote racial healing and, 2) to catalyze efforts to address current inequities grounded in notions of a racial hierarchy. As a national, community-based initiative, the TRHT effort launched by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation seeks to address the historical and contemporary impacts of race and racism within our communities.
The Institute on TRHT Campus Centers is designed to help campus teams identify evidence-based strategies that support their vision of what their communities will look, feel, and be like when the belief in a hierarchy of human value no longer exists. Teams established strategic goals that align with both their vision and the TRHT Framework. During the Institute, the MOCAN team identified steps for achieving those goals, and developed plans for evaluation, communications, engagement, and sustainability.
Campus teams engaged in PEN will participate in and design Rx Racial Healing® Circles, participate in workshops, and collaborate with experienced TRHT Campus Center mentors, workshop facilitators, and evaluation consultants to develop and/or refine their transformative campus action plans.
This year’s Institute included over 600 participants from 75 colleges, universities, and organizations. MOCAN is honored to be the first statewide organization accepted into the Institute.
MOCAN’s TRHT Action Plan
The MOCAN action plan includes three goals:
Promote racial healing activities on campus and in the community:
Address the systemic actions and false beliefs in racial hierarchies that exist in postsecondary education systems. MOCAN will develop a cross institutional team that will utilize Rx Racial Healing® Circles and conduct the “difficult dialogue” sessions to address the systems and inequitable practices.
Erase institutional barriers to equal treatment:
Each PEN institution will create (or update) their diversity statements and equity plans to include actionable, resourced steps. When implemented, the plans will address inequities in student success, completion, and representation. MOCAN will engage national leaders to work with each campus to develop or strengthen their diversity statements and equity plans.
Prepare the next generation of leaders to build just and equitable communities:
MOCAN will partner with the PEN institutions and other statewide and regional organizations to develop trainings for diverse professionals to prepare them for leadership opportunities in the field. MOCAN, collaborating closely with partner organizations, will provide workshops, seminars and training opportunities at the annual conferences of key professional associations focused on developing and acquiring leadership and administrative skills. MOCAN will also provide targeted professional development opportunities for diverse professionals in the field related to trends and topics in higher education.
MOCAN’s TRHT Team
Trent Ball, Senior Director Postsecondary Equity & Attainment, MOCAN
Dr. Feleccia Moore-Davis, Campus President, and Chief Academic Officer, St. Louis Community College Meramec Campus
Dr. Richard Stephenson, Academic Success Centers Coordinator and Diversity Committee Co-Chair, Jefferson College
Dr. Rabekah Stewart, Assistant Vice President Multicultural Services, Missouri State University
Dr. E. Andre Thorn, Director Center of Academic Success, and Excellence, University of Missouri Columbia
Deanna Williams, Special Advisor to the President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Fontbonne University
