Tina Chapman DaCosta Receives Isaac L. Jordan Sr. Staff Pluralism Award | May 2025
“She is the fiercest warrior of diversity, inclusion, and pluralism I have ever encountered, and I truly believe there is nobody better suited to receive this award.”
That’s what one student and colleague wrote in support of Tina Chapman DaCosta, director of RIT’s Diversity Theater and an RIT alumna. She is the recipient of the 2024-2025 Isaac L. Jordan Sr. Staff Pluralism Award, named in honor of RIT’s first chairman of the President’s Commission on Pluralism. It is given annually to staff members for their work in enhancing and promoting cultural awareness in a way that honor’s Jordan’s legacy.
Chapman DaCosta writes on advancing pluralism, “Just as freedom requires vigilance, sustainable pluralism demands continuous effort, advocacy, and strategic action. It’s the gratification of using your talents to help others and collaborating with them to make impactful programs and art.”
RIT’s Diversity Theater program is a campus wide program for faculty, staff and students. It is theater-based instruction, with workshops that use film, theatre, and vignettes as tools to promote engagement, understanding, and connection.
Chapman DaCosta is a connector and a collaborator. Over the past eight years, she has created partnerships between Diversity Theater and academic and business units across campus. Among them: the College of Science, with the College of Science Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence Leadership team, NTID, the Office of Faculty Affairs and she says a partnership is developing with the School of Performing Arts and with Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.
Chapman DaCosta collaborated with the Division of Student Affairs to develop and deliver the “Brick by Brick Community Building Film and Workshop” for the RIT 365 freshmen first year experiences. It became the highest rated RIT 365 course and is now offered for all new freshman, reaching an average of 3,000 new freshman annually, roughly 15,000 to date. Chapman DaCosta says 80% of students agreed the experience helped them achieve a greater understanding of other viewpoints and became more aware of their personal assumptions, biases or interpretations over the past 4-years.
Diversity Theater has designed and presented workshops for the Board of Trustees, the Associate Provost, RIT’s AWARE-AI NSF Research Traineeship Program Winter Symposium and the Academic Affairs annual professional development workshop.
She produced and directed two award winning films in partnership with RIT that are used in many of the presentations, Brick by Brick and DEAR ELEANOR. The latter won Best Score and was nominated for Best Editing at the Diversity in Cannes Film Showcase at the Festival de Cannes, in Cannes France. She is proud that 80% of the crew members who worked on those films are current or former RIT students.
The films are a tool that encourage open dialogue. Another person who wrote a letter of recommendation stated those films help set Diversity Theater apart.
“The film BRICK by BRICK, with accompanying workshop, has been presented for the RIT Board of Trustees, the President’s Cabinet, RIT 365 classes, various colleges and at fourteen national and international film festivals, is the winner of Best Short at the San Diego Black Film Festival 2020 and nominated for Best USA Diaspora Short, Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) 2020.” They continued, “The second installment, DEAR ELEANOR followed with even greater success, including 6 Film Festival awards and official selections.”
On receiving the award, Chapman DaCosta says she is thankful and grateful to be recognized but points out she is one of many in a long line of advocates for love and light. “We have to stay vigilant to support one another, to see one another, to recognize one another so that all can feel included, so that all can feel a part of this beloved community.”