In this assignment, students will assess organizational equity at their placement sites or another selected site. Students will conduct an equity assessment of a population-at-risk. You will be provided assessment tools that relate to racial, LGBTQ, and disability justice and equity. These can be used, or with prior approval of the professor, students may redesign the equity assessment grid to better fit the local community/agency or redesign it for another vector of inclusion/exclusion such as gender, age, etc.
The paper will be single-spaced and 3.5-4 pages long. Assessment grids must be attached to the document, and do not count toward the content page numbers. The papers and grids are to be typed and follow APA 7th edition format. Students should use the text and a minimum of 6 other scholarly articles in their papers.
–> The purpose of this assignment is to focus students on their placement sites as organizations, introduce one approach to organizational assessment, facilitate student engagement with issues of equity and justice, encourage integration and synthesis across readings on organizational assessment, and to help students think about the organizations as sites of macro practice.
After filling out the grid, students will write papers with the following content. If you are not place in a practicum site, you may use a human/social service place of employment (past or present), or you can see your course instructor to be assigned an organization.
- Report on Assessment results:
Be sure to cover: What did you assess and why? Summarize key findings from the assessment process. How is your organization doing on key issues in equity and inclusion?
- Interview:
Students must schedule at least one interview with some of the employees of the organization in order to obtain some information and discuss the equity assessment.
Identify an employee(s) that you would interview: How long has he/she worked in the organization and what are his/her primary work responsibilities?
Write up a narrative of the interview focused on your equity assessment: How does he/she recognize the equity issues in the organization? What efforts has the organization been taking to improve the equity and justice?
- Consider and describe the organizational context:
Do you think co-workers and leaders/managers at your organization would have come to similar conclusions considering these questions? Do you think others at the organization would embrace or resist an opportunity to engage in this process? Why? - Critical reflection:
Reflect on the process of considering your organization through this equity lens. The following questions should help shape your reflection, but you need not answer every single question here; you may dig deeper into fewer answers or find other avenues, given your organization, the grid results, etc.: Have you learned anything new in this process? Have you gained insights about your organization or about how equity might be improved in it? Do you have thoughts on what the next steps for your organization might be, if it was considering an initiative in equity? Do you think the grid is asking the right kind of questions? Do you think something important has been left out?
