The Fellowship in Continuous Learning for Antiracist Culture Change (CLARCC) seeks to create lasting change in public health education, fostering growth for faculty and staff through self-reflection, peer learning, and individual and structural action.
CLARCC guides fellows through a 15-week course of self-study in antiracist concepts, moving from self-reflection to action. Defining antiracist culture change as “widening the circle of power and opportunity,” the course introduces fellows to concepts such as implicit bias, multiple intelligence, and trauma-informed learning. Fellows receive a combination of individual coaching, peer learning, and group exercises as they complete the readings and exercises in the CLARCC workbook. The capstone of the fellowship is the articulation of a personal contract—a promise to oneself for how to translate the learnings from the fellowship into action at USC.
“Our goal is to inspire and motivate the fellows to continue doing this work after they conclude their fellowship,” says Jonathan Cohen, JD, MPhil, professor of clinical population and public health sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC, director of policy engagement at the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health, and CLARCC faculty coordinator. “It’s has been extremely gratifying to see the enthusiasm and optimism of the CLARCC fellows and to see them feel and express that their ideas and passion matter.”
The fellowship which was launched in 2023 by the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine, is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and is one of several efforts organized by the Department’s Representation, Engagement, Development, and Impact (REDI) Council. To date, three cohorts have completed the fellowship, with 21 fellows from across the medical school having graduated from this program. A fourth cohort will complete the fellowship this spring, and the ensuing year will be dedicated to evaluating the program and disseminating it to a wider audience.
“It has been refreshing and inspiring to see our staff included in opportunities where they can share their experience and ideas,” says Karina Dominguez Gonzalez, DSW, MPH, CLARCC staff coordinator. “Their contributions have been meaningful and practical and have provided a different perspective from those of faculty and students—that has been missing in discussions about our department.”
During the first capstone meeting in August 2024, fellows from the first two cohorts met to discuss the progress on their CLARCC personal contracts and exchange feedback with REDI Council members. The meeting also served as a forum to identify opportunities to improve and expand the fellowship based on pre- and post-fellowship survey data. The organizers invited USC alumni Pablo Otaola, PhD to be the keynote speaker. Otaola received his Doctor of Education degree from USC Rossier School of Education.
“Dr. Otaola went above and beyond to support our event. Throughout the meeting, he took on the role of coaching and mentoring the fellows in addition to giving a speech. He shared his personal story in a way that was so profound and motivating and helped to anchor our whole conversation,” says Cohen.
“His participation was a full circle moment because previously, a member from our team had interviewed him while we were writing the CLARCC workbook on antiracist education. It was great for him to see the fruits of his contributions—at the same university he had attended, and also for our graduates to meet someone whose expertise had helped inform the workbook they had created.”
“Dr. Otaola connected everyone in the room and reminded us that although we’re working together towards something significant at the department level, showing up healthy and bringing your perspective is also important. When he started talking so intimately about his own life, he made us think about “what can I as an individual bring to the department?” and “what are my personal projects for the department?”—which are contributions that often get overlooked,” says Gonzalez.
“Our experience with this fellowship has inspired us to think about a greater range of possibilities and options for the future of this program,” says Cohen. “Moving forward we would like to invite alumni to engage and implement their capstone projects and to encourage other departments and schools to replicate CLARCC. These kinds of ideas would have been impossible to imagine when we were initially kicking off the fellowship, but now they feel real.”