2024 Center for Equity and Cultural Wealth Institute

2024 CECW Institute

Please join us for the Seventh Annual CECW Institute on Thursday, June 6, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the Charlestown campus.  

The 2024 CECW Institute affirms the liberatory power of language, culture, and community in higher education, particularly for students who are racially and linguistically disenfranchised. “Liberation Literacies,” a framework developed by our keynote speaker, Dr. Jamila Lyiscott, will guide the day’s exploration.

Participants will come away with strategies for developing institutional and academic cultures that value and respect the wealth of the “Liberation Literacies” students use to express the knowledge, histories, creativity, and resilience of their cultures and communities. Breakout sessions will showcase best practices for integrating students’ literacies in the classroom and college services that dismantle systems of privilege and advance racial equity. The Institute will also highlight the role that “Liberation Literacies” play in the development of student agency, advocacy, and activism which serves as a foundation for students’ academic and lifelong success. 

Featured Speaker: Jamila Lyiscott, PhD

Jamila Lyiscott, PhDFeatured Speaker: Jamila Lyiscott, PhD headshot

Aspiring Way-Maker, Social Justice Education Scholar, Author & Spoken Word Poet

Jamila Lyiscott aka, Dr. J, is an award-winning community-engaged scholar, nationally renowned speaker, and the author of Black Appetite. White Food: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom. She currently serves as a Tenured Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is the founding co-director of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research, and previously led the journal of Equity & Excellence in Education as an Editor-in-Chief. Dr. J’s research and activism work together to explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life globally. Her research examines the liberatory capacity of language and culture in the lives of youth of color, racial healing, youth-led activism, and the power of the African Diaspora to transgress coloniality.

2024 CECW Institute Call for Proposals

Thank you for your interest in offering a session at the 2024 CECW Institute! Session presenters will receive a stipend of $500. There will be two Breakout Session periods. Please align session proposals with the Institute Outcomes and one of the following two themes. 

Themes

Best practices for integrating the literacies, cultures, and communities of students into classroom curricula and pedagogy, and/or student services. Sessions that include community-engaged learning and students as co-presenters are encouraged but not required.

Examples of best practices in the development of student leadership, agency, advocacy, and activism when students’ literacies rooted in their cultures and communities are integrated. Students as leaders or co-leaders of sessions are encouraged. 

Deadline: Friday, May 10, 2024

Submit a Proposal

CECW Institute Outcomes

INQUIRE

  • Gain an understanding of the power of “Liberation Literacies” in shaping identity, fostering agency and activism, and advancing student outcomes.
  • Gain an understanding of the role of “Liberation Literacies” from a Cultural Wealth perspective in the work of building just and equitable institutions.   

COMMUNICATE

  • Engage in dialogue to critically reflect on why “Liberation Literacies” rooted in culture and communities, are marginalized in higher education.

ACT

  • Identify opportunities for collaboration to integrate “Liberation Literacies” into classrooms and support services to amplify student agency, advocacy, and activism, and increase student outcomes.    

GROW

  • Utilize multiple resources for ongoing learning and development of best practices that center “Liberation Literacies” rooted in culture and community in support services, classrooms, and student leadership efforts.