Living Our Values Experience (LOVE) Pilot Program

The Living Our Values Experience (LOVE) program brings students, faculty, and staff together to do antiracist work and study and develop practices and interconnections between structural systems of discrimination and oppression, including bias, stereotype, prejudice, microaggressions, privilege, and power.  It responds directly to the Black Lives Matter movement and calls from President Nair for an “open course” to address racial justice. The LOVE program invests in our community to formulate a much-needed space for students, staff, and faculty to collaborate on strengthening the Arcadia community and examining their role within society as agents of change.  As you can see below, the Spring Semester builds on the Fall, is structured somewhat differently, and includes a core focus on planning for action. 

In the Fall of 2021, Working Groups Addressing racial inequities in education, art history, public health, criminal justice, sports, and the workplace will meet each week on Wednesdays from 4-5:30pm.  This experience can fulfill the Global Connections Experience if students also register for GCR101.  (Please email at lovepilot@arcadia.edu if you are interested in this option).  The goal for the groups is to work together to plan for antiracist action to address these issues on campus and/or in the local community.  If you are interested in learning more about the projects that Working Groups were thinking about in the Spring, please check out this video of The Spring 2021 Changemakers Summit. 

We will also have 3 Teach-Ins this fall that will be open to the wider Arcadia community and will focus on the experiences of members of the Arcadia campus and the wider community in taking antiracist action. 
 

Students who join this program will receive a wide array of benefits, from the immediate and timely opportunity to become better equipped to understand and address racial inequality, to the valuable preparation to enter a diverse workforce, to become an effective agent in changing the structural systems that keep racism alive and well in our nation. 

Arcadia's LOVE Pilot Program offers a learning experience that addresses important skills in racial justice, including:

• Taking accountability and understanding responsibility in personal, professional, and political matters of race
• Engaging in critical Inquiry and deliberate discourse both within affinity groups and across racial differences
• Developing the capacity to address matters of race with authenticity, transparency, and trust
• Exploring the ethics of care and morality of justice as it relates to racial equity
• Learning how to create intersectional processes and projects that make it safe to take risks, including all voices, and reveal innovative and effective solutions to persistent conflicts and problems.

The LOVE Pilot Program draws on principles from past and ongoing Arcadia initiatives, including:

• Pluralism Course Curriculum
• Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Principles (JEDI)
• Global Connections Experience and Reflection Requirements
• Arcadia’s Lived Values

Students will explore and experience pathways to:

• Critically analyze the interactions between individuals and institutions and locate the self in those interactions 
• Recognize and dismantle systemic white supremacy and develop strategies and approaches to anti-racist work from the local to global levels
• Understand the dynamic nature of institutions and how they maintain socio-political and economic power
• Examine the impact of institutions on issues of racial equity and justice
• Examine the role of a change agent, and the pathway to becoming one
• Interpret aspects of other cultures/races with greater sophistication and accuracy
• Gain more in-depth knowledge of the historical, political, scientific, cultural, and socioeconomic interconnections within the US and between the U.S. and the world
• Recognize when power relations are present and be able to affect the dynamics of global and local transactions when power is a subtle but potent presence 
• Identify obligations to people situated both inside and outside their communities and national borders.

Participant Experience

The structure of the LOVE Pilot Program is designed to combine large group (L) learning opportunities with a small group (S) experiential and discussion format to allow for integrating and understanding the topic on multiple levels. The culmination of the experience will include a group presentation of projects.  Participants will have to fulfill minimum participation requirements, and two-term participants will be granted a certificate of completion.

It is possible to link the LOVE Pilot experience to the GCR101 requirement, to that a new University Seminar Called "Where Race Lives" that integrates the experiential elements of the LOVE Program into the course schedule.  Honors students can also count the LOVE Pilot experience as a part of their Honors Program experience. Graduate internships are also available.  For questions about these links between the LOVE Pilot and the AU Curriculum, please email lovepilot@arcadia.edu. 

Fall 2020 Teach-In Topics 

(View All teach-in webinars recordings below)

An Arcadia Call to Action: How Can We Be Better Anti-Racists? Speakers: Doreen Loury, Director of Pan-African Studies and Assistant Professor of Sociology; Jessie Guinn, Assistant Dean of STEM, College of Global Studies; Jennifer Riggan, Professor of International Studies

Bias/Microaggressions/Racial Abuse: How can we do better/heal? Speakers: Favian Guertin-Martin, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Director of the Criminal Justice Program; Lauren Reid, Assistant Professor, Graduate Program in Counseling

Working for Racial Justice at Arcadia: What are we doing; what more can we do? Speakers: Student Members, CTLM/Just Act Ensemble

Small-Group (S) Fall 2021: The small racially mixed Working Groups will focus on understanding intersectionality and generating solutions for persistent and systemic racial disparities. Each small group will create and collaborate to investigate issues and determine actions that addresses structural racism, either within Arcadia, the local community, or beyond, and prepare to present at the end of the term. 

If you have further questions, please contact LOVEpilot@arcadia.edu.