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“True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.” - Brené Brown

As Brené Brown notes in the quote above, “true belonging” is not a simple or easy task to accomplish. It’s something that takes ongoing work, reflection, and courage, and requires intentionality in our relationships with other people, but also our relationships with ourselves. And while true belonging is difficult to accomplish, it’s also incredibly important to work towards.

Research shows that experiences of belonging strongly correlate with many positive and meaningful outcomes, both for students and employees. For students, higher levels of reported belonging correspond with higher retention rates and a higher likelihood of perceiving their overall college experience as positive (Eunyoung, K. & Irwin, J.P., 2013; Gopalan, M., & Brady, S. T., 2020). And in the workplace, belonging has been shown to lead to an increase in job performance, decrease in turnover rates, and a higher likelihood that employees will recommend their workplace to others (Kellerman, G. & Reece, A., 2019).

With this research in mind, Diversity & Inclusion is proud to announce a new training certificate series titled “Foundations for Advancing Belonging” or “FAB” for short. This certificate series consists of four 60-min long training workshops that start with a focus on reflective learning and move into allyship and advocacy skills over the course of the series:

1. Decision-making, Implicit Bias, & Genuine Dialogue
2. Communication, Trauma, & De-escalation
3. Intervention, Types of Aggression, & Bystander Strategies
4. Persuasion, Public Speech, & Political Dialogue

Because these workshops build on each other, we recommend that folks participate in them in the order they are listed above. Once all four of the workshops have been completed, participants will receive a “Foundations for Advancing Belonging” training certificate.

This training series is open to all students, faculty, and staff at the �Ƽ��Ӱ�ԭ��. Each of the FAB four workshops will be offered at regularly scheduled intervals for anyone who wants to participate but will also be available upon request for groups or organizations on campus.

For more information about the Foundations for Advancing Belonging (FAB) four-part workshop series, including what each workshop covers, when they're being offered, how to register for scheduled sessions, and how to request a session for a specific group, please visit the Diversity & Inclusion training and education webpage