COSAM News Articles 2021 March Message from the Dean - March 2021

Message from the Dean - March 2021

Published: 03/02/2021

To all COSAM Faculty, Staff, and Students,

I hope you have been actively participating in COSAM’s 30-Day Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Challenge. This is an important initiative that will help all of us consider different viewpoints and perspectives. I know that I have learned a lot from watching the videos last week and look forward to more in the coming days.

The activity was created by joyce gossom and her team who helped us offer the Table Talk discussions. They also developed the COSAM Champions and have made many other valuable contributions to COSAM.

The 30-Day DEI Challenge continues through Friday, April 2. I highly encourage you to participate in the daily activities and discussions held each week. Discussing challenges, barriers, and opportunities help us to make COSAM a better place for everyone and gives us an opportunity to connect.

Assistant Dean Kim Mulligan and I hosted a series of virtual town halls last year on September 22, 23, 29, and 30. Those town halls gave us a platform to share ideas throughout our college. We spoke with faculty, staff, and graduate students as well as alumni during Black Alumni Week.

Those sessions let us collaborate, discuss, and refine our goals for DEI. During the online events, Kim and I shared our action plan and talked about the newly formed diversity taskforce.

We had meaningful conversations about cultivating faculty, staff, and students through mentoring and coaching, and shared ideas for how to increase diversity through recruitment. We discussed how equity is an important consideration for COSAM job search committees and how COSAM requires implicit bias training for all members of any committee.

I am proud that COSAM is setting an example of how we can work together to create an environment where everyone’s voice is heard and all of our opinions matter.

Nick