Curriculum Infusion
Overview
- Many in the health promotion field are familiar with the curriculum infusion model as it has been applied to the area of alcohol and other drugs (AOD).
- Sexual assault as a topic for infusion presents another opportunity for education, awareness, and advocacy regarding a serious risk for college students.
- The challenge is to communicate to faculty, from a variety of academic areas, how they can be involved in a meaningful way.
Hooking Faculty
- An important part of getting faculty buy-in is personalizing and localizing the topic.
- Campus professionals need to make information personal and meaningful for their faculty by using local data and references.
- Most campuses have few reported cases of sexual assault. Using estimates of unreported cases can make an impact.
- Using AOD-related data, while educating about the connection been AOD and sexual assault, can promote additional understanding of the issues and risks.
Ways to Infuse
- Giving faculty a variety of ways to infuse information about sexual assault supports the different teaching styles and interests of the faculty.
- The social and health sciences and women's and gender studies are academic areas particularly interested in the topic of sexual assault. It is useful to contact faculty in these areas to determine how they might be including the topic. In addition, this contact presents an opportunity for those most vested in prevention efforts to offer assistance, provide information, and referral for faculty who may be gaining new interest.
Ways that faculty can infuse sexual assault as a topic in their classes:
- Conduct specific lectures and discussions that address the issue.
- Use the teachable moment when the campus experiences a high profile rape or sexual assault.
- Assign research and position papers and other related projects.*
- Offer service learning opportunities on campus and in the community.
- Faculty can be involved in additional ways, including making referrals for students who have been assaulted, sponsoring a student advocacy group, or working with a community organization or coalition.
*An example of a class project comes from Ivy Tech State College in Gary, Indiana. The professional nursing issues class project involved planning and implementing a half-day campus forum addressing the risks of alcohol and other drug abuse and sexual assault.
Resources
In general, resources that deal with curriculum infusion of AOD topics can be useful when applied to the sexual assault area:
