Students attending a lecture in Newton Hall (SUNY Geneseo photo/Matt Burkhartt).
SUNY Geneseo has recently partnered with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation (TRHT) program. The program aims to bring sustainable change by addressing the historic and contemporary effects of racism in communities and institutions.
Geneseo began implementing TRHT on campus last academic year and is using it to provide a framework that aligns with Geneseo’s diversity, equity, and inclusion vision. The TRHT program provides a structure and a set of guiding principles to help build a more equitable and inclusive environment. Being part of this program supports ongoing efforts of transformative work necessary for racial healing. Geneseo will use the program’s initial focal point of community-led collaboration: cross-racial, intergenerational, and cross-sector.
TRHT ensures more strategic actions and collaborative efforts to create a more inclusive campus. The program complements the college’s DEIB initiatives by adding a structured approach to address inequities, implicit bias, isms, and phobias.
The program “enhances our ability to create a lasting impact in which all members of the Geneseo community can truly feel that they belong, seen, heard and included,” states Acting Chief Diversity Officer Clifton Harcum.
One of the goals of the TRHT program implemented at Geneseo is to enhance the college’s equity-centered mission. This initiative, led by the President’s Commission on Diversity and Community members, will work toward faculty, staff, students, and administration coming together through workshops, dialogues, and training sessions that encourage shared learning and reflection and create opportunities to engage in the program, along with benchmarking to measure progress and ensure accountability.
“I believe that by fostering a culture of openness and empathy, we can unite the campus around this transformative initiative and work collectively toward a more equitable and inclusive community,” Harcum says.