Campus Trainings

The Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance offers a variety of informational sessions, trainings, and workshops designed to inform students, staff, faculty, and visitors about their rights and responsibilities as members of the Northwestern community, and to equip community members with the tools to create a vibrant, equitable, and accessible learning environment for all.

All trainings and workshops are customized for your specific department or group, and training facilitators will meet with department/group leaders prior to the training to gather background information, answer questions, and discuss logistics. We welcome inquiries about training topics not listed below.

We are able to offer a limited number of department-/unit-level workshops each quarter. Please fill out the request form below to request a training for your area. Please see our schedule of open-enrollment trainings if you are interested in attending a training as an individual or with a small group of your colleagues.

Please click here to request a training. You will receive a response to your request within 2 business days. We are typically scheduling sessions anywhere from 2-8 weeks from the date of the request, depending on the type of session requested and staff availability.

For training inquiries email OCRTrainings@northwestern.edu or call 847.467.6165 to speak to a team member.

Education and Outreach Workshop Offerings:

Information sessions:

• Intended audience(s): Students, staff, faculty, third parties
• Duration: 30-45 minutes
• This engaging workshop provides an overview of individuals' rights, responsibilities, and options under the University's Policies on Institutional Equity, which includes protections from Harassment, Discrimination, and Sexual Misconduct. For staff, faculty, and others, including students, who are paid by the University, this session can include a discussion of responsible employee reporting obligations, including where and how to report, responding to disclosures of harassment, discrimination, and sexual misconduct, and how to talk with students and colleagues about your reporting obligations.

Responsible Employee 101: Navigating Your Reporting Obligations with Empathy and Care

• Intended audience(s): Students, staff, faculty
• Duration: 60-90 minutes
• This workshop will deepen participants understanding of the responsible employee duties (specific practices for community members who are both students and staff of NU), policies implemented through the Office of Equity, and reporting options. Facilitator(s) will share some trauma informed strategies for responding to disclosures as well as resources for sharing your responsible employee obligation with other students.

 Preventing and Addressing Harm in student organizations

• Intended audience(s): Undergraduate/Graduate student groups and organizations
• Duration: 60-90 minutes
• This dialogue-based workshop asks student group members to engage with each other to communally identify how conflict and harm rooted in microaggressions may be manifesting itself in their student group/organization, and provides space to explore ways of responding. Dialogue-based work will explore: What is harm? What is the difference between conflict and harm? How can we address conflict and harm when experienced in our student organization? How can we prevent harm from showing up in our student organization?

 Framework and Tools for Interrupting Harm

• Intended audience(s): Faculty, staff
• Duration: 90 minutes
• This fast-paced, engaging workshop uses a multi-media approach to explore the concepts of power, privilege, and microaggressions, and how they show up in our work. The facilitator will share several intervention strategies, and guide participants through case studies designed to help them identify harm in the moment and practice intervening to prevent or remedy harm in real-world scenarios.

 Framework and Tools for Interrupting Harm

• Intended audience(s): Students, staff, faculty, third parties
• Duration: 90 minutes
• This fast-paced, engaging workshop uses a multi-media approach to explore the concepts of power, privilege, and microaggressions, and how they show up in our work. The facilitator will share several intervention strategies, and guide participants through case studies designed to help them identify harm in the moment and practice intervening to prevent or remedy harm in real-world scenarios.

 Cultivating Gender Inclusive Spaces

• Intended audience(s): Faculty, staff
• Duration: 90 minutes
• This interactive workshop will provide participants with vocabulary, concepts, and frameworks to understand how to support community members of all genders. Participants will build skills and best practices for realizing true inclusion centering gender and gender expression.

 Equity Series

• Intended audience(s): Faculty, staff
• Duration: Minimum of 3 sessions, maximum of 6 sessions; each session 90 minutes/session
• This customized training series is designed for departments who are ready to engage in long-term dialogue and change work to shift their norms and practices towards true inclusivity. Series topics may include: what we talk about when we talk about power, privilege, and oppression: building a common language; understanding implicit bias; action planning for justice and inclusivity.
  • Please note that due to staffing capacity, we are only able to offer a limited number of series per quarter.

We welcome inquiries about training topics not listed above. 

Request a training

To schedule a training, please fill out this brief online Training Request Form. You may also request a training by contacting OCRTrainings@northwestern.edu.

LGBTQ Ally Training is offered quarterly and trainings rotate between the Evanston and Chicago campuses. Staff and faculty may attend a training on either campus regardless of the campus of which they are based. Learn more about this training initiative. 

Additional Training and Workshop Resources

 Interested in trainings on other topics? Many campus partners provide complementary programming.

 Students:

• Social Justice Education

 Faculty:

• The Searle Center for Teaching and Learning 

 Staff:

• Learning and Organization Development 
• MyHR Learn   

Training digest

In the 2017-18 academic year, the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance offered 123 training events.