Newsletter Article

Updates from the Diversity Steering Committee

The Diversity Steering Committee (DSC) is an organization of graduate students and faculty members that oversees events and diversity-related initiatives within the Psychology department. This year, the DSC pushed forward several new projects and initiatives. Here are two highlights.

Biannual climate survey sent to the Psychology department’s graduate students

Beginning a new biannual tradition, the DSC collaborated with the Graduate Program Action Committee (GPAC) to produce our second survey assessing our graduate students’ experiences of the current culture around academics and diversity in the psychology department. The goal of this second survey was to understand how students’ satisfaction with the department and their experiences within the department (positive and negative) relating to diversity may have changed since our last survey conducted in Spring 2016. DSC and GPAC plan to summarize and present results, along with suggestions for improvement, during the 2018 school year.

Initiating a Diversity Science Speaker Series

This year DSC members voted to initiate a Diversity Science Speaker Series aimed at inviting out diverse researchers from across the country who research topics related to diversity. Our goal with this speaker series is to engage the UW community with diversity research and bring exciting scientists to our campus to meet with scientists and share how their experiences with diversity have informed their work. Our first selected speaker is Valerie Purdie Greenaway from Columbia University. Please stay tuned for more information!

Frances.Aunon   Adriana.Germano
Frances Aunon   Adriana Germano

We also sadly report that Frances Aunon (Adult Clinical Area with Jane Simoni)’s time as a DSC co-chair is coming to an end this year. Frances served for the past two years as a DSC co-chair. We continue to look forward to seeing what DSC can achieve under the continued leadership of Adriana Germano (Social Psychology & Personality Area with Sapna Cheryan) and our incoming graduate co-chair.

The DSC looks forward to supporting graduate students in exploring diversity science in their coursework, research, teaching, and other domains of engagement within and outside the UW. Please contact us at psychdsc@uw.edu for more information.

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