PSU Magazine Spring 1993

Lieberman leads a workshop on communications skills for managers at Tektronix Inc. I encourage a person with cultural dif– ferences to be part of a team? How can I encourage myself to look at what that person can contribute to make the team stronger?" Lieberman's pre entation to the Oregon Council for Hispanic Advance– ment earned her an invitation to serve on the organization's board of directors. She accepted without hesitation. "Hispanics are the largest-growing under-represented culture in Oregon," Lieberman says. "I enjoy this work because my educational background and position at PSU allows me to give them access to strategies for intercul– tural communication that they can implement immediately." Miltie Vegalloyd, chair of the OCHA, says Lieberman's involvement has raised the sophistication level of workshops and conferences the organization sponsors. "She's made a tremendous difference," Vegalloyd says. "Devorah's contributions have raised 18 PSU expectations about the quality of the workshops we do." In addition to board member hip, where Lieberman says a goal is to examine how the board's own occupa– tional diversity might be u ed to promote better business and Hispanic interaction, Lieberman also conducts speech and communication workshops at the group's Oregon Leadership Institute. The Institute, which consists of classes on one Saturday per month for a period of six months, offers a curriculum of esteem-building and employment-related workshop for Hispanic youth. "The question, 'Why don't these various cultural groups just assimilate?' does come up," Lieberman says. After all, the original goal, the melting pot concept for America was assimilation– that everyone would look, act and think the same. "The problem," Lieber– man says, "is that it didn't happen that way. That's why we had the riots in Los Angeles; the Nee-Nazis in Portland. "Rather than dealing with a dream that didn't work out, why not deal with reality and work for all cultures living together, recognizing the strengths of each heritage," she asks. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction Lieberman gets from her work is seeing a project her students have initiated take hold and light a spark that others are willing to fan. At Stephenson Elementary School, the diversity puppet show, and the responses it generated from first graders, so impressed teacher Jan Struk that she applied for, and received, a joint Portland Public Schools and Portland Teachers' Association grant to continue the idea. Now first graders are writing diversity-training puppet show scripts and making their own puppets. "Although we've have interns and class projects originating from other colleges, the level of commitment PSU made to this project was unusual," Struk say . "Professor Lieberman invested nine graduate students in one first-grade cla . "I'd say the inve tment paid off." D (Eva Hunter, a Portland freelance writer, is a regular contributor to PSU Magazine.)