September 2024 Update from the Centers for Student Access, Community, and Intercultural Engagement

Greetings Western Community!

As we launch the 2024-25 academic year, I am excited to highlight developments and upcoming programming from the Centers for Student Access, Community, and Intercultural Engagement. If you are a student, our services are for you! If you are a faculty or staff member, I encourage you to check out this info and connect your classes and individual students with the services and programs we provide. Additionally, colleagues are invited to participate in workshops for faculty being offered by the Disability Access Center and a session with the Blue Resource Center for faculty and staff about supporting undocumented students.

About the Centers 

The Centers include three Enrollment & Student Services departments focused on advancing holistic student development and inclusive success: the Disability Access Center (DAC), LGBTQ+ Western, and the Office of Multicultural Student Services (MSS). 

Within Multicultural Student Services are the Black Student Coalition, Blue Resource Center, Ethnic Student Center, and La Plaza Latine Student Center. Each of these centers are led by student development professionals, including our colleagues Rodrigo Gonzalez-Juarez and Quacyya Cuaresma who joined the MSS team in new positions in recent months. 

The Disability Access Center works collaboratively with faculty and staff to facilitate disabled students’ access to all aspects of university life. The Disability Outreach Center (DOC), a program of the DAC, builds community and provides peer-led educational sessions and resource referrals. Axel Cichocki, who joined the DAC team earlier this year as our first access manager for neurodiversity inclusion, supervises the DOC. 

LGBTQ+ Western advances holistic thriving for diverse LGBTQ+ students by collaboratively engaging the Western community with transformational knowledge, resources, advocacy and celebration. The department’s Generations of Pride community partnership will soon enter its second year.

Highlights for Fall

Centers’ welcome and orientation events are great opportunities for students to learn about available student services, meet Centers’ staff, start building connections with other students, and see our spaces in the VU and Wilson Library.

In this highly polarized election season, the Centers are excited to partner with the Munro Institute for a series of panel discussions about critical policy issues at stake in the presidential and Washington gubernatorial elections. The Beyond the Surface series begins October 1 with a discussion about news and media literacy and continues weekly through the first week of November. Panelists include faculty members from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Woodring College of Education, the College of Business and Economics, the College of the Environment, and the Institute for Global Engagement.

All are welcome to attend these events! Faculty might consider bringing their classes or encouraging student participation by including event attendance as a class assignment or extra credit opportunity. If you will bring a class, please let us know at thecenters@wwu.edu so we can ensure sufficient space for all attendees. Much gratitude to Kate Destler, director of the Munro Institute and faculty member in the Department of Political Science, for her collaboration to bring these events together.

Important heritage and cultural events throughout Fall provide numerous ways for students to celebrate their own cultures and identities, and to connect in rich co-curricular learning communities across cultures. Continue to check the Centers’ events page as we add details about events for Latine Heritage Month, LGBTQ History Month, Disability Action Month, as well as Native American Heritage Month planned in collaboration with Laural Ballew, executive director in the Office of Tribal Relations. The Blue Resource Center will also host an Undocumented Student Action Series, with workshops geared toward both students and faculty/staff.

If you are teaching a course with curriculum that engages one of these topics, I encourage you to contact professional staff in the relevant center about your class participating in an event. And, workshops offered as part of these months can be important learning opportunities for student staff across colleges, especially TAs, lab assistants, others working directly with students.

The Centers’ weekly lunch and learns are back every Wednesday in the Multicultural Center. These events focus on student development and community. Lunches this Fall will include discussing job searching with the Career Services Center, cultivating a culture of consent with the Counseling & Wellness Center, and learning about basic needs resources with the Western Success Scholars program.

We’re adding to our popular identity development and support space offerings. Details for groups hosted by LGBTQ+ Western are on their website. Details for groups hosted by the Disability Outreach Center and Black Student Coalition will be posted on the Centers’ events page soon. These groups can be great for students looking for community and support.

During the lead up to Winter registration in November, advisors from the Academic Advising and Student Achievement Center (AASAC) will be in the Multicultural Center, Disability Access Center, and Black Student Coalition to help students prepare for registration. We encourage students to connect with academic advisors in the Centers or in the AASAC!

Finally, several of Western’s LGBTQ+ and Ethnic Student Center clubs, which the Centers work closely with, need a faculty or staff advisor. While advising can take substantial time, giving just four or five hours to a club every month can go a long way to supporting student leaders as they plan activities, build and support their membership, and navigate board dynamics. Faculty and staff who are interested in being a club advisor are encouraged to contact simone staley, assistant director of Multicultural Student Services for ESC clubs and Ayanna Phillips, program manager for LGBTQ+ Western and the Centers, for LGBTQ+ clubs, to share their interest and learn more. Staff would of course need permission of their supervisor to serve as an advisor.


I am grateful to the Centers’ dedicated team of student development professionals and student staff for the hard and thoughtful work they did this summer to welcome and support students as the year begins. Much gratitude, too, to the faculty and staff colleagues we are partnering with in Centers events and service delivery. I look forward to the year ahead.

My best,
Litav
 

Litav K. Langley
Assistant Vice President for Student Access,
Community, and Intercultural Engagement