Holistic Health and Wellness

An exchange of new ideas, new language and new consciousness. Goal one of the Diversity Team is to provide members with an on-going conversation on diversity towards transformative consciousness.

A monthly column in the Newsletter is one of the media used in meeting this goal. We invite you to join in this conversation with your ideas, thoughts and suggestions. Another goal is to promote racial equity in the US and international women empowerment. Our third goal is to integrate the value of health and diversity in the structure, programs and activities of AAUW. Diversity for the Greater Rochester Area Branch of AAUW is a mosaic of gems reflecting persons from different age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnic, socio-economic, health and spiritual cultures, including the culture of the deaf. Each with unique ideas and abilities. Contact, Heide Parreño, email, orostar@aol.com.

Conversing on Diversity: An Exchange of New Ideas, New Language and New Consciousness

Our initiative is to uphold diversity as a value that is embedded in the infra-structure of GRAB/AAUW and integrated in our programs and activities.

Members of our team have key positions on the Board and Committees which comprise 70% of our Branch leadership.

Our hope is to continue to build bridges of collaboration with college diversity programs such as RIT Women Faculty Self Study. A new member of our diversity team is Shahin Monshipour who is a Board of Director of International Culture and Arts Network which we will collaborate and support.

Our Diversity Team values your input so we are making available an on-line survey at: https://sjfc.us2.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV 6PXNiyu6wXjUU4c

We will also have the survey available at every meeting.

——————————————————————————-

GRAB AAUW initiated and organized a successful forum about Diversity of Women Faculty in collaboration with Rochester Institute of Technology. There were a total of twenty-three participants, with the majority from RIT plus representatives from Nazareth College, SUNY Geneseo and AAUW members. Hector Flores, new Dean of Graduate Studies at RIT provided great insights into the issue of women faculty diversity.

We enhanced the experience of diversity during the continental breakfast with a variety of juices and cultural foods, and the presence of members of our diversity team. GRAB AAUW’s Initiative on Diversity was re-affirmed when our President Marilyn Tedeschi shared our Diversity Statement. She emphasized diversity as an important value within our organization and hopes to integrate even more into the programs and activities of our Branch.

The three women researchers from RIT gave an excellent presentation with great interactive participation of attendees during the breakout sessions. To quote one of the participants, “I would like to thank your diversity committee for developing this workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would like to know who I should contact to become a member of the GRAB branch.”

If anyone is interested in getting a copy of the handouts and power point presentation, please contact me at orostar@aol.com.