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Building Belonging: An Employee Professional Development Program
Program Description
Building Belonging is a professional development program that supports Cal Poly employees in expanding their knowledge and strengthening their skills to foster a welcoming and safe university community. The program emphasizes belonging as a foundation for campus wellbeing and student success, while encouraging participants to actively foster a culture in which every member of the Cal Poly community feels valued and supported.
This program introduces shared institutional language and provides employees with centralized educational resources. Workshops are connected to key initiatives across Cal Poly and the CSU, including the CSU Mission, student success priorities, and university and systemwide strategic plans. Through interactive, reflective, and community-centered learning opportunities, participants will learn practical strategies for creating inclusive campus environments and engaging in meaningful dialogue with colleagues. Workshops are designed to meet participants at any stage of their learning, regardless of prior knowledge or experience.
Program Overview
Workshops are designed to serve employees across all units, departments, and divisions. The program consists of three workshops, which may be taken individually or in any order. Each workshop will be offered once per quarter during the 2025–2026 academic year: in person at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo during fall and spring, and virtually in winter to ensure access for all employees, including those at Cal Poly Maritime Academy and the Solano Campus. While there is no requirement to complete all three workshops, participants who wish to do so are welcome to spread them out across different quarters.
This program is offered by the Department of Culture and Institutional Excellence (CIX) in partnership with Employee and Organization Development (EOD) and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (CTLT). We encourage managers to support their teams by encouraging participation—helping staff contribute meaningfully to a campus climate that reflects and supports the needs of our increasingly diverse Cal Poly community.
Workshop Descriptions
Below you will find the titles and descriptions for our Building Belonging academic year 2025-2026 workshop series. These workshops are designed to give you an overview of the learning opportunities available this year through this program.
Workshop I: Foundations of Belonging
This workshop introduces participants to the concept of belonging within the context of Cal Poly as a higher education institution. Participants will explore what belonging means in our university and why it is essential to advancing student success, employee wellbeing, and our shared educational mission.
Through guided self-reflection, participants will examine their own experiences of belonging and consider the factors that shape those experiences in workplace and campus environments. The session will also introduce the concept of othering as a common but often unexamined dynamic that can impact how individuals and groups experience interpersonal, collective, and institutional levels of belonging.
Participants will build awareness of how othering can show up in everyday interactions and develop practical strategies to pause, reflect, and shift behaviors in ways that promote belonging. This workshop emphasizes personal responsibility and equips participants with tools to more intentionally contribute to a welcoming Cal Poly community.
Workshop II: Cultural Humility in Practice
Cultural humility is the ongoing practice of critical self-reflection and self-evaluation, grounded in a willingness to learn from others and an openness to recognizing the limits of one’s own perspective. It emphasizes interpersonal curiosity, collective accountability, and a commitment to building mutually beneficial relationships across difference.
This workshop introduces cultural humility as a framework for personal and professional development, reflecting Cal Poly’s commitment to cultural and intellectual diversity, mutual respect, civic engagement, and social and environmental responsibility. Whether working with students or engaging with colleagues, participants will explore how cultural humility can shape everyday interactions and decision-making.
Through guided reflection and behavior-based scenarios, participants will examine their own assumptions and biases in the context of their higher education work. The session will provide practical tools and strategies to engage more effectively and respectfully with individuals and communities from a range of backgrounds, fostering effective and respectful interactions with individuals and communities from backgrounds different from one’s own.
Workshop III: Communicating with Care
The workshop focuses on building skills to communicate with care across differences in ways that foster understanding, empathy, and mutual respect. To do this, we will examine how our communication styles are shaped by our cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, and the values we come to view as common sense. Through an interactive activity, participants will explore how communication differences influence the way we give and receive feedback, collaborate with others, and navigate conflict. This process helps participants better understand their communication lenses and how these shape the way they interpret, evaluate, and respond to others.
Participants will examine how different communication styles can be effective in different contexts, while recognizing that workplace environments often reward certain dominant styles. The session will explore how these norms shape whose voices are heard, valued, and understood.
Through self-reflection, group discussion, and interactive scenarios, participants will unpack common cross-cultural communication challenges and practice strategies for navigating them with greater awareness and intention.
Facilitators
Diana Ortiz Giron, M.Div.
Diana Ortiz Giron (she/her/ella) is the Director of Programming and Education in the Department of Culture and Institutional Excellence (CIX) at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She oversees a team of student interns and graduate assistants, manages the office’s signature events, and co-creates professional development opportunities for staff employees. Diana’s previous work experience includes managing a peer education intergroup dialogue program, overseeing affinity-based student affairs programming, and facilitating diversity education learning opportunities. She holds a B.A. in History with a minor in Chicana/o Latina/o Studies from Pomona College and an M.Div. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard University.
Sarah Macdonald, Ph.D.
Sarah D. Macdonald, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is a sociologist and educational developer passionate about educational equity and inclusive teaching, learning, and working environments. At Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, she is an Assistant Director in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, is Senior Director of Innovative Pedagogies in the Department of Culture and Institutional Excellence (CIX) and teaches in the Social Sciences Department. Dr. Macdonald is a passionate teacher who has taught undergraduates in sociology and media studies at University of California, Berkeley; Mills College; and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in Sociology and Russian from Smith College.
