Grad students create new cultural association

When Design@USC student Tawny Tran decided to discuss Asian American representation in media for an online class assignment, the comment she got from her professor wasn’t one she expected.

“[He said] people don’t watch films because there are Hispanic people, black people or women in it,” Tran said. “He kind of just shut off and completely dismissed any kind of topic in regards to race or gender, and it made me very uncomfortable that it wasn’t even open to my perspective on it at all.”

Tran tried to report the professor to the director of her program but was told nothing could be done.

With the help of fellow graduate classmates Angela Newman and Deon Reid she decided to take matters into her own hands by forming the Multicultural Innovators Association, a student-run club within the Design@USC program. Tran said MIA aims to start conversations about microaggressions and the challenges students of color face at USC.

Design@USC, also known as the Masters in Integrated Design, Business and Technology, is a program in the Iovine and Young Academy. According to Iovine and Young’s faculty page, its faculty is composed primarily of white men. There are only two women and three people of color out of 20 instructors listed on the page. According to Tran, MIA launched in January as a diversity and inclusion initiative — one of the first in Iovine and Young.

Tran is the club’s vice president and technology chair.

“Our [Design@USC] program is mostly online,” Tran said. “And to be experiencing unconscious bias and microaggression over a computer [in a classroom setting] was kind of crazy for [me and my friends] — that’s when we started meeting up to discuss what to do about it.”

According to Newman, president and business chair of the organization, planning for MIA began in May 2018.

“We started with texting and just conversations in class,” said Newman, a graduate student in the Design@USC program. “Then we started to meet up … and started brainstorming on the board and starting throwing up all the things that we’re bothered by, or things that we wanted to change, or things that we don’t have …  as minority students.”

Newman, Tran and Reid created a document with thoughts and concerns about the disadvantages that they had faced as students of color and emailed it to Iovine and Young Academy Dean Erica Muhl.

They then met with Muhl, department heads and advisors to have a conversation about diversity and inclusion in the Academy.

“I really appreciated that the dean did that,” Newman said. “[She] took the time to say ‘Hey, I was reading your email, let’s sit down and have a talk about this’ … she could have said nothing.”

But by the end of the meeting, Newman said no official plan had been made, so they decided to start a club.

During a Design@USC lab program, they proposed their idea to their peers and professor Jay Clewis.

“It was an actual project assignment that we were getting graded on,” Newman said. “We had to do surveys, we had to do interviews. We had to make sure that [there was] sound evidence to prove that [MIA] was something that [students at Design@USC] need and wanted.”

According to MIA’s website, the club’s purpose is to protect the educational rights and needs of Design@USC students of color. Meetings take place on the first Monday of every month on Zoom, a video conferencing app that is also used in the Academy’s online courses. Design@USC has students from around the world, including Chicago and Canada. According to Newman, MIA is meant to be inclusive of those students who do not have the opportunity to participate in events that take place on campus.

Katia Valenzuela, a graduate student in the Design@USC program and MIA’s graphic design chair, said the online aspect of the club allowed her to build relationships with her peers.

“When you think of the idea of being with people online, it sounds a little bit isolating,” Valenzuela said. “You [think that if] you’re alone in a room and you’re far away from everyone, [you can’t] interact with anyone. In actuality, [MIA] does a really good job [of creating social connections] … It’s more comforting than it is isolating.”

Design@USC is an 18-month program, and most members of MIA’s executive board are set to graduate in May, but Newman said the organization was formed with future students in mind.

“I knew that creating this wasn’t really about me, I know that I’m going to [be] graduating soon, so I’m not going to be able to see what [MIA] will be like in two years or even a year,” Newman said. “[MIA] is not about what am I getting, its about what can I help provide for others. ”