The SILS Diversity Committee met on Tuesday, March 27th. Topics on the agenda are as follows.
- The committee had a conversation involving several items concerning the Diversity Certificate that students can earn:
- Brainstormed for future guest speakers, webinars, and panels to organize
- Discussed ways to bring student awareness to the importance and advantage of the certificate, such as a diversity component in boot camp,
- Updated resources on the Diversity Certificate Sakai page
- Began discussion on the best platform for Diversity Certificate candidates to communicate with each other (most likely a Facebook page, or the Sakai forum
- Pronouns have been removed from the working on the certificate itself
- It has been confirmed that students can change their names on class rosters through Connect Carolina. Instructions on how to do so: When you log in, look near the bottom of the page under the “Personal Information” section. There is a link called “Names”. Once you click on that, you can add a new name and set it to be your preferred name. Your preferred name should show up on class rosters.
- The committee worked to update the SILS diversity statement. The revised statement must now be voted on by staff and faculty. While refreshing the statement is a start, the committee recognizes that integrating the commitment into the daily activities of SILS will require more than changing language.
- The committee continued the discussion of best practices for faculty to include diversity statements in their syllabi. There is the possibility of sharing a short article from two professors at Brown University on a simple strategy for faculty to include diversity statements in their syllabi. The committee also discussed the findings of Stephen Krueger (MSLS ’17) his masters paper titled, “Diversity and Inclusion Education at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill”, where he examined 115 syllabi of SILS courses for evidence of diversity and inclusion and found them to be lacking.
- The committee discussed a list of avenues for advertising in order to reach underrepresented communities when there are open faculty positions.