Celebrate the NEOMED community at the annual Multicultural Festival
Every year, the NEOMED Multicultural Festival highlights the diversity of our institution, faculty, staff and students. It is an excellent opportunity to celebrate with one another and continuously create an environment of inclusion and shared joy.
Multiculturalism is vital to any university community. At NEOMED, our mission is to “harness diversity, innovation and collaboration to create transformative leaders and improve health through education, discovery and service.” Our core values are Leadership, Excellence, Advocacy, Diversity, Equity and Respect (LEADER). The Multicultural Festival is one way we translate these guiding words into reality.
While “culture” may sound like an ambiguous or elusive concept, and “multicultural” can sound even more daunting to define, our struggle to define either often stems from the fact that “culture” and “multiculturalism” are ever-present in our day-to-day lives. Culture is commonly defined as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterize individuals or organizations. As Frederick Erikson (2001) stated:
“In a sense, everything in education relates to culture -- to its acquisition, its transmission and its invention. Culture is in us and all around us, just as is the air we breathe. It is personal, familial, communal, institutional, societal and global in its scope and distribution. Yet culture as a notion is often difficult to grasp. As we learn and use culture in daily life, it becomes habitual. Our habits become for the most part invisible to us. Thus, culture shifts in and outside our reflective awareness.”
We are surrounded by cultures -- our own, and others’ -- every day, though we may rarely pause to notice, name or celebrate our cultural beliefs, habits or identities.
Each of us comes to NEOMED with our cultural identities and practices, and together our community forges a shared NEOMED culture shaped by our mission, values, norms and expectations. We are a multicultural institution: one that includes many cultures among our University community members and society. Multiculturism is fundamental to NEOMED’s identity and its educational practices and policies. Though we are united by our shared identity as NEOMED students, staff or faculty, each of us comes to this shared space as an individual with complex and intersectional identities. Even as we celebrate the cultural identities that contribute to our vibrant, multicultural community, we must not forget that our intersectional identities also predispose some to greater vulnerability to discrimination.
Multiculturalism challenges us to think beyond convenient binary conceptualizations such as: Black/white, man/woman, conservative/liberal, able/disabled, gay/straight, young/old, etc. Rather, it calls on us to embrace the many beautiful shades that exist between us. The Multicultural Festival offers the NEOMED community an incredible opportunity to reflect on the many aspects of your/our multicultural identities and how we might value each:
- Age
- Cognitive ability
- Education level
- Gender identity
- National origin
- Physical ability
- Race/Ethnicity
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Socio-economic class/status
- Veteran status
Honoring our multicultural identities is how we actively empower our students and each member of our community to be their authentic selves, hear their voices and share in the benefits/wonders of our diverse learning environment. It is essential to continuously create a more equitable, fair and just learning environment for our students. As Baker (2018) describes, multicultural education is “directly linked to social justice, which refers not only to a critical interrogation of power, privilege and discrimination, but also to acts that intentionally disrupt or respond to systemic oppression.” Looking to the future, multiculturalism prepares our students to serve diverse and marginalized patient populations. This is “transformational leadership”: to challenge the status quo and build a better, more just world.
The Multicultural Festival
Our diverse NEOMED community is what makes us excellent, and all are welcome here. The Multicultural Festival has always served as a great opportunity to display and honor our multicultural learning environment. On behalf of the Multicultural Festival planning committee, please join in the fun!
- Join in the celebration at the Multicultural Festival on Wednesday, Oct. 9, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Register now
- Questions about the Multicultural Festival? Contact CV Garcia, assistant director of inclusion and engagement, Office of Academic Affairs and Student Services, at cgarcia1@neomed.edu.
— submitted by Michael Appleman, M.A.Ed., assistant professor, and Rachel Bracken, Ph.D., assistant professor
References
Erickson, F. (2001). Culture in society and in educational practices. In Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives, pp. 31-58, J. Banks (ed.). Allyn and Bacon.
Shannon-Baker, P. (2018). A multicultural education praxis: Integrating past and present, living theories, and practice. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 20(1), 48-66.