Climate, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Steering Committee

The Department of Chemistry is committed to creating an environment where every member of our community is valued, feels a sense of belonging, and has the opportunity to thrive as their authentic selves. We embrace diverse identities, cultural backgrounds, and viewpoints, and we are committed to creating a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment that provides equitable opportunities for all our community members. We recognize diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential to all aspects of department governance and critical to reaching our full potential as world-class leaders in scholarly research, education, and service.

To be a world-class leader in scholarly research, education, and service that draws from and supports members from around the world.

1. The Department of Chemistry believes that diversity, equity, and inclusion are critically important. We recognize diversity to include a wide range of individuals with a multitude of personal experiences and backgrounds; this includes but is not limited to individuals of varying racial and ethnic identity (including Black, Hispanic & Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islanders), gender identity, LGBTQIA+ status, disability status, nationality, religious affiliation, age, immigration status (including DREAMers), and socioeconomic background. We believe that through a celebration of the whole individual, we can cultivate a community in which all of our students, staff, and faculty thrive.
2. We acknowledge the past and present social injustices, exclusionary practices, trauma, microaggressions, prejudice, and harms that the Department has perpetuated, which have engendered inequitable opportunities within our community. We commit to ongoing reflection to identify and address these and other emergent structural violence.
   Goals:
   • Set specific, measurable, and transparent timelines to increase the representation of minoritized groups in all positions within the Department while monitoring these efforts with concrete metrics and reporting them in a way that is easily accessible to the community.
   • Establish teaching and learning practices to address conscious and unconscious bias, racism, ableism, sexism, and other forms of oppression to shape a more equitable learning environment for all students.
   • Develop and motivate participation in educational opportunities relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These include bystander, anti-racism, aggression, and bias training for Departmental members.
   • Commit to resourcing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and affinity organizations, such as Catalyst, Chemistry Opportunities (CHOPs), National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), Queer+ in Chem (QiC), The Benzine, and Women in Chemistry (WIC).
   • Incentivize all research groups to draft group expectations documents to clarify policies such as work expectations, research milestones, conflict resolution, vacation, etc.
   • Incentivize participation in DEI work by including it in job descriptions for explicit recognition and compensation
   • Launch programs to recognize and reward efforts that enhance the community’s understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
   • Build a well-advertised and maintained support structure to provide resources to address health, wellness, and family needs. The primary focus is to support the unique needs and backgrounds of new arrivals, graduate students, and international students.
   • Design a sustainable structure to amplify and respond to the voices of minoritized persons within the Department.
   • Create clear feedback mechanisms to report observed and experienced acts of bias, hostility, harassment, and aggression. These mechanisms should comprise various public and anonymous channels so that the individuals who take these steps are supported and free from persecution.
   • Dismantle policies that lead to systemic inequalities within the Department while crafting new policies, as necessary, to acknowledge and combat existing bias.
   • Consult with Department and campus-specific experts and advisors on diversity, equity, and inclusion towards advancing and broadening this document’s vision, mission, goals, and actionable items.
3. We commit to creating a safe social climate free of injustice, exclusion, aggression, harassment, and prejudice for all community members, and we pledge to use open and transparent communication to help dismantle these oppressive institutional elements.
4. We believe that all individuals in the Department contribute to its climate and are accountable for their impact.

Our Shared Future: We acknowledge the circumstances that led to the forced removal of the Ho-Chunk people from Teejop and honor their history of resistance and resilience. Please see Chancellor Blank’s statement for more information.

Charter