South Dakota State University CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

Community networking and involvement: these aspects were instrumental but also included significant challenges, which we share more about below. We collaborated with several community partners: Brookings Area Chamber of Commerce (BACC), Brookings Economic Development Corporation (BEDC), Vision Brookings, and the city of Brookings Human Rights Commission (HRC). Through these collaborations, we had community-level infrastructure for the potential involvement of varied stakeholders at every stage of the community problem-solving process. When grant team members from these community partners were fully engaged in the work, they were invaluable. For example, we initially had difficulty recruiting participants for our phase one Fall 2020 focus groups. The grant team members from the BEDC provided us with vital contact information for community HR and business leaders. Without that contact information, it would have been difficult for us to hold the focus groups, especially given the uncertainties of COVID. Unfortunately, we experienced a great deal of turnover of the members of our grant team during the two-year time period of the grant.

Developing enclave discussion spaces: this aspect was instrumental to making progress on understanding the issue of cultural diversity, especially through including the perspectives of self-identified culturally diverse employees (CDE) in workplaces across Brookings. By convening discussions that included only people who self-identified as CDE within a particular industry, participants shared their experiences with challenges and opportunities regarding cultural diversity and community inclusion in a safe space. We relied on enclave discussion spaces for the Fall 2020 focus groups with CDE across the following large industries/employers in Brookings County: agriculture, retail/service, manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education. CDE perspectives shaped the Community Conversation Guide, which structured the public deliberation in phase two of the project where the entire community was invited. We also returned to CDE after the public deliberation to hold an enclave deliberation using that same Community Conversation Guide. In these follow-up meetings, we directly asked for CDE input on how the community could enhance inclusion.

Key lessons learned

Lack of community members’ follow through: We struggled with recruitment and follow through with grant team members and community participants in every phase of this grant. One grant team member who was present for the team photo never attended any team meetings over the two years of the grant. Some community members signed up to participate in events but didn’t attend, including for focus groups, public deliberations, and the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) assessment. We learned that although team members and community partners are on board in theory, this does not necessarily lead to follow through. We incorporated best practices of community-based problem solving and collaboration, but people didn’t always commit to the actual work. This could be due to a variety of reasons, including COVID concerns, turnover with grant team members, overwhelming job responsibilities, and the challenges of doing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. Grant team members who came onto the team once it was already in progress seemed to be less invested. Overall, the lack of follow through was frustrating as we tried to engage different stakeholders.

Politicization of DEI-focused work in South Dakota: Over the course of the two years of this grant project, DEI-related work became more politicized nationally, in South Dakota, and in the community of Brookings. For example, the superintendent of the K-12 school district publicly noted the politicization of culture-related and DEI-related work at the Community Planning Meeting in April 2022. Additionally, House Bill 1012 passed by the South Dakota State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Kristi Noem in July 2022 prohibits any state of South Dakota institution of higher education from requiring DEI-related training or DEI-related professional development. Simply put, teaching about culture, identity, or anything related to DEI is politically charged right now in the state of South Dakota.

Reflections on the community innovation process

We generated many ideas as part of increasing collective understanding of the multi-faceted issue of workplace cultural diversity and community inclusion. The community innovation process loop for our project gets stuck when examining what solutions can be tested or implemented in the community outside of our grant team. We were really resourceful with social media and when faced with high turnover of grant team membership. We continued to engage new grant team members as they came onto the team as new employees of our community partners. For instance, during the two-year span of this grant, the BEDC had three different CEOs. We also did well in connecting with new community partners to implement some of the community-generated solutions and were inclusive with many different stakeholders. For example, we collaborated with Brookings Public Library (BPL) on an intergroup dialogue series that we plan to continue annually, even now that the grant is over.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

One element that is important to the model based on our experience is strong grant team leadership within a community context. Context might be a missing wheel in the model alongside inclusive, collaborative, and resourceful. Despite our struggles with turnover of grant team members, lack of follow through with participation of community members and partners, and the politicization of DEI-related work during the time period of this grant, we often did more with less as a result of our leadership tenacity in this particular community context. For example, Dr. Sara Drury was unable to travel and serve as moderator for our public deliberation in April 2021 due to the COVID surge; her students remotely assisted the grant team with training and facilitation. We used those funds in other ways, including planning, recruiting for, and hosting two public deliberations (one in-person, one virtual) rather than the one originally planned. We collaborated with community partners such as the school district and the city’s HRC and BPL in different ways, but as noted above, the follow-through was weak with many community organizations in terms of implementing community-generated solutions.

Progress toward an innovation

We have definitely increased awareness of the importance of workplace cultural diversity and community inclusion. For example, Dr. Kuehl is now on the Visit Brookings board because the organization desired additional board members who could represent the perspective of cultural diversity and making our community more inclusive. Dr. Kuehl was also part of the city of Brookings’ economic development planning, attending two different input meetings in 2022. Dr. Molly Enz was invited to deliver a workshop on intercultural competence for the South Dakota Higher Education Association’s annual meeting in November 2022. Our grant team has created accessible documents of our community conversations during this two-year grant period, which anyone can use or access. For example, the Community Conversations Report of our findings is available online for free in both English and in Spanish. While we would not say that we achieved an innovation, we do think that the accessibility of all of our findings from the grant project will then allow other individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations to read about community-generated solutions and implement them if they so desire.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

The primary issue that we need to address to achieve community innovation in Brookings is community members’ motivation or willingness to follow through with intercultural competence and DEI-focused work to enhance community inclusion. As a community, Brookings will never be completely inclusive unless the predominantly white majority of the community agrees to do the work. Intercultural competence is a lifelong journey; one training or event isn’t sufficient to enhance community inclusion. We have a strong need for community organizations to implement the community-generated solutions from our grant project. Perhaps one concrete step to reach a breakthrough or innovation would be to create more centralized community scheduling of DEI events; Visit Brookings is attempting to do so but is one small organization in the larger Brookings community. We will never achieve a breakthrough with workplace cultural diversity and community inclusion in Brookings unless community organizations’ leaders agree to step forward and take on the actions and solutions identified in the Community Conversations Report, as noted above.

What’s next?

The most immediate next step is that we are going to continue to partner with BPL to hold a community intergroup dialogue series in fall 2023. Our hope is that the community intergroup dialogue program will become an annual series with increased participation of community members representing a variety of cultural identity backgrounds. We have already partnered with BPL and applied for a small discussion grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council, funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, to improve upon the pilot intergroup dialogues program in fall 2022. Another next step is that as a result of this grant, we have more people in the community who are qualified administrators for the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Community members are more aware of local resources regarding DEI work. For example, we will continue to contact community organizations to share information about intercultural competence and the IDI. If organizations want their employees and/or their organization to continue to acknowledge increasing workplace cultural diversity and become culturally competent, that will potentially help make Brookings more inclusive. No

If you could do it all over again…

We would tell ourselves that talking about DEI and doing DEI-focused work is difficult yet important. We tackled a multi-faceted issue of workplace cultural diversity and community inclusion that is not only difficult for people to openly and respectfully discuss; it is also incredibly emotionally draining and difficult work on our part as grant team leaders. Because we knew it would be challenging to recruit participants, we did plan for and compensate community members accordingly. However, if we could go back to the start of the grant period, we would encourage ourselves to seriously consider how best to compensate ourselves as experts of intercultural competence and public deliberation, because at times, it felt as though community members did not see us as experts whose time and expertise should be valued. For example, a community member who participated in the intercultural competence workshop contacted Dr. Enz and Dr. Kuehl to inquire about presenting about intercultural competence to students who are peer mentors. The community member never responded after we asked to be compensated accordingly for delivering this sort of training session.

One last thought

The effort associated with DEI-focused work is time consuming and emotionally difficult. As noted above, we experienced a lack of buy-in from the grant team’s own members regarding this work to enhance inclusion. As a result, it is even more challenging to see successful results. If white community members cannot personally identify with cultural diversity struggles, then it may be easier for them to disengage from this work. Motivation is key, and we struggled to get community buy-in at various phases. For example, half of the registered participants for the virtual Community Conversation public deliberation meeting were no shows; many of them attended an SDSU playoff football game instead. We continually reached out to school district administrators because they participated in the community planning meeting in April 2022 and suggested a date for the intercultural competence workshop in June 2022. However, only a few school district employees attended the workshop, and when we tried to follow up with them after the event, they never returned our multiple emails and phone calls. We cannot make people want to develop their intercultural competence or promote inclusion.