Dec. 4, 2020
We hope you had a restful holiday break. Thanks again to our students, staff and faculty for your help making the SCS community more welcoming, diverse and inclusive.
The university is nearing completion of the search process for the vice provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As Provost Jim Garrett has stated, "This position plays an integral role in promoting inclusiveness and diversity, challenging the status quo and maintaining a robust dialog centered around anti-racist practices and the research that supports it.”
A document spelling out new guidance for teaching and service assignments was generated and approved by the department heads. It is being reviewed for compliance with university rules.
As part of NSF grant submissions, applications for REU supplements opened Dec. 1. We sent messages to all faculty detailing the importance of these supplements and provided guidance using these supplement funds to help broaden our Ph.D. demographics. Claire Le Goues and Josh Sunshine have written FAQs and provided a sample budget, budget justifications and project descriptions, available in this REUSE Supplement Guide.
In each update, we will post a submitted story that illustrates an important DEI-related challenge. (Submit your story on this Google form.) This week, we bring a perspective on the power that SCS has in training students for work in tech: "SCS has the power to set norms for racial equality in the tech industry, and it is ethically obligated to exercise this power fairly." — SCS faculty member
Related Reading: We want to highlight Harvard’s efforts to embed ethics across the CS curriculum, going beyond what we are currently asking for. From Harvard's Alison Simmons: "Standalone courses can be great, but they can send the message that ethics is something that you think about after you’ve done your ‘real’ computer science work. We want to send the message that ethical reasoning is part of what you do as a computer scientist." SCS should as well.
If you'd like to receive updates and calls to action on DEI from the Ph.D. Advisory Committee, sign up for our mailing list.
The SCS Ph.D. Advisory Committee is maintaining an SCS DEI progress tracker to map progress relative to the Towards Anti-Racist Change letter. To date, three items have been completed, six are on track, 22 have been started and 19 remain.