A welcome message from the CDEI Chair, Liz Litzler, PhD.

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I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve the ASEE community as this year’s Chair of the Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (CDEI). While I’ve been an ASEE member since 2005, and have been working on improving equity in STEM via my roles at the University of Washington Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM equity since 2003, I’ve only more recently become involved with CDEI.  We have an historic opportunity to advance racial justice in engineering education.  We need to take it upon ourselves to keep the momentum going, and while we all need to engage in the work, white people like myself need to take on both our own personal growth work and also become stronger anti-racism advocates in our local contexts. CDEI is here to help you do both of those things-we even wrote a letter to help you.

 

I have a few personal goals for CDEI this year:

1. Focus on anti-racism and racial justice work within CDEI and ASEE, to keep the Black Lives Matter momentum going. I expect that many of our committees will be engaged in helping to make this happen.
2. Increase transparency and communication around the work of the Commission.  What that will look like might morph over time, but we’ll start by sharing updates from our executive committee meetings as regular blog posts, utilizing the blog for newsletter-like content including scholar spotlights (we can spotlight you!), and using the new ASEE HUB (rollout early August) to communicate with each other and have discussions.

 

We welcome you to be a part of this year’s initiatives. CDEI has three levels of membership: Standing members/Executive committee, Delegates, and Friends. In total, we are 341 people strong! Collectively, this group could have a massive impact on engineering education if we all make commitments to action.

1. Standing members are appointed by the ASEE board. Standing members and committee leaders meet with the CDEI chairs team monthly during our executive committee meetings.  We have 22 Standing members/ex-officio/committee leads.
2. Delegates serve as much needed liaisons between our committee and their divisions, sharing with us about the DEI-focused work of their divisions, and sharing our CDEI resources and information back to the division. We have 44 division delegates.
3. Friends include anyone who wants to stay informed about CDEI activities and/or contribute their energy to our committees. We have 275 Friends of the Commission.

 

We currently have seven working committees and we encourage you to join one (or more!) to contribute your knowledge and skills to advance DEI work: Awards, Communications; Conference Planning; Partnerships, Policy & Letters; Professional Development; Strategic Planning & Assessment. Our committees are a great way to expand your professional network in meaningful ways because you will be working closely with a small group over a year or more. Please fill out our annual membership survey to let us know how you want to be involved with CDEI this year.

 

Our committees already have some amazing work happening and I can’t wait to see what they accomplish this year! In addition to the highlights of their existing work below, I will be asking each committee how they can contribute to my goals of keeping the anti-racism momentum alive within ASEE and increasing transparency of CDEI.

     *Awards will be launching our new Constituent Award;

     *Communications is putting extra effort into our social media presence, updating our website, blogging, and introducing spotlight posts to highlight the work of CDEI members and others         advancing DEI;

     *Conference planning is learning from our Montreal virtual pivot to see how we can be even more inclusive and effective in future conferences;

     *Partnerships is focusing on advancing our internal ASEE partnerships by creating a delegate toolkit;

     *Policy and Letters will continue writing Champions letters and other policy responses to questions from the ASEE board;

     *Professional Development will continue their virtual workshops, providing PD content at the annual conference, and curating resources for DEI trainings; and

     *Strategic Planning & Assessment will help us finalize our strategic framework and new bylaws, and set up mechanisms for improved reporting on CDEI progress.

 

We extend our gratitude to former Standing Members who are now our CDEI Friends including: Becky Bates (departing past‐chair), and Daryl Chubin (Strategic Planning & Assessment co-lead). We also extend a warm welcome to new executive team members: Jeremi London (incoming‐chair), Karin Jensen (Standing Member at Large), ETC liaison Gary Steffen (who transitioned from our Board liaison), and our new liaison to the ASEE Board, Brian Self. And finally, I’m grateful for the mentorship and amazing amounts of work that Susan Walden put in last year as chair. I only hope that I can live up to her leadership. Big virtual, consensual hugs all around (I’m a hugger).

 

I hope that you make a commitment to your own anti-racist personal and organizational growth  and will consider contributing your talent to the work of the CDEI to move ASEE forward. I stand ready (with the amazing chairs team) to work with you in solidarity to advance racial justice in ASEE.  You can reach all three of us (myself, Susan, and Jeremi) at CDEIChairs@asee.org with any questions or comments.

 

In Solidarity,

Liz Litzler