The Diversity Steering Committee is an umbrella organization of predominantly graduate students and faculty and staff members that oversees diversity-related events and initiatives within the psychology department.
For 2020-2021, faculty and graduate executive board members were Dr. Yuichi Shoda, Noah Triplett, Dannielle Whiley, and Kim Bourne. For 2022-2024, the graduate co-chairs were Rachel Song, Z Ferguson, and Jovani Azpeitia. For 2024-2026, the graduate student co-chairs currently are Jovani Azpeitia, Ariel Xinyue Li, and Carol Lu.
We consider human diversity as referring to groups of people who experience themselves as differing on one or more of a variety of dimensions including, but not limited to, race, culture, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, and disability status.
Our overall goal is to encourage and foster the growth and maintenance of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive psychology community by:
- Supporting members of the Psychology Department with marginalized identities and fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for them
- Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within the field of psychology as a whole by conducting outreach efforts with underrepresented minority groups
- Addressing the concerns of members of the Psychology Department on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in enrollment, retention, and curriculum, as well as larger societal matters
- Encouraging and supporting research on diversity science
- Overseeing the graduate-level Diversity Science Specialization
We have numerous ongoing projects, see the DSC’s Projects tab. If you would like to learn more, you are welcome to attend our meetings, and join the listserv. Please email us for more information.
Diversity Science
A comprehensive understanding of human behavior requires examination of the meaningful differences between and among people across the diversity of human experience. These differences are often rooted in current and historical experiences of oppression and prejudice that have disproportionately devalued people of different identities including, but not exclusive to, races, cultures, ethnicities, sexual orientations, genders, gender-identifications, abilities, and socioeconomic statuses. The goal of the Diversity Science Specialization is to inform our understanding of human behavior and develop competency in the following areas:
- The unique and intersecting psychologies and perspectives of underrepresented groups.
- Psychological processes that contribute to the development of identity and bias.
- Exploring, identifying, and questioning biases within our own research and the field at large.
- The development of psychological services and empirical investigations that are applicable to and implementable in marginalized communities.