DEI Roadmap
Department of Immunology Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Roadmap
Our DEI Strategic Plan
Beginning in fall of 2020, the University of Washington Department of Immunology embarked upon a journey to develop a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Roadmap. This DEI strategic plan articulates the department’s goals for making changes that build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community. The events of summer 2020, particularly the murder of George Floyd, prompted many institutions to develop such documents, many of which were written by leadership, either unprompted or in response to community questioning and outcry. Our document is the culmination of an entirely community-led process. Through surveys, discussions, and events, community members contributed their thoughts, ideas, and hearts to the building of this roadmap.
The living document that has emerged describes projects, initiatives, and programs that seek to actuate change and reach the DEI goals identified by the community. Goals are presented as five themes in DEI, under which specific action items are detailed. Each action item includes a plan for realization and mechanisms to ensure accountability. This document will serve as a collective commitment to making real changes that build an academic culture in which all persons are respected and can thrive. The roadmap is also just the beginning – this document will be reviewed annually and will guide department priorities to grow along with our amazing, diverse, and vibrant Immunology community.
THEME I: Cultivate a respectful and inclusive climate that promotes diversity and fosters success for all constituents.
Increase diversity of seminar speakers and use our seminar series to showcase DEI content. A seminar series with speakers and content that reflects our commitment to DEI is important to build an inclusive community. In 2022 and beyond, we will ensure a 50:50 speaker gender balance and a speaker list that is diverse as regards underrepresented minority (URM) status, age, and scientific discipline. The seminar speaker selection committee will be responsible for soliciting suggestions for diverse speakers and ensuring diversity in the final list. Also, 1-2 seminar slots will be devoted yearly to DEI content.
Advertisement and Evaluation: Yearly, the Assistant to the Chair will track metrics of diversity in the speaker list for gender and URM status. These data will be reported out at the retreat and in the DEI newsletter. The DEI Committee will plan and organize DEI-related events that take place during seminar time slots. These events will be advertised and listed on the DEI website, in department-wide emails, and in the DEI newsletter.
Create a peer mentorship/partnership program for staff, students, and postdocs. This activity builds on successful peer-peer mentoring available to new graduate students to support diverse community members. Beginning in 2022 Fall Quarter, the DEI Committee will organize a system by which interested individuals can sign up annually for a peer-peer mentor/partner relationship, on a voluntary basis. The Committee will provide a rubric for realistic expectations in peer-peer interactions. The DEI Committee will be advised by the Graduate Program Advisor (GPA) based on experience with the current student program. The DEI Committee Chair will coordinate matching.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Assistant to the Chair will work with the DEI Committee to survey participants and collect data on program value annually. There will be a report out on these data at the retreat and in the DEI newsletter. The program will be advertised at the retreat and on the DEI website.
Request that each lab have an annual discussion of professionalism and respect in the workplace. This activity ensures that DEI is part of the discussion in every lab. In Summer 2022, PIs will be provided with a sample document that articulates expectations for professionalism and respect, which they can adjust to their own needs. Each PI will be required to conduct a yearly review of their lab-specific document and a discussion using a format of their choice, aiming to retain the document as a shared, living entity. This document will be provided to any new lab member as part of onboarding. The DEI Committee will support faculty in developing their document and holding discussions. Affiliate faculty will be strongly encouraged and those who have Immunology students will be required to participate. There will also be a once-yearly discussion of a department-wide document at an administrative staff meeting and a faculty meeting.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The DEI Committee will oversee compliance, with the Chair and the Assistant to the Chair providing yearly reminders at the start of the academic year to faculty. This activity will be described on the DEI website.
THEME II: Recruit, support, and retain students, postdocs, faculty, and staff who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, first-gen, women, or a member of any other underrepresented group.
Enhance our strategies for recruiting URM students, postdocs, and staff. The DEI Committee will oversee substantial efforts to enhance and re-imagine trainee and staff recruitment. We will ensure that all points of entry are inclusive and inviting to URMs, especially graduate admissions and hiring, by reevaluating our website content and recruitment materials. All evaluators will be trained annually in DEI norms and implicit biases in admissions or hiring. We will reach out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (https://sites.ed.gov/whhbcu/one-hundred-and-five-historically-black-colleges-and-universities/), Tribal Colleges (http://www.aihec.org/index.html) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (https://sites.ed.gov/hispanic-initiative/hispanic-serving-institutions-hsis/) and encourage and promote attendance at diversity sessions at all major conferences to help increase the number of URM applications. For these and all related outreach activities, we will develop a diversity outreach toolkit that can be used to advertise our programs or open positions through a DEI lens. To increase our opportunities for URMs, we will work to identify donors for URM-focused fellowships. For staff hiring, we will use the UW HR Staff Diversity Hiring Toolkit and Inclusive Hiring resources to create job ads that are more inclusive. This work will begin immediately in Spring 2022, with the DEI Committee Chair forming a taskforce to work on these issues.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The DEI Committee will work with the Assistant to the Chair, the Chair of the Graduate Admissions Committee, and the Department Administrator to track admissions and hiring of diverse trainees and staff. Specifically, UW data sources will be engaged to create diversity profiles that include URM/gender. Feedback from applicants that did not accept offers of admission or employment will be collected to allow for continuous improvement. Data on constituent diversity will be presented at the retreat and in the DEI newsletter.
Increase diversity in the faculty. Increasing diversity in our faculty is a critical goal for building a vibrant academic community. To be effective long term, we need to ensure our pipeline for future faculty is well developed: this includes outreach to up-and-coming URMs, using the outreach toolkit that everyone can use when they do invited talks or conferences (like above), and targeting HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic Serving Institutions. To be successful, we will need commitment from all current faculty who vote on faculty hires and promotions, with leadership from the Chair. The taskforce created above will also work on this aspect of hiring, using resources that have recently been successfully leveraged to hire diverse faculty members in other departments or units and University-wide resources, such as the Handbook of Best Practices for Faculty Searches.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Department Chair and the Assistant to the Chair will track hiring of diverse faculty. As for other personnel, feedback from applicants that did not accept offers of employment will be collected to inform improvement in hiring processes. Data on faculty diversity will be presented at the retreat and in the DEI newsletter. As UW is a nationally recognized institution that recruits talented scholars from across the country, our faculty racial and ethnic diversity should ultimately mirror that of the general US population.
Support URM or otherwise diverse undergraduates in summer internship programs. This activity will improve opportunities for diverse undergraduates to study in immunology and related fields. The UW STAR program, LSAMP, and Rainer Scholars programs have already been engaged to bring URM students to our labs for summer research experiences. Specific outreach events that are already planned or will occur in the future will serve diverse undergraduates and make the UW, Seattle, and national community aware of research opportunities in our department.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Assistant to the Chair, the DEI Committee, and the Outreach Committee will oversee advertising. Research opportunities for diverse undergraduates will be posted on our website.
THEME III: Provide community members with the training and tools to appreciate and value diversity.
Provide mandatory training for personnel to identify actions that are not inclusive or are harmful. The department recognizes that training every community member in identifying and resolving exclusionary behaviors is an important step towards fostering a community to appreciate and value diversity. The following programs that are already in place or will be put into place as indicated serve to provide an initial training in this regard to the indicated position:
- Faculty: UW Medicine EDI Faculty Development training through the Office of Healthcare Equity – a mandatory, day-long DEI training workshop
- Student: UAW provided training
- Postdocs: UAW provided training
- Staff: staff will be required to attend the same UAW training available for students and postdocs, upon hire or by Winter 2023 for existing staff
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Assistant to the Chair will record participation of all department members in DEI training sessions. The Chair will contact faculty members and staff who do not meet these requirements, and faculty members will be contacted about non-compliant trainees and staff scientists and provided information from the DEI Committee for how to encourage their trainees to participate in these training sessions.
Incorporate discussions of contributions made by historical and contemporary scientists of color to the field of Immunology in our curriculum. The Department Chair will create a Curriculum Committee that is responsible for supporting students as well as guiding the curriculum of immunology courses. The Curriculum Committee will build a requirement into all immunology curricula for professors to include within their teaching discussions contributions made by historical and contemporary scientists of color to the field of Immunology. This requirement will be applied in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Curriculum Committee will survey students at the end of each academic year to determine whether faculty members met these curriculum goals. This data will be reviewed by the Committee and Department Chair and discussed at a faculty meeting. Feedback and improvements will be considered and implemented in subsequent academic years.
THEME IV: Develop outreach to external communities to support DEI in biomedical sciences.
Create a centralized resource for department members to learn about outreach opportunities. The department currently participates in a number of outreach activities, but the community has expressed a need for increasing the ease of learning about these available opportunities with the hope that improving communication about outreach opportunities will facilitate increased participation. By Fall 2022, a webpage on the departmental website will be created that has information about current outreach events, with links and information to get involved with specific outreach opportunities provided. The initial webpage will be created by the Assistant to the Chair in consultation with the Outreach Committee.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The webpage will be updated by the Outreach Committee each time they meet. A link to the outreach webpage will be found in the Immunology weekly newsletter.
Create relationships with community institutions, including K-12 schools. We hope to strengthen our outreach relationships with K-12 schools by selecting new outreach events with K-12 schools and planning for annual participation at these events. The Outreach Committee will select 1-3 new K-12 outreach programs to engage with and contact the K-12 school liaisons of these programs by Fall 2022. Building a strong rapport with these institutions will take consistent participation from department members over the next few years. Upcoming outreach events will be communicated through the centralized outreach webpage and highlighted in the Immunology weekly newsletter.
Advertisement and Evaluation: The Outreach Committee will collect data on community member participation (hours volunteered, position within department, overall satisfaction with event, how they learned about event) by survey following outreach events. Data on outreach participation will be included in the annual DEI newsletter and presented at the annual retreat.
THEME V: Develop a sense of community and belonging within the department through gatherings and activities.
Create a Social Committee to organize social activities and strengthen DEI. To foster an inclusive environment and a sense of community within the department, we will create and maintain a Social Committee as a DEI subcommittee. The Social Committee will be responsible for planning and coordinating departmental events and social activities that encourage interactions between members of different labs and staff in a fun, positive, and respectful atmosphere. The Social Committee will be created by the end of June 2022, with the hope of having the first social event by Fall 2022 to welcome incoming graduate students. The opportunity to volunteer for the Social Committee (as a DEI subcommittee) will be advertised in the Immunology weekly newsletter beginning Winter Quarter 2022. The goal is to have 4-5 volunteers by the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, in addition to a Chair-appointed faculty member, so there can be an initial meeting to discuss organization and future events.
Advertisement and Evaluation: We will announce the creation of the Social Committee and the names of volunteers in the Immunology weekly newsletter, through departmental emails, and flyers posted in common spaces.
Hold a yearly Department Olympics in the summer or at the retreat. The Social Committee will plan an annual Department Olympics, and this event will be held each year either during the summer or at the departmental retreat. The Department Olympics will be planned each year 1-2 months in advance, with the goal of having the first event at the Fall 2022 UW Immunology Retreat. The timing of future events can be determined by the Social Committee and the Chair of the Department.
Advertisement and Evaluation: After each Department Olympics, an anonymous survey will be sent to get feedback on the event, including what was positive and areas for improvement. The Social Committee will incorporate the feedback when planning the following event. We will include pictures and highlights of the Department Olympics in the Immunology weekly newsletter, as well as the Immunology annual newsletter, and the DEI newsletter.
