FROM: Dean Jeffrey Brock
TO: SEAS and FAS Science community
RE: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan - Charge to Chairs and Departments 

As a STEM community, we must foster a learning and working environment that is welcoming to all. Your departments play a critically important role in achieving this goal.

With this charge, I am calling upon you and your faculty to develop a diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan for your department. I see it as vital that each plan be developed in consultation with your entire community – students, trainees, staff, faculty of all ranks, and alumni. Each plan will have characteristics unique to your departmental culture. While it is important to consider recruitment for diversity and excellence, I ask that you consider equally your departmental climate and its role in retaining diverse faculty, trainees, students, and staff once they arrive. You should feel welcomed to include positive efforts already underway and any departmental infrastructure you have already established to address issues of diversity and climate. 

I ask that you: 

  1. establish goals for 1, 3, and 5 year time horizons,
  2. describe the processes and structures you plan to build toward these goals,  
  3. establish how you will assess your progress, and
  4. document how your department will return to this plan and at what cadence.

Through our regular meetings, my office will provide opportunities to share your efforts with one another as they develop and to think about ways your departments can collaborate on these goals.

At this moment, I ask that we work to establish how existing resources within our departments may be leveraged to the greatest effect, and I hope to supplement these resources with opportunities for programming from my office. I note that the University Science Strategy Committee report has identified Diversity Across Stem at Yale as one of its top cross cutting priorities, and the report of the President’s Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging is imminent. Our efforts will anticipate and prepare for these initiatives to increase diversity, positioning our departments to engage this larger process with our own reflections and self-study.

These plans are due to me by October 15, 2020. I look forward to reviewing them in partnership with Larry Gladney, FAS Dean for Diversity and Faculty Development. Once received, we will share these plans with our internal Science/SEAS community. We will work with University leadership on implementation, and on how we can build our excellence through our diversity. 

As you undertake this as a department, my administrative office will be doing the same, and I will press others to engage in similar conversation and reflection. 

Sincerely,
Jeff
Dean, School of Engineering & Applied Science
Dean of Science, FAS
Zhao and Ji Professor of Mathematics


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