Susan Graff, director, Physician Assistant Studies (PAS) Residential program, is passionate about making diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) more than just a catch phrase.
She’s intent on ensuring that every individual and community associated with the University of Pittsburgh has the opportunity to communicate their own lived experiences in order to better understand how identity and privilege shape the way they interact with others, including their colleagues, students and patients they serve.
After taking an online Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom course through Cornell University, Graff was inspired to develop her own version. She applied for and received a Pitt Seed grant, funding for a transformative and scalable project that advances the mission of the University.
The CuPID (Community, Partnership, Identity, Dialogue) course for Pitt’s Health Sciences was born.
This completely asynchronous and free-of-charge course is a fresh approach to DEI work. It explores identity through first-person narrative storytelling.
“Our multidisciplinary team interviewed 33 different individuals from Pitt’s Health Sciences schools,” explains Graff. “We started with a series of questions on certain themes and topics. It wasn’t long before we realized that while the interview questions served as a guideline, people began expanding on the questions, revealing deeper-seated experiences that are valuable for others to hear.”
“It was just very organic to see the process going off in different directions,” adds PAS Assistant Professor Karthik Hariharan.
The interviews not only encouraged conversations about how concepts like racism, ethnocentrism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia manifest specifically in health care, but also how other lived experiences and privilege may impact an individual.
Graff recounts one story in which a dental student talked about being left-handed while all the dental equipment was designed for right-handed people. “Unless you’re a left-handed dental student, you might never be aware of this, yet it affects how you work and interact with the patient,” says Graff.
Once all the stories were recorded, Graff and her team identified specific themes and edited nearly 100 hours of footage into three teaching modules: Social Identity and Intersectionality; Bias, Microaggressions and “Isms”; and Belonging and Building Inclusive Communities.
John Guinane, University Center for Teaching and Learning, served as producer on the CuPID interviews. He was struck by the power of the conversations.
“People started talking about things we don’t often think about,” says Guinane. “Just hearing their stories has helped me to grow. I think when others really listen and learn from what they hear, it can be a spark. It’s one of those courses that can change society.”
Graff credits University Center for Teaching and Learning Senior Instructional Designers Robin Albright and Santa Pastorius for taking the team’s ideas and the content of the videos and turning them into a functional course, and Occupational Therapy Postdoctoral Associate Lilcelia “CeCe” Williams and PAS Associate Professor Kathryn Reed for providing important course content.
The CuPID course is open to all students, staff, trainees and faculty in Pitt’s Health Sciences. Participants are encouraged to work at their own pace throughout the semester. Graff estimates the “work” of completing the CuPID course takes about 20 hours.
Thanks to additional seed funding, Graff is now helping other Pitt schools develop their own CuPID courses based on interviews and stories that relate to their specific professions.
“We recognize that challenges exist in areas other than health care,” admits Graff.
“Through authentic dialogue, individuals in every field can share the ‘heavy things’—those parts of themselves or lived experiences that they typically carry on the inside that they wish others knew about them. We hope the CuPID course enables people to listen more and notice more about people’s ‘heavy things’ so they will become more comfortable in offering to help carry them.”
“The course allows you to not only be aware of certain things, but to take action—to do something about them,” states Hariharan.
He and team member Professor Adriana Modesto Gomes Da Silva, School of Dental Medicine, are creating a CuPID podcast called “Who We Are Inside” and believes this vehicle will reach an even greater audience.
“Pitt has a big impact on the city of Pittsburgh,” Hariharan continues. “We’re now in a position where we can take steps forward to change things for our greater community as well as our own University. It’s a matter of changing the world, one step at a time.”
Graff says that to her, the CuPID course doesn’t represent an end. “It represents the beginning of work that is ongoing. It’s a powerful experience. It has empowered me and it is my hope that it empowers others.”
