Focusing on assets: action research for an inclusive and diverse workplace

Action research facilitates the development of potential solutions so that communities can develop native approaches to strengthening their own communities. Through the use of action research, the workplace becomes a location of opportunity to create social change in ways that strengthen diversity and inclusion. Inspired by diverse economies scholarship, this action research intervention was aimed at valuing and strengthening diversity and inclusion at a small rural community college. A starting point for the project was the recognition that within the workplace of a community college there are multiple forms of work being performed and associated ways of being that fall outside of the traditional identity of a waged worker being paid for services rendered. This chapter describes the context and process of using an assets-based approach to strengthen diversity and enhance inclusion in a community college setting where a shortage of resources might seem to preclude such work from occurring.