MULTICULTURAL MASTERCLASSES 1

Multicultural Program for MasterClasses

Jessie Lynn Gravatt

School of Education, Colorado State University

EDUC 651: Multicultural and Special Populations

Dr. Tobin Lopes

April 24, 2023

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Abstract

A virtual company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, (whose name has been withheld from

this paper for confidentiality purposes) offers weekly training opportunities for employees. This

multicultural program will fit into the informal, unpaid classes that are called MasterClasses. By

adding an interactive learning opportunity each quarter of the calendar year to their training

schedule, they will support their existing DEI training opportunities and complement other DEI

initiatives within the company. This multilayered approach would allow the company to

transform into the diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization it is striving to be.
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Multicultural Program for MasterClasses

For my theory into action project, I have designed a program of informal training

opportunities that I have named Multicultural MasterClasses to begin in 2024. These classes will

complement existing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training as well as other initiatives at

a confidential virtual company for which I am providing training support. The primary focus of

this program will be to build cultural competence among all employees, and in so doing, create a

multicultural organization and promote better relationships within the company and with local,

regional, national, and international clients.

To build cultural competence, this program will focus on multicultural education with an

emphasis on how it will support existing and future DEI initiatives systemically. These

initiatives, especially if they are part of a company’s identity, can help them outperform

competitors and increase profitability (Cuadra, 2023). Also, diversity in professional

organizations can positively impact innovation, empathy, and resilience (Perchik et al., 2023).

Inclusion can improve employee performance on an individual, team, and organizational level

(Foy, 2021), and equity—when achieved through supportive inclusion—can be more sustainable

(Perchik et al., 2023; Washington, 2022).

A Virtual Company

While this company has a physical office in Salt Lake City, Utah, all employees are

required to provide their own setup to work remotely. The fewer than one hundred employees

reside across the continental United States, so all training must be accessible through virtual

platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams meeting spaces and e-learning modules through

their learning management system.

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Training Structure

Training management at this company involves developing, facilitating, and updating a

variety of training opportunities, from the onboarding of new employees to the yearly formal

training on a proprietary methodology. The organization offers three types of regular internal

training: formal training, DEI training, and MasterClasses. The formal training, which is paid

and mandatory, occurs for one hour each month for nine months of the year and is usually for all

employees. Formal training topics must be considered critical to the team’s success.

During two months of the year, they offer DEI training, which is paid and voluntary

because we want employees to choose to engage. The company avoids mandatory DEI training

because it may harm the outcomes we want to achieve (Perchik et al., 2023).

The third type of the regular training options are one-hour classes for professional or

personal development that are held about three times per month. Through these MasterClasses, I

want to implement a multicultural program. My working title for each class within the

multicultural program is Multicultural MasterClass. This program will support the DEI training

opportunities and, whenever possible, paid formal training.

The Value of Multicultural Education

This company’s employees must navigate a wide variety of internal and client

relationships, and the people on the other end of these relationships represent many cultures and

perspectives. The team works with clients throughout the U.S. and globally, which creates

challenges that include keeping communication direct to avoid confusion.

However, cultures are not defined by geography alone, if at all. The diverse groups we

interact with include non-dominant or minority groups, and team members at the company are

part of non-dominant groups, including people who are neurodiverse, LGBTQ+, and from racial
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and ethnic minorities. Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, this

company has been in the redefining stage of Holvino’s (2008) multicultural organization

development (MCOD) model. Managers took steps to improve DEI within the company because

they felt it was the socially just choice while acknowledging that these steps could also positively

impact how effectively team members work with clients.

The Action Plan

A multicultural program within the MasterClass category could strategically support the

management team as they work to grow the company into the multicultural end phase of MCOD

model where they would realize and maintain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work

environment. These multicultural classes could be a way to foster the continuous learning and

subsequent actions needed to make this growth—and the attainment of being “a fully

multicultural organization”—sustainable (Holvino, 2008, p. 3).

Goal and Objectives

The two-fold goal of the multicultural program is to help employees achieve greater

cultural competence personally and professionally. (See Appendix A for the specific program

objectives.) Multicultural MasterClasses would intentionally educate and increase awareness of

cultural perspectives. Because all MasterClasses have a secondary purpose of providing weekly

opportunities for synchronous community building, the multicultural program has the potential to

“transform culture” (Holvino, 2008, p. 8).

High-Level Plan

Quarterly Multicultural MasterClass

Every quarter of next year, one MasterClass would be devoted to a multicultural topic.

Either a team member or a guest would facilitate a class that creates deeper understanding of that
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person’s culture. While employees are not paid for their MasterClass attendance, they are paid

for their time spent developing and facilitating a MasterClass. To avoid tokenism, which

Marukian (2022) points out as potentially traumatic, employees would learn of the opportunity to

facilitate in a company-wide post in Microsoft Teams. I advise against approaching any

individuals.

Likewise, the company should solicit guest speakers from multicultural organizations

with a mission to provide education and conduct outreach. In 2022, for example, I reached out to

an LGBTQ+ ally organization on behalf of this company, and their outreach director facilitated a

MasterClass during Pride Month. While I would provide high-level expectations, which will be

outlined in the next section, internal and external facilitators would propose the content that they

feel is important to share. In this way, I hope to avoid the force fitting Nieto and Bode (2018,

Chapter 3) warned against, instead providing authentic opportunities for employees to better

understand behavior and experience through shared cultural knowledge (Spradley, 1980).

Most months, formal or DEI training and the MasterClasses are thematically tied

together. During a month that a Multicultural MasterClass is held, that theme means even those

training opportunities outside of the newly implemented multicultural program would be moving

the company strategically toward greater multiculturalism.

Preparation for the Class

MasterClass virtual hosting duties occur before, during, and after an actual class. Another

training duty will be to ensure any MasterClass content connects to the underlying DEI theme

devised for the month or quarter. Together, a month of training opportunities could answer these

questions:
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1. How does this critical topic relate to DEI? (Formal training) Or how does DEI

contribute to the company and team members’ success? (DEI training)

2. What perspectives can you explore or what specific actions can you take to grow your

cultural competence? (Multicultural MasterClass)

3. How are personal or professional areas in your life affected by DEI or a lack of DEI?

(Other MasterClasses)

When revising the “How to Facilitate a MasterClass” MasterClass, the company needs to

set the expectation of answering these questions. This how-to class was last facilitated live in

2020 and has been scheduled for updating this year. During the redesign, the company must add

the three questions above to the content that potential MasterClass facilitators will learn with tips

on how to work with the training team to connect to surrounding classes and support the overall

DEI goals of the company. Because the small training team largely relies on employees to

develop and present the content for weekly classes, team members should be given access to the

last version of the how-to class as a recording that they can reference when they commit to

presenting a class.

Initially, the cost of the multicultural program would be absorbed by the existing

MasterClass budget as more classes would not be added to the training calendar in 2024.

However, starting in 2025, I advocate for increasing the training budget so that the company

could pay for guest speakers and virtual experiences that could directly impact the needed

systemic changes to make this company a multicultural organization. I envision these higher-

budget classes would continue to fall within the established training schedule.
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Implementation Challenges and Solutions

The current objections I am fielding regarding adding a multicultural program within this

company’s training efforts relate to the perception that MasterClasses are meant to provide

professional development most of the time. Beyond developing employees’ professional

abilities, this multicultural program could provide personal development as team members are

empowered to see the world from different perspectives.

Other objections and challenges relate more directly to the return on investment of a

multicultural program as well as its sustainability. Elements I incorporated by design into the

high-level plan of this program are meant to overcome these potential issues.

Example of a Monthly Training Schedule

Without connections across training opportunities or to an organization’s mission and

goals, the investment in DEI training may see a short-term return or zero return (Bernstein et al.,

2022). This multicultural program will be linked intentionally to surrounding training as well as

other learning and performance opportunities within the company to reinforce and subsequently

sustain positive DEI impact. Table 1 shows how the theme could work, and facilitators could

lean into the DEI connections at their comfort level with support from the training team and the

facilitation resources I will help them create.

Table 1

An Example Month of Communication Themed Training

When Type Topic Notes

First Thursday Formal training Client This is a standard topic that is

communication covered every other year.
First or second Performance Project leader Every project with every client
Tuesday opportunity: discussion of the is assigned a project leader
Project intersection of DEI who manages the project,
leadership and client liases with the client, and leads
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communication the team members assigned to

preferences the project.
Second Friday Multicultural The evolving lexicon One option to present this topic
MasterClass of LGBTQ+ in an engaging way would be
to invite a drag queen to give a
grown-up storytime that would
also teach employees about the
terminology that is evolving
within and around the
LGBTQ+ community.
Third Friday MasterClass Client Z’s color-
coded, workplace
communication styles
Fourth Friday Hour of Ideas Professional “love” An Hour of Ideas is a
MasterClass languages discussion panel format where
employees volunteer to share
their knowledge and field
questions on a subsection of a
broader topic.
Mid-month Complementary Book club discussion The company book club
learning: Book of Crucial meetings are not part of
club Conversations by official training.
Kerry Patterson

Team Buy-in for a Multicultural MasterClass Program

To further create sustainability of a multicultural program, the company should plan to

get buy-in from the team as a whole in two ways. First, I have suggested plans to address

possible individual resistance, and second, I have suggested how the company will gradually

implement changes.

Overcoming Resistance

Feeling overlooked, invalidated, or challenged in their fundamental identities can lead

employees to engage in disruptive behaviors (Morukian, 2022). Not considering how employees

will feel about a multicultural program or the content of specific Multicultural MasterClasses

that link to their experiences could derail more than this planned program. This kind of neglect

could impact the company’s DEI progress as a whole (Perchik et al., 2023).
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While employees have the option not to attend any MasterClass, I would suggest

extending hosting duties to check in with individuals. Remote meetings do not allow for the

same level of contextual listening that Marukian (2022) recommends, so facilitators and

background hosts need to utilize the meeting platform’s chat function. A host in the background

can act as a go-between when an attendee wants to ask a question anonymously, and this host

can help attendees who may feel triggered by content. Of course, content would be reviewed for

triggers, but I know from my own experience that triggers can stem from innocent content. The

triggering association an individual has cannot be anticipated perfectly.

In addition to this behind-the-scenes approach, facilitators will be asked to create a safe

space and open a dialogue that employs “perspective taking and goal setting” in that order

(Marukian, 2022, p. 45). As Bennett (1986) notes, people cannot adopt every cultural schema

into their single perspective, especially if they have internalized differences, so building an

appreciation of what Marukian calls “multiple realities” (p. 46) or perspectives and setting an

expectation of assuming positive intent will also help overcome any resistance from attendees or,

at least, help deter disruptive behavior.

Gradual Implementation

Fortunately, this multicultural program should be a seamless transition for teammates at

the company because it will expand upon the less formalized efforts made in the past year. For

example, I presented a MasterClass on twelve concepts from Japanese culture that I admire,

which was similar to the cultural event described by Bennett (1986) that would help develop an

organization in denial about the need for DEI. Despite how I included information on the

internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, my class mostly represented the
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beginning stage of Bennett’s model that progressed through ethnocentricity to ethnorelativism

with integration as the highest level of the model.

Because the established DEI training sessions, which cover topics such as

microaggressions and unconscious bias, are working toward integration, I believe gradual

implementation of this program can be supportive by building cultural competence. The

company has started with cultural events, and they can begin adding elements to Multicultural

MasterClasses that will make integration easier for the team when they attend DEI training.

Another way to look at this is with the four approaches to multicultural curriculum

outlined by Banks (1989) where my MasterClass on Japanese concepts belongs to Banks’

Contributions Approach. He notes that his approaches can be used together. I envision

Multicultural MasterClasses offering opportunities to appreciate other cultures that then move

the company toward internal transformation. Social justice and social action would be the focus

for twice-yearly DEI training sessions.

Because I advocate for transparency in all training initiatives, I advise the training team

to also announce the program to the management team as soon as they have approval from the

company president. Upon receiving their feedback and possibly adjusting the plan, the lead

trainer will announce the multicultural program to everyone at the company-wide quarterly

meeting in October, which is the last company meeting in 2023, and the lead trainer will further

provide a list of the most impactful potential benefits with the announcement.

Assessment of the Multicultural Program

All MasterClasses end with a survey (see Appendix B) that asks attendees about the

usefulness of the content presented, which the training team will continue to use to assess

individual Multicultural MasterClasses.

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Depending on the feedback received, the training team may adjust the survey questions

specifically for the program. At the end of the calendar year, they will also collect business

metrics through an online survey, and those survey questions will be determined in the fall of

2023.

Benefits of a Multicultural Program

While this multicultural program will complement the company’s DEI initiatives, it will

also promote relationship-building and align with the company culture and values. The cultural

competence employees learn will provide them with more balanced perspectives. For example, if

a team member has internalized what Weaver (2001) termed as Americans’ “overemphasis on

individualism and competition,” fostering awareness of other perspectives can help them be

more collaborative with teammates and clients, especially client contacts who represent other

cultures. Given how this company naturally relies on the business relationships it has with

clients, relationship-building can directly impact their profitability.

Brantmeier and Lin (2008) point out that “connecting intercultural, multicultural, and

peace education” can result in harmony (p. 70). One of the company’s main values centers on

community, and the multicultural program could encourage a harmonious community or

company culture that would encourage increased morale and effectiveness. While the focus on

cultural competence may have a more straightforward path to inclusive practices, the

multicultural program will also bring this company closer to diversity and equity through the

strategic alignment of the training schedule, training topics, and their values and priorities.
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References

Banks, J. A. (1989). Approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. Trotter Review, 3(3), 17-19.

https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&context=trotter_review

Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity.

International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10(2), 179-196.

https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(86)90005-2

Bernstein, R. S., Salipante, P. F., & Weisinger, J. Y. (2022). Performance through diversity and

inclusion: Leveraging organizational practices for equity and results. Routledge.

Brantmeier, E. J. & Lin, J. (2008). Transforming education for peace. Information Age

Publishing.

Cuadra, D. (2023, January 4). Will a recession put a stop to DEI initiatives? ebn.

https://www.benefitnews.com/news/will-a-recession-put-a-stop-to-dei-initiatives?

cm_mmc=newsletter-_-email-_-undefined-_-BRAND-TalentBrief-Email-

TopicNewsletter-TalentBrief0118-

26263&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BRAND-

TalentBrief-Email-TopicNewsletter-TalentBrief0118-26263&lid=dp753ve27dfy

Foy, C. M. (2021). Successful applications of diversity, equity and inclusion programming in

various professional settings: Strategies to increase DEI in libraries. Journal of Library

Administration, 61(6), 676-685. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2021.1947057

Holvino, E. (2008). Developing multicultural organizations: A change model. Chaos

Management, Ltd. 1-9.

Morukian, M. (2022, June). Dialogues eclipse lectures. TD Magazine. 42-47.

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Nieto, S. & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural

education. Pearson.

Perchik, J. D., Iheke, J. C., West, J. T., Smith, E. N., Milner, D. Porter, K. K., & Morgan, D.

(2023). Disruptive behavior: Impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in

radiology, from the AJR special series on DEI. AJR.

https://doi.org/10.2214/AJR.22.28962

Spradley, J. P. (1980). Ethnography and culture. In Participant observation (pp. 18–25). essay,

Wadsworth, Thomson Learning.

Washington, E. F. (2022). The five stages of DEI maturity: How to move from promises to

results. Harvard Business Review, November-December issue, 92-99.

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Appendix A

The Objectives of the Multicultural MasterClasses

1. In 2024, this confidential virtual company will offer quarterly Multicultural

MasterClasses that increase employee buy-in of DEI initiatives for systemic change

within the company by promoting greater cultural competence.

2. These quarterly Multicultural MasterClasses will layer with other learning and

performance opportunities to further increase buy-in as well as jumpstart, or even

improve upon, the success of the company’s DEI growth.

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Appendix B

The following six questions are asked in a pop-up survey at the end of every MasterClass.

Answer options for the first three questions are provided in parentheses, and attendees can

answer in long form for the last three questions, which provides me with qualitative data.

1. Can you apply what you learned today in your role? (Possible answers: Never,

Immediately, In my next project, Someday)

2. Was this class informative? (Possible answers: No; Yes, somewhat; Yes, very)

3. Was this class interesting to you? (Possible answers: No; Yes, somewhat; Yes, very)

4. What did you learn that was new or a good refresher?

5. What went well during this class?

6. What could be improved, or what would you suggest changing?