Siena Heights University Uses Tax Dollars to Offer New ‘JEDI’ Certificate
“The initiative stems from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to explore the feasibility of the certificate.”
It’s not the Star Wars version of Jedi, it’s a DEI certificate program.
The College Fix reports:
Siena Heights University creates new ‘JEDI’ certificate with taxpayer dollars
Siena Heights University will offer a new certificate in “Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” this upcoming fall semester.
The new certificate will give students “hands-on experience” for how to apply DEI in the “workplace,” according to the professor who directs the program at the Michigan Catholic college.
The initiative stems from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to explore the feasibility of the certificate. Siena Heights received $34,905 so it could “design a new, coherent D&I certificate program at SHU that is qualitatively distinct from the D&I certificates offered at other institutions and which can be offered in either online or blended/hybrid formats,” according to the grant summary.
Students can earn the certificate after they have completed 12 credit hours of training on concepts such as: “racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia through readings from classical and contemporary sources in history, philosophy, literature and business.”
Professor Leland Harper told The College Fix via email the “most exciting aspect” of the certificate is JEDI 480, because “students will be placed at an external organization in their field to work with an on-site supervisor for approximately ten weeks to identify and address one or more organizational issues related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.”
He also runs a separate DEI consulting company that is unaffiliated with Siena Heights. It has partnered with the university to offer ‘implicit bias training.’”
“[The course] allows our students to put theory into practice and gain real hands-on experience applying their knowledge in the workplace,” Professor Harper said.
Professor Harper (pictured) explained how this program is different from other DEI initiatives.
“While many of [other DEI programs] provide useful information, each of them focuses primarily on compliance,” Harper said. “To me, this is the bare minimum that we should be doing – we should not just be trying to comply, and there is more that needs to be said about how and why we can foster ideas of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our society.”
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