The Q Center, fall 2020
Active Ally Program
July 1 marked the first completed year of the Active Ally Program. In an effort to center growth and development, an analysis of the Year 1 data from Foundations Level 1 was completed. Foundations Level 1 employs a pre/posttest assessment of participant knowledge. Analysis of this data is being used to reassess content of the Foundations Level 1 training, in addition to the content addressed in the Deep Dive workshops. The data show a high level of prior knowledge of factual LGBTQ identity-based content and non-significant growth in this area (maxing out at about 2% difference pre vs. post). The data indicated the most impactful area of content is the ally identity development content, including the focus on the Actor, Ally, Accomplice model from White Racial Ally Identity Development by Jonathan Osler (n.d.). Data showed a 37% point difference between pre-test and post-test for this content. This data will be used to shift the focus of Foundations Level 1 to more heavily concentrate on allyship development with a deeper exploration of the stages of development based on the needs of our participants
Based on CDC and University guidelines, the Active Ally Program was delivered remotely for the entirety of the summer and will continue with remote workshops during the fall 2020 semester. Thus, a great deal of the work this summer has been to ensure that current and new content is appropriate to deliver virtually using a combination of Zoom, Google Drive Suite and other platforms. Our Human Sexuality Workshop has been offered three times this quarter, each by request:
- TRiO program for the orientation student leaders to prepare for their summer programs. (one)
- Employee Student Conduct Board members to support their professional development and accessibility. (two)
The fall 2020 Active Ally Program offerings for employees continue to be offered in conjunction with the University Center for Training and Development (UCTD) and have been published in the UTDC fall brochure. An expansion of the partnership with UCTD will include the promotion of the Active Ally program on the UCTD partners’ web page. This will additionally highlight the Active Ally program as a professional development opportunity open to employees.
In response to low-to-no student turnout for Active Ally workshops last year, much of the summer was spent exploring ways to connect students to the program. We have developed a new focus to promote the program to several constituency groups:
● professional and pre-professional academic programs such as undergraduate and graduate social work, human development, education, nursing and pharmacy;
● paraprofessional programs such as the CDCI internships, resident assistants and admissions ambassadors;
● student volunteers through the Center for Civic Engagement; and
● student development outlets like the Fleishman Center and Harpur Edge.
This quarter, we began a collaboration with the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Pharmacy students will have an opportunity to receive co-curricular credit from the school for participation in a number of University trainings, including the Active Ally Program. We will be offering the Human Sexual Identity workshop, a component of Active Ally, as an introduction to our content.
This quarter we on boarded two new sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) peer educator undergraduate interns for the academic year. They will be receiving credit through the CDCI program. These students will be trained to develop and facilitate Active Ally Program workshops and will also produce education materials that can be accessed by various departments across the University through the Q Center website as a means to diversify our impact and provide new avenues of engagement. The Active Ally program allows the Q Center to meet the WEAVE assessment goal of providing programming across campus that increases participant’s knowledge about gender and sexual diversity.
Rainbow Welcome
The COVID-19 pandemic created big challenges for our Pegasus First Year Experience program. Open to all LGBTQ first-year students as well as allies, Pegasus programming is designed to support students’ transition to college while considering issues/needs that are specific to LGBTQ students. Pegasus has three components: Rainbow Welcome Orientation; UNIV 101 First Year Experience course, The ABCs of LGBTQ: Histories, Identities and Cultures; and the Pegasus Programming Board. Students are invited to participate in one, two or all three.
Rainbow Welcome Orientation has been a two- to three-hour event held the day after new students move onto campus. Typically, about 100 students register for the event and 50-80 students attend. Participants are taken through a series of icebreakers and leadership games that are highly interactive. It became clear that with the pandemic, we would not be able to conduct a meaningful program using social distancing measures. We made the decision to turn the program into a six-week series of one-hour virtual events. By conducting the sessions during the summer, we hoped to create a relationship both with and between students well in advance of them coming to campus.
From July 12 to Aug. 16, we engaged participants in various games designed to spark connection. The virtual escape room activity offered an additional opportunity for students to learn about important University resources. To escape the room, they needed to find answers to clues about resources using the University website. Unfortunately, just 39 students registered for Rainbow Welcome and a total of 18 students participated in at least one of the six sessions (though a handful of students participated in multiple sessions). This was a significant decline in the number of participants based on the past four years of the program. Typically, we use the opportunity to speak to every incoming student who attends summer orientation and use that as an opportunity to recruit students for the program. This summer’s virtual Orientation, multiple emails and redundant website content was no substitute for face-to-face interaction and recruitment. We are currently in the process of sending an evaluation survey to those 18 participants to assess what they got out of the program.
Transcend Discussion Group
For the first time, the Transcend Discussion group that is sponsored by the Q Center continued to meet through the summer months, virtually over Zoom. While the pandemic provided challenges to the transgender community — namely students were unexpectedly ripped from the safety and comfort they built for themselves while away at college — it seems to have had an unexpected benefit. Going virtual during the spring semester crisis allowed students to learn that they could stay connected even when hundreds of miles separated them. They continued to have conversations, play virtual games and generally support one another.
Annual graduate student field trip to LUMA
Each September, the Q Center invites LGBTQ graduate students to get to know each other and the city of Binghamton by attending the LUMA Projection Arts Festival downtown. This year, the festival has planned a special virtual event that can be experienced at home alone or in small groups. The Q Center will once again invite graduate students to come together virtually to experience LUMA although they will forfeit the downtown experience.
Annual Open House Party
The Q Center is planning our annual Open House Party as a virtual event this year. We are going to recreate the live open house event, using Zoom rooms. Our rooms — music lounge, game room, poetry open mic and more — will each be hosted by a different LGBTQ student organization. This will be a way for LGBTQ students to come together across schools to meet and connect to each other, the student organizations and the center.
Rainbow Welcome, the Transcend Discussion group, Annual Graduate student fieldtrip to LUMA and the annual Open House Party all allow the Q Center to meet its WEAVE assessment goals of providing meaningful opportunities for LGBTQ students to connect.