BRIDGING INSTITUTE

We provide customized training and general workshops to meet the growing needs of our community. Here's a sample of some of the workshops we have offered:

• Moving from othering to belonging: The importance of cultural humility
• Understanding and addressing bias
• Embracing cultural humility in leadership
• Developing Inclusive Spaces
• Implementing Equitable Practices in the Workplace
• Strengths-based leadership
• Building a strengths-based team
• Trauma-informed de-escalation in the workplace
• Understanding and addressing microaggressions
• Building a culture of engagement
• Intercultural Development Inventory: Stages of intercultural competence
• Wellbeing: How to apply the five essential elements to your life
• Dominant cultural norms: What we need to know to improve workplace culture

In 2018, we were charged with creating a workshop that would meet the requirement from Oregon house bill 2864 to establish cultural competency training for all employees at Chemeketa. In recognizing that cultural competency is a life-long journey that is developed through relationship, the college established a professional development certificate to recognize employee's efforts toward continued and meaningful engagement. Employees participated in sustained and purposeful dialogue about the complexity of cultural differences and how we can leverage these differences to make us a stronger institution through a series of workshops.

After receiving a strong response to this offering, we refined many of these workshops to offer a six week, cohort based series of Professional Skills and Training courses. These six courses were packaged together and approved by the State of Oregon as a non-credit cultural competency certificate. 

In 2022, we piloted our first cohort to a community based organization. Since then, we have offered the cultural competency certificate to dozens of organizations in the Pacific Northwest. We also responded to the voices in our community asking for specific professional development and created a wide variety of customized trainings to meet the specific needs of our region. Today, we continue to work with local non-profits, state agencies, city municipalities, financial institutions, faith based organizations, healthcare agencies, and educational institutions to provide practical, real-life training that draws participants into relationships with each other while offering tools and strategies to strengthen workplace communication and productivity.

The cultural competency certificate program works to strengthen the communication and wellbeing of your business or organization by offering practical tools and skills to increase employee engagement through cultural competency training. Check out the cultural competency certificate webpage for more information!