Inclusive Excellence Professional Development Opportunities

Inclusive Workplace Starts Here

Understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion is crucial for creating an inclusive workplace for faculty and staff. By embracing diverse perspectives and ensuring access to opportunities, faculty and staff promote a sense of belonging within an inclusive learning environment that empowers learners to navigate cultural complexities, cultivate empathy, and develop the necessary skills to thrive in a diverse and interconnected global economy.

ASPIRE meets people where they are through pathways that provide opportunities for skill enhancement, knowledge acquisition, and career improvement. ASPIRE’s professional development pathways serve as transformative journeys that foster growth, learning, and relationship building. Through the use of autonomous choice, individuals may chart their journeys toward personal and professional fulfillment.

In support of individual units' as well as George Mason’s broader strategic goals, the ASPIRE Learning and Development opportunity offers multiple Pathways Forward for individuals and teams to:

• Cultivate skills for communication and interaction across cultures. 

• Foster self-awareness of personal worldviews, cultural practices, and values, while promoting understanding of others' histories, cultures, and identities. Recognize the significance of this for fostering a sense of belonging among stakeholders.  

• Acknowledge the valuable role of diversity in our community and prioritize cultivating an inclusive excellence lens. This lens enables us to critically evaluate and address systemic and organizational practices that perpetuate injustice, exclusion, and inequity, hindering trust, respect, fairness, and social justice.

To attend a Pathway workshop, log in to MasonLEAPS before clicking the corresponding link after each workshop title below to register.

To schedule professional development for yourself or your team, please complete our Inclusive Excellence Professional Development Opportunities Intake Form.

Compassionate Conversation Pathway

This Pathway supports the development of skills for communication and interaction across cultures.

Workshop: Compassionate Conversations

Workshop: Building Community Through Compassionate Conversation**

** Note: In-person only. "Compassionate Conversation" is a prerequisite for this workshop.

Within Myself Pathway

This Pathway focuses on intrapersonal awareness, knowledge, and self-reflection.

Workshop: Nurturing Cultural Awareness and Resilience

Workshop: The Story of Me, The Story of Us

Workshop: Cultivating Empathy

Within Our Team Pathway

This pathway will focus on interpersonal and interactional awareness that fosters respectful, compassionate, and empathetic relationships with individuals, specifically those representing diverse constituencies.

This pathway focuses on developing ongoing, conscious efforts to examine systemic barriers and challenge the mentalities around the paradigms of ideas, language, and behaviors.

Workshop Title: Creating Communities of Belonging (Part 1)

Workshop Title: Creating Communities of Belonging (Part 2)

Our online courses are designed to give you the freedom to pursue professional development opportunities that are right for you. These online self-paced courses are asynchronous: you can work on your assignments anytime, as self-paced courses do not have due dates. The content is divided into learning modules. Each module will cover one or more topics. Within each of the learning modules, you can expect the following components:

• Module introduction that outlines what you can expect to learn in the module.
• Required readings (textbook, articles, journals, websites, etc.) and presentations (audio and/or video).
• Assignments (which may include written journal assignments, quizzes, blogs, etc.) based on the readings and presentations.
• Module conclusion to review the topics and what you should have learned.

Typically, courses will require a quiz to Check Your Knowledge and a final project, Advancing Inclusive Excellence (AIE@M): Tell Your Story, that enables you to take deeper dive that brings together all topics covered in each of the learning modules. You’ll find that the design of the learning modules has a rhythm to help you manage your time in the course.

Asynchronous: The Story of Me, The Story of Us

• Registration Link (MasonLEAPS sign-in)

Asynchronous: Cultivating Empathy

• Registration Link (MasonLEAPS sign-in)