Critical Requirements
Faculty & Staff involved with
- Teaching
- Academic Advising
- Mentoring
are experienced or trained in making their practices inclusive, equitable, and accessible to persons with diverse backgrounds and identities.
Normal Expectations
- Provide training opportunities or support for students interested in developing DEI competencies.
- DEIR training is part of the evaluation criteria for personnel involved in teaching, academic, advising, or mentoring.
- Require DEI training for anyone serving on admissions and/or search committees.
Markers of Excellence
- Provide evidence that all constituents (faculty, staff, students)
- Understand elements of DEIR
- Know how these elements are operationalized within the department or program.
- Know how violations of these elements are acknowledged and addressed.
- Promote engagement by students, faculty, and staff in DEIR activities through rewards and performance evaluations.
Critical Requirements
Have a long-term strategy for recruitment & retention of
- Faculty
- Staff
- Students
from diverse backgrounds and underrepresented groups.
Normal Expectations
- Support professional development on culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogies and practices for faculty and staff who engage in searching, recruiting, and retaining individuals (faculty, staff, students) from underrepresented groups.
- Support faculty, staff, and student engagement with affinity organizations (e.g., NOBCChE, SACNAS, oSTEM, etc.) and interdisciplinary programs that prioritize topics related to DEIR and access.
- Support/Encourage faculty and staff interested in participation in a broader array of conferences and workshops that foster the success of students from underrepresented groups.
- Ensure that learning environments are inclusive for students
- Minimize stereotype threat and social stigma,
- Recognize and value contributions from all students, including those from underrepresented groups,
- Welcome and provide access for students with different abilities.
Markers of Excellence
- Use evidence-based practices to define strategies for recruitment of faculty, staff, and students from diverse backgrounds.
- Ensure working and learning environments are inclusive and accessible for faculty, staff, and students.
Critical Requirements
- Establish mechanisms for supporting learning & retention of chemistry majors from diverse backgrounds and underrepresented groups.
Normal Expectations
- Include aspects of DEIR in pedagogies used to train chemistry majors. Promote DEIR in their curriculum and highlight achievements and contributions of scientists from underrepresented groups and diverse backgrounds.
- Encourage the formation of student led groups that engage with DEIR activities and provide them with counter spaces.
Markers of Excellence
- Ensure that funds are available to provide access of opportunities for chemistry majors, including those from underrepresented groups.
- Establish metrics for evaluating the mechanisms for supporting learning and retention of chemistry majors from underrepresented groups.
Critical Requirements
- Have institutional, or departmental policies to investigate and address issues of:
- Discrimination,
- Bias,
- (Micro)aggressions,
- Prejudice, and
- Harassment.
Normal Expectations
- Have procedures and tools for observing & documenting inclusive classroom practices.
- Communicate and clearly articulate criteria for personnel whose evaluation include DEIR criteria.
- Track department demographics (faculty, staff, students).
- Conduct or participate in departmental/institutional climate surveys.
Markers of Excellence
- Make curricular goals related to DEIR available on a public forum. Include both
- Evaluation of curriculum and
- Revision of curriculum.
- Establish metrics for evaluating policies used to address issues of discrimination bias, (micro)aggressions, prejudice, and harassment in the working and learning environments.
- Communicate effective practices in faculty, staff, and student recruitment and retention.
- Have a strategic plan to communicate about and advance access to learning environments, including laboratories, for students with different abilities.
Critical Requirements
Normal Expectations
- Periodically review, revise, and communicate policies.
- Provide evidence that constituents perceive that the elements of DEIR have been operationalized in earnest and without patronage.
Markers of Excellence
- Has a standing committee that includes faculty, staff, students dedicated to DEIR issues, including accessibility.
- There is an evaluation of the program’s ability to achieve uniform and effective DEIR practices.
- There is a mechanism to receive student anonymous feedback on DEIR practices and accessibility.
- Ability and Ableism: Ability refers to one's physical and cognitive capabilities whereas ableism is a system that places value on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, favoring those with abilities and resulting prejudice or discrimination against people with disabilities.
- ABIOP: Analytical, Biochemistry, Inorganic, Organic, Physical Chemistry
- Access and accessibility: Access refers to the conditions that enable people with permanent or temporal disabilities to participate equitably in all societal activities whereas accessibility describes the degree to which one has access to all rights, benefits, and responsibilities in the living, working, and learning environments.
- Affinity group/organizations: A group or organization formed based on the shared ideas, interests, and goals of the individuals.
- Bias: Disproportionately favoring or not favoring a person, group, entity, or idea in a way that is unfair, prejudice, or discriminatory.
- Counter spaces: A system of support structures and resources, formal or informal, that support the psychological health of individuals from marginalized, minoritized, and disadvantaged groups.
- Culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogies: Culturally responsive pedagogies incorporate students’ identities and cultural references into the curriculum whereas inclusive pedagogies address students’ learning styles, abilities, and background.
- DEIR: Diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect.
- Discrimination: The mistreatment of individuals or groups of individuals based on their identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic background)
- Diversity: Representing individuals having a range of identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic background, body size)
- Equity: Ensuring that everyone in each environment has the same resources, opportunities, treatment, and experience
- Evidence-based practices: Strategies having a demonstrated efficacy and outcomes backed by empirical data
- Harassment: To inflict hostile, prejudice, or intimidating behaviors on another individual
- Inclusion: Ensuring that all individuals have access to a space or opportunity.
- Micro-aggression: subtle verbal, behavioral, or environmental instances that are directly or indirectly intended to be degrading, dismissive, intimidating, belittling, or contemptuous towards an individual or group, particularly those from a marginalized or disadvantaged group.
- Prejudice: A judgment or opinion about an individual or group that seeks to marginalize or cast aspersions on that individual or group based on their identity or other characteristics (e.g., academic pedigree or marital status).
- Respect: A positive or esteemed disposition towards another individual.
- Stereotype threat: An individual’s fear of confirming a negative belief about their identity regardless of if the belief is founded. Such fear often manifests through low performance, despite the person’s ability, and isolating behaviors.
- Underrepresented groups: A subset of the population whose presence or participation in a space is significantly smaller than the whole.
