The Innovation in Diversity and Inclusion Grant Project Team is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s IDI Grants! It is important to note that this year we received more submissions than all the previous years combined. All the projects examined dynamic aspects of LLCC with creative problem solving, but alas, we can only fund a few.

In partnership with the LLCC Foundation, we are pleased to be able to fully fund the Might Minds, Heart and Hands, service-based learning project proposed by Yvonne Cosentino, program director, occupational therapy assistant, in the areas of Training, Teaching and Learning, Recruitment and Retention, and Other Innovation Strategies. This collaborative and innovative project promotes OTA health care education through the creation of a community-based, service-learning program for at-risk youth. This project will give our students the opportunity to work directly with community children in need.

We are pleased to be able to fully fund a LLCC Diversity & Equity Fellowship Initiative project in the Recruitment and Retention strategy, proposed by Leigh Giles-Brown, program director diagnostic medical sonography. This project will aim to address the lack of diversity of LLCC Health Professions faculty and to provide positive representation to attract a diverse student body to health professions (and sonography in particular). The DMS program will use the funds to attract participation of a minority echocardiographer who will help develop the curriculum for a new cardiovascular sonography AAS degree program. The LLCC DEFI project will be used as a faculty recruitment tool with the goal of increasing the diversity of the Health Professions faculty pool.

Last, but not least, we are pleased to be able to partially fund the Hip Hop and Higher Education project submitted by Kimberly Williams-Wilson and written by Dr. David Leitner on behalf of Black Student Union club. This project falls under the Other Innovation strategies, but is aligned also with Recruitment and Retention. This project seeks to address the problem of retention, specifically the existing gap between the number of African-American students who enroll and the number who graduate. A series of activities will be created that align with significant cultural events that begin with Black History Month in February 2023. These events will continue through March and April to reinforce the spring semester drive to register students. Ultimately these events will be designed to close the retention gap by creating a sense of cultural and academic inclusion within African-American students enrolled at LLCC.

Congratulations to the winners again. We are excited to see these projects come to fruition.

The IDI Grant Project Team
Laura Anderson
Michelle Pulce-Flynn
Sonja Spencer
Jamil Steele
Adam Watkins