The SJI competency highlights the skills needed to identify one's own identity and agency, raise this awareness in others, and address inequitable practices in micro-and macro-settings. The labeled outcomes are much fewer than other competency areas (ACPA & NASPA, 2015), and although I meet the critera for many of them, my internal compass points me in the direction of the intermediate level in SJI.

 

As an example, I have included my Personal Philosophy Statement as an artifact of my growth and commitment from the end of my first year of graduate school. Over the summer, I continued to reflect on this statement, refining it and incorporating inclusive 'calls to action' in peers in a different master's program (Sports Psychology at IU) and in a different school (HESA students at Loyola University Chicago). I also was called to action by these peers!

 

 

 

 

At the introductory level, I also understand how my privileges, perceived or actual, help maintain systems of oppression. I have advanced in some ways to the intermediate level in including this realization in conversations with students who identify in different ways than I do. In so doing, I am furthering not only my students' level of self-awareness, advocacy, and participation in making change, but also embrace my role in areas where I have implicit authority and the commitments needed to enact change, empower others, and disrupt the status quo.

 

Hiring diverse candidates for student-staff and professional positions have been hotly debated on various teams on which I have been a member. Addressed in the SJI category is a call to "engage in hiring and promotion practices that are non-discriminatory and work toward building inclusive teams" ACPA & NASPA, 2015). I empowered my teammates to consider the departmental (mis)representation of one dominant culture and the weaknesses that presents as a department and in our interactions with students. In my previous role at Guilford College, I witnessed many colleagues support these endeavors in reaching out to address several homogeneous aspects of our department.

 

My next steps should include calling to action my department, participating in the removal of disciminatory barriers within the institution, playing an active role in societal changes, and "ensuring campus resources are distributed equitably and adequately meet the needs of all campus communities" (ACPA & NASPA, 2015).