overview of the pilot program
Just Communities, in partnership with Dr. Carmel Saad, has developed a training program tailored for four distinct university populations: senior administrators, faculty members, staff trainers and student leaders. Content will cover population-based biases at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation and religious affiliation.
Lead Trainer
Dr. carmel Saad
Dr. Carmel Saad’s work focuses on the impact of implicit bias intervention programs. Her team studies implicit bias and its influences on human behavior and interactions, and equips program participants with evidence-based strategies to mitigate the effects of bias on real-world outcomes.
Shame and blame demotivate participants. Instead, we present research that shows how bias creates inequities in the workplace and beyond, and how the brain naturally gravitates toward biases. Participants reflect on bias in their own lives. Then we empower them with effective strategies for disrupting habitual bias and its attendant behaviors.
Lead Trainer
Jarrod Schwartz
Jarrod Schwartz is the executive director of Just Communities Central Coast. He is an educator and a consultant with more than 25 years experience in organizational and personal development. He is an associate of the A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems and an adjunct faculty member at Antioch University.
About The Program
The 2018 California Budget Act included a one-time appropriation of $1.2 million for a two-year pilot program “to provide anti-bias training for administrators, faculty, staff, and student leaders at campuses of the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU).”
A joint UC-CSU workgroup of content experts was formed — including scholars and practitioners of anti-bias and implicit bias training — to define the scope and learning outcomes of an evidence-based program appropriate for different university populations.
This workgroup issued a Request for Proposals (RFP), inviting vendors to demonstrate their training modules and address questions. In June 2019, after a comprehensive review of all proposals, the UC-CSU workgroup selected Just Communities of Central Coast and Dr. Carmel Saad to deliver the pilot training program (see joint UC-CSU letter for more details).
This training is modeled after Dr. Patricia Devine’s Breaking the Bias Habit® framework, which approaches bias as a natural thought-habit that can be disrupted with awareness, concern and practice.
Breaking the Bias Habit® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.