Educational Workshops
*Workshop Request Form at the Bottom of the Page*
Staff at the McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention offer a variety of educational programs for the campus community. Our emphasis is on educating, rather than training, which means we focus on long-term, on-going programs designed to engage participants in critical thinking and reflection. Through our educational programs, we encourage people to make sense of sexual violence for themselves, applying the knowledge they gain to their own unique contexts.
One of our strategies for engaging the campus community in on-going education is to facilitate workshops for student organizations, staff development, and guest lectures in classes. Any time we work with a group, we prefer to come more than once for a minimum of 1 hour each — once to present initial information, then a second time to provide space for people to make sense of and apply that information. Our workshops are always interactive and built for YOU! We will work with you to develop something based on your needs.
The center's staff can build an educational series from workshops listed below or create something new to fit the needs of your organization. These workshop descriptions are a starting place for the kinds of workshops we can facilitate.
If you are interested in having us present to your student organization, at a staff meeting or to your class, please fill out the form below. We look forward to working with you!
Most Popular Workshops for First-Year Students:
1. What is Harm?
2. Understanding History and Power to Address Sexual Violence
Sexual violence overlaps and is intertwined with all forms of oppression, making it crucial to understand the context and history that shape our current societal views and experiences of it. In this workshop, we provide an overview of the historical roots of sexual violence in the U.S., and connect that history to current social, cultural, structural, and power dynamics operating on college campuses. Using a power-conscious framework, we identify strategies to effectively address campus sexual violence that include shifting attention to the people who cause harm, identifying harmful behaviors, and developing strategies to prevent them.
3. Repairing Harm & Restoring Relationships
Are you unsure how to repair harm you've caused in a relationship? It can be hard to admit, yet all of us have caused harm at some point. Fortunately, many people in our lives care enough about us to have these challenging yet necessary and meaningful conversations. By learning to openly listen and acknowledge when we cause harm, we can avoid perpetuating and deepening harm. In this workshop, we will explore what harmful behavior is and how to begin the process of repairing harm that has already occurred.
Want to do ALL Three Workshops? Check out our Three-Part Series!
Three-Part Series: Understanding Harm, Accountability, and Repairing Relationships. The educational harm series is a three part workshop series that provides advanced knowledge about dating and sexual violence on college campuses and within students’ communities. These workshops are ideal for student groups in close community with one another who want to engage in discussion about dating and sexual violence.
Learn more here.
Thinking Like an Abolitionist to End Sexual Violence in Higher Education Contexts
A hyper-focus on policy and one-size-fits all responses has led to stagnant practices to address sexual violence in higher education. Women of color activists and their allies have been advocating for abolitionist philosophies to eradicate violence for decades. In this session, we will explore a brief context of the problem of violence from a power-conscious lens, then highlight several abolitionist philosophies as strategies for eradicating violence in higher education. Specifically, we will examine abolition as the practice of creating what we want our communities to look and feel like by focusing on non-carceral responses to violence, individual and collective healing and engaging in a “million little experiments” to create a better world.
Addressing Sexual Violence: Understanding Awareness, Response, and Prevention
Increased attention to sexual violence on college campuses over the past several years is a huge win for student activists! Unfortunately, it has also come with a fair amount of confusion and disagreement about effective strategies for addressing sexual violence. In this interactive workshop, we explore the differences between awareness, response, and prevention of violence. We will also develop strategies to stop violence from happening in the first place within our own circles of influence.
Dialogues Sessions
In this workshop, student facilitators lead a discussion diving deeper into topics such as consent, tuning-in, healthy relationships, and coercion, giving students the opportunity to have the conversations that are important to them. Through these discussion-based workshops, students create dialogue with their peers by analyzing their own life experiences and how they affect their understanding of harm. To address sensitive questions, students can participate anonymously, providing them with a safe avenue to seek answers they might find difficult to express. Students gain a deeper understanding of their own capability to cause harm, better ways to communicate with their peers or partners, and ultimately how to avoid causing harm through self-awareness and accountability.
Check out the form below to schedule any of these workshops and/or request something specific. The MCVP caters each workshop to your team's needs!