Dear CLASP Students,

First and foremost, welcome to the Critical Literacies Achievement and Success Program (CLASP)!

CLASP is a program designed specifically to support, advocate for, and celebrate the important work of first-generation, multicultural, low-income, or otherwise underrepresented students on the WSU campus. As a program, we are committed to challenging the “deficit model” of education. That is to say that CLASP views each student as an indispensable source for unique and personalized skills, values, and experiences that merit understanding, security, and compassion. In this sense, students are not so much passive recipients of instruction and information; they are profound agents and colleagues in matters of curricular design, faculty development, and community building.

CLASP partners with programs, institutions, and departments across campus to administer faculty development programming that sponsors efforts to collaborate with and defer to students like you in identifying and confronting issues of cultural competency, microaggressions, stereotype threat, “cultural taxation,” intersectional identities, etc.

As a CLASP student, you are a co-author of your curriculum. In order to accomplish this profound curricular work, CLASP asks that you regularly meet with your professors and instructors outside of class. In so doing, you will help create an open and responsive space for learning and development. While we certainly believe that this is a dynamic and empowering space where you can grow, prosper, and succeed, we also maintain that the entire WSU community benefits and thrives in a curriculum that favors conversations and collaboration over and above assimilation.

In closing, CLASP thanks you for your part in all of these efforts. Above and beyond the work you do as an enrolled CLASP student, we also welcome your unique and personalized contributions in helping design and administer CLASP programming throughout your academic career. By continuing to lend your ideas, skills, and experiences to CLASP advocates and other stakeholders, you might participate in the sort of extracurricular opportunities that are personally and professionally rewarding.

We look forward to collaborating with you in the coming months (and hopefully years). Have a wonderful day!

 

Sincerely,

 

Anna Plemons

CLASP Director