Building Bridges

Students Building Bridges (SBB) and Mount Mary Building Bridges (MMBB) are programs designed to provide a safe and supportive environment where students, faculty and administration can participate in diversity -focused discussions and hands-on activities.

Both programs take a holistic approach to creating an inclusive environment and asserts that everyone is equally responsible for building a community that fosters the ability to achieve, create, succeed, and contribute.

Our Mission and Purpose
Our Mission is to provide an opportunity for the entire Mount Mary community to participate in programs designed to foster understanding and relationship building across all lines of diversity.

Participants are encouraged to accept differences as unique aspects of the individual and

• Share cultural differences
  
• Engage in activities from other cultures
• Challenge the comfort zone and be open to other points of view
• Embrace opportunities to develop deeper levels of understanding and critically reflect on their own beliefs
  

Students Building Bridges
The Students Building Bridges is a skill-building program designed to increase awareness among the student population of diversity issues and the impact both positive and negative treatment have on productivity and performance. The program is available to all students.

Mount Mary Building Bridges
The Mount Mary Building Bridges Program is designed specifically for faculty, staff and administration. An extension of our student population, this group faces the same challenges and barriers to fully realizing the potential of our community.

In their peer-to-peer professional contact or in mentoring and preparing young women for the future, this group is encouraged to consider how diversity affects individual community members.

How We Align With Our CORE Values

Competency
We are providing skills to our sisters and brothers to help them successfully interact with others on a global scale. Learning about each other is the key to our success as a society. We are committed to expanding our knowledge by engaging in open and honest discussions, presenting materials to challenge our thinking and to use activities that help us to get out of our comfort zones

Community
Our holistic approach to embracing differences and creating inclusion involves the entire Mount Mary community, without exception. Every member has value and will be respected as an individual.

Compassion
We encourage our community to share their experiences and to be supported in a safe and nurturing environment.

Commitment
We are devoted to the work of creating an inclusive community. Our work is to build an environment in which every person can continuously grow, positively contribute to society and feel connected to one another regardless of our differences.

How We Do What We Do

• Design customized classroom presentations
  
• Form a Diversity Committee
  
• Form a Building Bridges Advisory Board
  
• Develop Interactive Campus Communications
  
• Offer an annual Multicultural Faire
  
• Offer all-campus Diversity Questions/Answer sessions
• Offer smaller group sessions for discussion and behavior-based activities on topics such as
  • perceptions, perspectives and points of view
    
  • negative treatment and how it affects one's ability to learn, grow and perform
    
  • what exclusion looks like.
  • what exclusion feels like.
    
  • how to create inclusion
  • impact and benefits of an inclusive environment
    
  • challenges of being an "only"
    
  • stereotypes
    
  • our "blind side" to someone else's experiences
    
  • diversity within homogenous groups

For more information on the Building Bridges programs at Mount Mary College, contact George Ann Casper, (414) 258-4810, ext. 367, or stop by the Building Bridges office in the lower level of Notre Dame Hall, room 43.

Mount Mary College's Building Bridges programming is funded by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.