CDEI October Update from the Chair

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Hello dear CDEI stakeholders,
I voted! Did you vote? I hope that you are exercising your right to choose your local, state, and national leaders. In doing so, we can make a difference.

This month’s CDEI hot tip comes from CDEI member Karin Jensen who brought to our attention the work of her colleague from the University of Illinois, Professor Tiffani Williams.
1) Pay attention to the language we use to describe groups of people in our daily communications and in research. Be mindful of how groups choose to describe themselves and do not create new labels for groups that they themselves do not use. Learn more here.
2) Do something: Carefully evaluate the language you use to describe groups of people and reach out to groups to understand how they identify themselves. Instead of creating lists of “good” and “bad” words and labels, carefully consider the context and implications of words and labels.

Many of our seven committees have been busy with CDEI work, and so have the chairs. Before I get into the updates, I want to remind you all of our quarterly CDEI meeting which all members (standing members, delegates, and friends) are encouraged to attend. You’ll find the meeting links posted in our group on the ASEE Hub.

• Thursday November 5th at 9am PT/10am MT/11am CT/12pm ET
• Friday November 6th at 12pm PT/1pm MT/ 2pm CT/3pm ET
  (We offer two times to maximize participation; Content will be the same across the meetings, so you only need to attend one of them)

Here are the updates:

Chairs Updates: We have a new Member-at-Large: Sharan Asundi (Old Dominion University), and a new MIND Representative, Henriette Burns (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville). We made a call for nominations to the whole CDEI community to fill the member-at-large position. We welcome them to the team and look forward to their contributions. We have almost everyone (missing about 53 people) imported into our CDEI group in the Hub, so we’ll start using that for communications. The Chairs worked with the Policy and Letters committee members on a response to the Executive Order; this will be published in Prism. If you haven’t seen the ASEE Board’s response– please check it out -it is a really strong policy statement!

Awards: This committee is underway. We will be rolling out our new ASEE Constituent Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award this year in addition to our Best DEI Paper award–so there will be lots to do on this committee! They are sharing the 2020 Best DEI paper information with communications to get more visibility for the work of these great scholars.

Communications: We now have two Scholar Spotlights posted on the blog.  Check out the first Spotlight of Dr. Homero Murzi and our second spotlight on Tony E. Butterfield. Our CDEI Blog is going to be busy—check it out when you want to know what is going on with the Commission.

Conference Planning: Conference planning committee will be meeting in early November. We don’t yet know if ASEE will be in-person or virtual, but we are going to start some planning anyway. We hear that ASEE will make the decision about virtual after January 2021.

Partnerships: No updates this month.

Policy & Letters: This committee worked on a response to the recent Executive Order extending the ban on ‘sensitivity training’ to federal contractors. Multiple committee members contributed time and ideas to this statement- Thank you all! The CDEI chairs team utilized all that work to create something shorter and more targeted for the Prism piece that will be published.

Professional Development: This committee is kicking off their Cultivating Inclusive Communities program on 10/29. So far they have 118 people sign up to participate! Sign up to join in. The PD committee received 7 proposals for CDEI workshops and they have chosen 5 to submit to ASEE. We are planning a full slate of sessions including member submitted workshops, our DEI 100, 200, and 300 workshops, Cultivating Inclusive Communities session, Safezone trainings, Awards session, and our roundtable. And the Virtual Workshop Series is continuing: Register for these awesome workshops happening over the next three months:
10/30/20 @ 2 PM ET: Understanding & Addressing Microaggressions, by Christina Crawford [Learn More| Register]
11/20/20 @ 2 PM ET: Gender Equity of STEM Women During the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Dr. David Wahl [Details Forthcoming| Register]
12/18/20 @ 2 PM ET: Black Engineering Faculty Speak, by Dr. Carlotta Berry, Dr. Monica Cox, and Dr. Tahira Reid [Learn More| Register]

Strategic Planning and Assessment: This committee met earlier this month and has established a bylaws working group, a strategic plan working group, and will be discussing streamlining assessment mechanisms and report writing. They are doing some really hard thought work about our vision and mission, our goals, and how to link our objectives and outcomes. We are planning to have the Bylaws and Strategic Plan ready for ASEE Board review at their January meeting.

In Solidarity,
Liz Litzler
CDEI Chair 2020-2021