Liza Talusan from Stonehill College

One of the biggest problems faced by diversity professionals is that of isolation. There are few pre-existing spaces for them to gather and meet each other, especially across different industries. To help combat this, every month I will profile a different diversity professional. In the course of the interview, you’ll not only get to hear about the kind of work this person is doing, you’ll also be able to benefit from the resources, strategies, and tips they share with you.

By Carmen Van Kerckhove

Name:
Liza Talusan

Title:
Director of Intercultural Affairs

Organization:
Stonehill College

1. Can you give us a broad overview of your organization and what it does?

I work at a mid-sized suburban liberal arts Catholic College about 20 miles south of Boston. It’s predominately white in both its student population and its employee population. We have about 8% students of colors, so there are about 2,000 white students on campus and about 200 students of color. Our white population is made up of students who attended predominantly-white high schools and lived in predominantly-white neighborhoods. Our students of color tend to come from ethnically diverse neighborhoods. So, we have populations that are very different from each other going to college here together. Our campus is located in a middle-to-upper-middle class suburb of mostly white people, and it’s on the border of one of the largest cities in Massachusetts which is largely composed of people of color and immigrants.

2. What’s your role at your organization and in what ways does it involve diversity?

Generally speaking, I help facilitate conversations, policies, and procedures that have to do with the inclusion of people and ideas. My role consists of working with students of color and those from under-represented backgrounds, and helping to educate majority students about their responsibility for creating an anti-racist environment. In terms of faculty, staff, and administrators, I play a key role in helping to increase diversity among the employee applicant pool and for providing support and resources about diversity to these groups.

This past year I have worked very closely with human resources to try and raise the level of awareness and biases that occur in our overall recruitment, hiring and retention processes across campus. Not unique to Stonehill, but in my experience, I sit on search committees where comments like , “We want to look for the best candidate,” implies that the “best” candidate excludes people of color.

This is the first year we’ve created an advertisement that specifically speaks to diverse candidates. The ad emphasizes that the college offers inclusive excellence grants for sustainable diversity programming and explains that faculty and staff of color can join particular affinity and discussion groups. We never quite focused on ways in which we must specifically outreach to people of color, so this is a new way of approaching increasing diversity on a professional level.

3. What do you think is the single biggest diversity challenge to tackle this year?

The biggest thing I am running into is the errant notion that we have entered a post-racial society. A lot of people turn to the inauguration of President Obama and say, “Look, we’re done! We’ve made it!” I think many people rely on President Obama’s success to prove that racism is over and that we don’t have to talk about diversity anymore. I’m also finding more and more people who feel they can opt out of the diversity conversation because they think they know it all already, but the truth is, they don’t realize how far from “over” it is. This is a very hard paradigm to shift.

So, the approach I have taken this year is not so much to talk about the 200 students of color, but to talk about the 2,000 white people who are here. So we are bringing in folks like Tim Wise, Peggy McIntosh, and Katrina Browne to really stir the pot about why white people need to start paying attention to race and why white people need to own that they are white. And that’s a really difficult conversation to have in the community at large because most have never been challenged on it before.

4. Which professional development resources would you recommend to other professionals who are involved in diversity work?

On a national level, I highly recommend NCORE, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, because it’s a conference focused on the issues we talk about. At more general conferences, there are usually just one or two sessions about diversity and 100+ sessions on other stuff I have already known for the past seven years. So, I love NCORE because it’s new, and it’s usually full of cutting-edge research from people who have been in the field.

On a micro level, I belong to what’s called the Multicultural Affairs Think Tank. I find it invaluable because – especially being in New England – it includes a lot of other multicultural directors who work at predominantly white institutions. Many of them are also at small institutions and deal with the same New England regional issues and mindsets that I deal with. We all have very similar needs and look for ways to think outside the box with each other.

Naturally, I also read a lot of blogs, such as Racialicious! and Anti-Racist Parent because they help to frame the type of conversations I have with college aged students around pop culture, ways in which they grew up, and their influences today. Reading those blogs also help me to feel like I’m part of a community that understands the types of messages I’m trying to introduce here.

5. What advice do you wish someone had given you before you entered this field?

Some days people will get it, and some days they won’t. You just have to keep plugging away, no matter what kind of day it is. I have to remember that education and consciousness-raising is part of my job and my responsibility in this world. It’s part of my job to find those pockets of people or departments or places that don’t quite get it. It’s not enough to preach to the choir, it’s about finding the tough places and doing the work that’s required in the trenches. It’s not easy, and it’s often very lonely.

I wish someone had also told me just how blurred the line would be between my personal life and my professional work. When someone doesn’t believe in the work I do, I take it very personally. When someone makes a racist comment, it isn’t just about the “work” –  they are insulting me, my experiences, my family and my struggles, too. When someone comments that “we’re focusing too much on diversity,” I can’t just forget about it after the work day is technically over.

Given these obstacles, both my husband and I have still made a conscious decision to work in predominantly white environments. I feel it’s my job to really challenge the notion of what an Asian-American woman is, and I know that I can make a greater impact here, where people hold the stereotype about my race or gender, than if I were in an environment where it’s more diverse.

My husband, who’s a teacher and administrator at an independent school, is a Puerto Rican man who often works in places where he is one of a few Latino males. There isn’t a week that goes by that he isn’t confused with the maintenance guy, who is also Latino. It’s been important for him to expand the definition that people have of Latino men  — that, yes, Latino men are also administrators, educators, and businessmen.
   
The decision to work where we are always in the minority is hard sometimes. I think we would have much more fun with people who look like us, but we know that our social responsibility lies in exposing the majority population to everything else Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans can be.

6. What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?

When I hear that students are more confident in this community because of something we provided for them, that’s gratifying. We’re doing interviews right now with the students of a leadership program I created and a lot of the students are saying, “Without this leadership program, I don’t think I would be as confident in the classroom,” or “I don’t think I would still be at Stonehill if I hadn’t been a part of this program,” or “I made friends and was confident enough to go for leadership positions in student government because of the support group that was created specifically for me.” 

There are many new initiatives happening right now, so I need to wait a year before I can judge how well we’re doing with the new momentum that’s building. It’s always fun to look forward to what tomorrow will bring because of what we’re doing today.