Inclusive Excellence Education Program

Kickstart your journey toward building stronger bonds at work with our Social Identity 101 workshop! This 90-minute workshop explores your social identities and connects them to meaningful action steps toward inclusion and belonging.

Upcoming Workshops
2/11/2025 | 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

3/25/2025 | 3 – 4:30 p.m.

Register for Social Identity

Join us for a powerful 90-minute workshop on undoing ableism. Discover how ableism impacts the disability community, gain insights into its frameworks, and learn practical skills to challenge ableism in your daily life.

Upcoming Workshops
3/27/2025 | 3 – 4:30 p.m.

4/8/2025 | 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Register for Undoing Ableism

“I just don't know how to have this conversation.” If you’ve ever had this thought, you aren’t alone! Our 90-minute workshop equips you with the confidence and skills to engage in meaningful and connecting conversations at work. You’ll learn how to approach difficult topics with empathy, defuse tensions, and create a space for open, honest dialogue. Whether it’s addressing misunderstandings or resolving conflicts, this session provides actionable techniques to transform challenging discussions into pathways for deeper understanding and collective progress. 

Upcoming Workshops
3/13/2025 | 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

5/7/2025 | 3 – 4:30 p.m.

Register for Navigating Difficult Conversations

A fundamental part of skill building is practice. This workshop offers participants the opportunity to practice the dialogue building skills and de-escalation techniques introduced in our Navigating Difficult Conversations workshop. Participants will be given different workplace scenarios and will collaborate with one another to apply these dialogue building and de-escalation skills in real time. Note: This workshop is designed to be attended after our Navigating Difficult Conversations workshop.

Upcoming Workshops
5/13/2025 | 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Register for Practice Makes Progress

From Debate to Dialogue: Conversation Strategies to Build Connection Across Difference is a cross-institutional training series presented by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Strategic Diversity Planning, Training and Assessment unit and American University’s Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning.

Upcoming workshops 
All workshops will be held each day from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
February 5 and 6, 2025 (Virtual)
April 30 and May 1, 2025 (In person)

Register for From Debate to Dialogue

Sometimes when working towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, we discover a need to take a collective step back and address unresolved challenges that arise in our teams. These challenges can have an impact on workplace culture and can create barriers that inhibit our collective growth and ability to make positive change. Each challenge is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of our colleagues, learn how to resolve conflict constructively and support team growth and evolution. Our 90-minute Reflect and Reset workshop guides workplace groups through a series of reflection activities designed to help groups identify ways to address needs and take actionable steps to move forward collectively.

By Request Only

All of us are invested in working in inclusive and welcoming spaces, yet microaggressions cause harm in the workplace all too often. Many of us remain confused about what a microaggression is, how to know if one has happened, and the numerous ways they impact others. This 90-minute workshop offers participants the opportunity to expand their knowledge of microaggressions and aims to encourage the understanding, compassion and confidence necessary to intervene when they occur.

By Request Only

Join us for an engaging workshop on how to respond to microaggressions. Learn powerful microintervention strategies to confidently respond to microaggressions in the workplace and lead with a culture of awareness, compassion and authenticity. With plenty of practice opportunities, this 2-hour workshop offers participants the chance for real-time skill building with colleagues and peers.

By Request Only

We all want to challenge microaggressions, but what happens when we’re the ones responsible? In this 90-minute workshop, we’ll dive into the tough but necessary work of recognizing and addressing our own microaggressions. You’ll learn how to listen without defensiveness, reflect on your impact, and take steps to repair harm. Through honest conversations and practical exercises, participants will build skills like offering genuine apologies, clarifying intentions, and building personal accountability—empowering you to create more inclusive and authentic interactions every day.

By Request Only

Join the Office of Diversity and Inclusion's Strategic Diversity Planning, Training and Assessment unit in this 90-minute workshop designed to help participants better understand the most common microaggressions that impact the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community. Participants will learn the impacts these microaggressions have on folks across APIDA identities and formulate ways to take action to dismantle these microaggressions in our everyday lives.

By Request Only

A fundamental part of skill building is practice. This workshop gives participants an opportunity to practice how we can address microaggressions. Participants will work together to apply microintervention strategies that can be used when we experience or witness a microaggression, as well as practice strategies for how to respond to microintervention resistance and microintervention with supervisors / leadership.

By Request Only

For Asian and Asian American communities, the global response to COVID-19 has meant a reiteration of anti-Asian racism and scapegoating. Since January 2020, Asian and Asian American communities have lived with unceasing, racially motivated attacks, ranging from verbal berating and humiliation to brutal acts of violence targeting our communities' most vulnerable. The Atlanta murders of six Asian identifying women, and the countless, daily attacks on Asian elders, several of which have ended in fatalities, are evidence of this violence.

By Request Only

For decades, Asian and Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) folks have been denied our racial reality. Socially constructed perceptions of either academic or professional success have made us a “model minority," effectively erasing our historical and present day experiences with systemic racism and oppression. When we unpack the numerous identities that exist within the APIDA community and the historical legacy of oppression APIDA folks contend with on a daily basis, we see that the label of “model minority” is nothing but a myth, and that this label serves a very different sociological function.

By Request Only