Understanding social identity is a process that can unfold throughout one’s entire life. Self-identification, or an awareness that one belongs to a specific social identity group, is frequently an early part of this development process (e.g., Calzo et al., 2012; Steensma et al., 2013). This is often followed by a period of exploration or learning more about the behaviors, attitudes, and traditions associated with being a member of a particular social group (e.g., Dillon et al., 2011) and how the group is perceived by others (e.g., Rogers & Way, 2016).
IDP’s workshops with students, staff, and faculty provide ample opportunities for beginning or deepening this kind of identity exploration; even after one three-hour-long session, a majority of workshop participants reported seeing their own identities in a more complex, nuanced way. A session like this can yield concrete insights, such as these takeaways described by two undergraduate workshop participants: “I learned how influential my social identities are with respect to how I experience the world compared to others” and “While it is important to understand and empathize differences in social identities while interacting with people around, it is just as much important acknowledge your privileges in order to have a truly rich interaction.”
Given the short duration of IDP workshops, participants begin conversations that are not neatly resolved in one session. Fortunately, survey responses suggest that participants feel excited to continue exploring identity-related issues on their own, with a majority of participants indicating that their workshop with IDP made them feel more interested in trying to understand their own identities. Some participants imagine this ongoing work will be focused on specific identities (“I learned that I need to do more research into issues affecting certain identities that I think less about,” wrote one undergraduate workshop participant), and others anticipate thinking about social identity’s impact on different contexts (“Continue to think about how different social identities affect the workplace and how I as a supervisor can listen, support, and foster an environment where people can communicate and work through differences,” wrote one staff workshop participant).