Our student-faculty DEI Committee works to shape departmental diversity initiatives and to increase transparency and accountability by documenting our efforts and plans. View the committee’s meeting minutes and updates.
Task Forces
Communications (Website/Newsletter)
Goal: Keep track of our committee’s initiatives and communicate them publicly via the website and newsletter
Description: The website and newsletter communicate our ongoing DEIAB initiatives to the rest of the department and the outside world, serve as a transparent record of our progress and plans to increase accountability, and convey our commitment to the ideals of DEIAB in a public way.
Peer Mentoring
Goal: Enhance the experience of international students in the CSD program through tailored resources, guidance, and community-building efforts. Advocate for the program’s classification as a STEM major.
Description: The Peer Mentoring Task Force regularly meets to understand and address the needs of international students. The task force compiles resource packets for incoming international students, covering grad school applications, housing, and clinical hour requirements. They develop ongoing support resources for students throughout their programs and careers and drive discussions and initiatives promoting DEIAB, including STEM classification advocacy.
Academic Standards and Coursework
Goal: Work to understand where the curriculum is regarding DEIAB strengths and areas of growth (especially from the students’ perspectives) and suggest curriculum goals and possible strategies for achieving those goals.
Description: Discuss coordination of coursework/clinical education activities and avoid overlap; discuss content, continuity, and coordination. Provide regular two-way reportouts to HAG, CAG, SLAG, and curriculum committees about the others’ discussions/goals to facilitate synergy across the various committees/task forces that deal with curriculum issues. Suggest goals for the department using the DEIAB annual report as a guide for dynamic assessment of the DEIAB curriculum.
Resource Database
Goal: Coordinate resources for open discussions/readings/materials
Description: Maintain a database organized by category/topic, type of media, etc., for a variety of topics related to DEIAB; create/maintain a database of DEIAB resources as they relate to various Big 9 topics (i.e., fluency, voice, swallowing, cognitive-communication, etc.).
Admissions and Recruitment
Goal: Reexamine our admissions, recruitment, hiring, and retention practices, focusing on underrepresented students, faculty, and staff.
Description: Evaluate the department’s graduate applications process each year and explore avenues for recruitment and hiring to diversify the faculty. Brainstorm creative solutions to diversify the hiring and admissions applicant pools.
Student Discussion Groups
Goal: Organize discussion groups, one for students and one for faculty/staff
Description: Organize, schedule, and facilitate discussion groups around DEIAB issues. Points of contact coordinate meeting scheduling, and task force members rotate in helping to choose readings/videos, write discussion prompts, prepare materials for the group meetings, moderate the discussions, and share resources for attendees to continue education following discussions.
Faculty Discussion Groups
Goal: Organize two discussion groups for faculty/staff each fall and spring term
Description: Organize, schedule, and facilitate discussion groups for faculty and staff around DEIAB issues. Faculty task force members gather schedule availability from faculty and staff at the beginning of each term to coordinate meeting dates and times. Faculty task force members follow the lead and work with the student discussion group leaders to align discussion topics and materials between the two groups. The selection of materials (e.g., literature, articles, readings, videos) and the writing of discussion prompts can adhere closely to the student group’s content or be more distantly related to the discussion topic. Preparation of materials for the group meetings, moderation of the discussions, and sharing of resources after the discussion group is also the responsibility of the faculty task force members.
We last assessed the task forces on February 2024