Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Professional Development/Enhancing Teaching and Learning

An essential ingredient in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy is the need to provide regular professional development for our entire campus community. The following opportunities took place in fall 2017 or are ongoing: 

  • To address the university-wide need for training and development, ODEI has appointed Allyson Livingstone as the inaugural director of diversity, equity and inclusion education, training and development (DEIETD). She will be responsible for a myriad of training and development services for faculty, staff and students; including, a) search and selection training for faculty, b) facilitation and dialogue training (with an eye toward creating and sustaining an intergroup dialogue program), c) multicultural curriculum transformation, d) training in culturally sensitive pedagogies, and e) cooperative training opportunities with the ombuds or HR on trainings related to conflict resolution, campus-wide equity compliance and the like. 

  • In collaboration with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the CDO has offered a yearlong Faculty Diversity Series focusing on foundational concepts in diversity, equity and inclusion. These workshops have faculty engage with these concepts and with one another through analysis of scholarly texts. Topics included: privilege, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, White fragility, colorism, rankism and allyship. Future workshops through CTL would involve the director of DETD and the CDO, where needed. 

  • Following conversations with the Hiatt Career Center and the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public life, ODEI will begin undertaking the work of the #TheDialogues workshops as well as the DEIS Impact week beginning in the summer of 2018. 

  • Working with the provost’s office and the office of the dean of arts and sciences, the CDO distributed over $18,000 in grants to faculty who wished to pursue diversity- related scholarship and presentations for the campus. Topics include: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexual Violence; Inequality and the Study of Antiquity; and Hidden Figures: Women of NASA, Yesterday and Today. 

  • The dean of arts and sciences provided or sponsored professional development opportunities, including sponsoring participation of early career tenure-track faculty of color in the Faculty Success Program put on by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, as well as creating and distributing videos of students of color and international students raising issues of concern within the classroom (including a framing video introduction by the CDO). 

  • The provost’s research fund supported the work of Carina Ray (AAAS) and David Engerman (HIST) to develop and fund a pilot Early Career Faculty Mentoring Program for faculty in History and the African Diaspora Cluster to start in AY 2018. 

  • The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life hosted Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw as the latest recipient of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize. Crenshaw is a professor of law at UCLA and at the Columbia School of Law and is a groundbreaking scholar of intersectionality who pioneered the intellectual movement known as “Critical Race Theory.” She was in residence October 23-25, 2017. 

  • ODEI offered a four-part, month-long staff and faculty development workshop called “Intergroup Dialogues: Working for Racial Justice” during the summer of 2018. This series of workshops engaged 35 staff and faculty in their own racial identity development as well as ways to dismantle systemic racism in their own spheres of influence. ODEI plans to offer this series each semester. 

  • ODEI, in partnership with the Office of Communications and Zanefa Walsh from Student Affairs, is leading a Diversity Communications Action Group for staff members who want to discuss challenges, opportunities, best practices and questions around diversity, equity and inclusion-related communications. More than 20 staff from across the university signed up for the initial session, which was held in July 2018. Additional sessions will take place during the fall semester.