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SF Build Focuses on New Faculty in Push for Inclusive Classrooms

Published

8 years ago

March 11, 2018

Leticia Márquez-Magaña

Balancing science and personal stories, representatives of SF Build are working to spread techniques for creating more inclusive classrooms through a series of faculty training workshops.

SF Build is an NIH-funded initiative to transform research and teaching at SF State and increase diversity in the biomedical workforce.

The program, and these workshops in particular, focus on the phenomenon of stereotype threat — a fear of confirming the stereotypes people have about you.

Triggered by a variety of situations, from being the only student of color in a classroom full of white students to dealing with negative or dismissive comments about one’s identity, it can lead to decreased motivation and lower test scores.

In a December 2017 workshop delivered to new faculty members, Professor of Biology and SF Build Principal Investigator Leticia Márquez-Magaña explained ways that new faculty members can avoid triggering stereotype threat in their classroom, drawing from her own experiences as a Latina scientist.

For instance, comments like “I don’t see color” can make students of color feel unwelcome. “I’m super colorful,” she said. “If you don’t see color, you don’t see me.”

Another pitfall, she said, can be negative comments that leave no room for growth — like trying to reassure a student who had failed a test by saying, “Not everyone is good at math.”

Feedback like that could be especially derailing for students who already have to combat negative stereotypes about their math performance. Instead, instructors can reframe comments in ways that show a path forward while emphasizing that failure is an important part of learning, Márquez-Magaña explained.
Assistant Professor of Management Verónica Rabelo, who attended the workshop, cited that portion as eye-opening. Even as someone well-versed in the literature about the negative impacts of stereotypes, she had fallen into some of the same traps that Márquez-Magaña described.

“Some of that feedback can be well-intentioned. I’ve even given some of that advice to my own students,” Rabelo said.
Over the past two years, the team has collected data about the workshops’ effectiveness and fine-tuned their delivery. With a continually shifting audience, finding the right balance of information has been a challenge.

On the one hand, personal stories encourage new faculty members to open up and share their own thoughts and experiences. According to Assistant Professor of Gerontology Emiko Takagi, who attended the December 2017 workshop, “Every one of us was able to connect to the ideas they were presenting in our own ways.”

At the same time, some faculty members will only be swayed by hard scientific evidence. So Márquez-Magaña also explains the large body of research on the triggers of stereotype threat and how these effects can even be seen in peoples’ bodies.

“You can monitor stereotype threat from an experimental psychologist’s point of view,” she said. “You can measure stress hormones, you can see peoples’ eyes darting back and forth.”

Another fall 2017 workshop, conducted during orientation for new faculty members, focused on the syllabus—typically a stiff, formal document. During the workshop, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Alegra Eroy-Reveles and her co-presenter, Professor of Health Education Michele Eliason, offered a different vision for the syllabus as a signal to students that the classroom will be welcoming for everyone.

One of their examples of a model syllabus, from Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Kim Coble, included the line, “You are encouraged to recognize the diverse strengths your colleagues bring to the classroom.”

Language like that signals to the students that they, too, belong in the class.

“What really resonated with me is that a syllabus isn’t just a laundry list of policies,” said Rabelo, who participated in the workshop. “It forms a feedback loop between the professor and students.”

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

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2 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.