 So my name is Laura Shram and I'm Rackham's Director of Professional and Academic Development and I'll let my colleague Gina introduce herself. Hi everyone, I'm Gina Charretta and I work on Laura's Professional and Academic Development team as the program lead for STEM professional development so I'm really happy to be with you today. So our topic today is writing a diversity statement for the faculty job search and we wanted to thank the National Center for Institutional Diversity and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching who both supported us when we co-designed this session many moons ago. The CRLT logo is still on our slides and we acknowledge that this is a workshop that we co-developed with them. We also wanted to share a little bit about why we're talking about diversity statements. We're getting a large number of requests from students and departments who are thinking about how to write a diversity statement as they see faculty job postings that request this job document as part of the packet. As for those of you who got a chance to watch the brief screencast that was emailed to everyone, unlike teaching statements requests for diversity statements are somewhat new and still a minority of jobs are requesting them so not all jobs are requesting diversity statements so we know that an increasing number of institutions are requesting these and we wanted to make sure to provide some support for our students in developing their diversity statements since this is kind of a new phenomenon for faculty jobs. So I'm going to briefly go over some discussion guidelines for our time together. We know this is a very stressful time for students so we invite you to just take care of yourself whatever that means, stepping out, stepping back in, muting your camera or having children in and out of the video that's all fine. And just caring for each other during our time together. We'll use the chat function to let us know if you're having any problems Kristen Jensen our amazing events manager will be here supporting us so if you have trouble please put it in the chat and hopefully she can share it with you. We want to name that thinking and discussing social identities can feel vulnerable not that it has to feel vulnerable but for some of us it can so we just wanted to name that as something that will come up in our conversation today just so that you're prepared to be thinking about that. We're all learning, including Gina and myself, we don't consider ourselves as having arrived as the I experts, although we will be sharing our expertise with you. But you know we're co learners here in this space with you. We ask that when we do engage with each other we just listen respectfully share responsibility for the conversation. And any, we will have time later to engage, mostly using a tool called idea boards, where we'll engage with each other so if anyone does share something personal we ask that you keep that confidential in this virtual space and carry the lessons you can just keep any names or personal stories here. And to make space and take space so kind of monitoring your airtime, whether it's on the chat or the idea boards making sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate and lastly, while we hope we can trust we all come in with an intent into conversations about social identities, we do ask that if something that you say has a harmful impact on someone and someone shares feedback about that impact that we would be accountable for the impact of our words and from that feedback and apologize and move forward together. So, a little bit about where this workshop falls this is rackums core skills for students professional development. And we really see this at the intersection of career development because we're talking about a very specific job document for a faculty career and diversity equity and inclusion so we'll be talking quite a bit about what diversity equity and inclusion mean what is a diversity statement so it's kind of at the intersection of that top right green colored skill and the kind of, I guess it's seven or eight o'clock I don't know on the on the wheel career development skill. And I'll turn it over to Gina to share our learning goals. Alright, thank you Laura and again just really happy to be with you all today in this virtual space and so yeah we just wanted to spend a couple of minutes going over our workshop learning goals so the first is that you know we hope you'll come away from our session, understanding best practices for writing diversity statements for the faculty job search. This will be a reflection on your own personal contributions to institutional diversity. We will be spending a decent amount of time going over a rubric that's been developed to review just different areas of contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. So you'll actually have the chance to review a sample statement that was that was given to us for use in this session and so you'll be able to discuss just what that author did particularly well, and suggestions that you might have based on our discussion today. And then we also will follow up after today with some additional resources, we'll go over some of those during the session, but then also follow up with you with just some frequently asked questions and other resources and readings that you can kind of delve a little bit more deeply into after your time during the workshop. We alluded to this a little bit but just in terms of the flow for the session today we'll start by talking about just a brief overview of best practices for writing a diversity statement and really common pitfalls that we see just in reading a large number of diversity statements so things to avoid when you're thinking about writing your statement. As I mentioned we'll be doing a reflection on your own contributions to diversity equity and inclusion to really support you and crafting or if you've already started writing your diversity statement and revising that statement, and then we'll be using that rubric to review a sample statement from a student. So, first we wanted to start by talking about who should write a diversity statement and we have two main bullet points up here just highlighting that we recommend that those who are committed to diversity equity and inclusion or DE&I and those seeking ways, seeking to learn ways to demonstrate their commitment to DE&I would be these two large groups. We do like to highlight for students that you really do not have, you don't have to write a diversity statement. So, the institutions that tend to request a diversity statement in the faculty packet are those that are really seeking individuals who are committed to DE&I. So, for those of you who may have written or are familiar with the sort of genre that is a teaching statement or a teaching philosophy, you know, you might see that those are very commonly requested at institutions that really put a high value on undergraduate in education. So similarly, those institutions that place a high value on DE&I are the ones that tend to more commonly request a diversity statement as part of that packet. So, if you're not really interested in doing this kind of work and you're finding a diversity statement that's really requested on a lot of the postings you're seeing, it's worth at least maybe just reconsidering the postings you're looking at just because there might be a misalignment in terms of your interests and what an institution might be looking for. So, in terms of the benefits of writing a diversity statement, again, you know, often we'll see we're tearing from students that they're seeing this more commonly requested as part of the holistic faculty job packet which might include a cover letter and CV and teaching statement, research statement, etc. And then also for interviews. So, even if it's not formally requested for the job posting that you see, we do say that you can you can still include it for a job packet even if it's not requested. So this is again, as we've sort of alluded to especially important to consider if you're applying at a place like the University of Michigan which has a very strong institutional commitment to DE&I, even if the statement wasn't a requirement in the job posting. And as far as interviews, we list here that this can be for both faculty positions so high that you know faculty positions will have on the hiring committee. During interviews for faculty positions in terms of and non faculty positions and so diversity related interview questions are really commonly asked both for faculty and non faculty interviews. So really articulate your commitment and writing will help you come prepared to with answers to these kinds of questions so even if it's not again, a document that's being requested in that packet, having prepared thoughtful answers to these questions that are going to be asked by faculty by students hiring committees is really, really valuable. So as you know we and colleagues were developing this session. We're really receiving questions from students who are going into interviews and they were really getting kind of stumped and feeling flustered, because they were receiving questions about their commitment to DE&I, and they just really had not had that they did ahead of time really prepare those thoughtful answers so again, it's really helpful to be thinking about that before heading into the interview process. So non academic employers are really increasingly seeking candidates that can demonstrate this commitment to diversity as well. So the National Association of Colleges and employers recently added global and intercultural fluency is one of the seven career readiness competencies. And they define that as being able to value respect and learn from diverse cultures races, ages, genders, sexual orientations and religions. An individual might demonstrate openness inclusiveness sensitivity and the ability to interact respectfully with all people and understand individuals differences. So again, we just really want to highlight this that doing this thoughtful reflection and really being mindful of your commitments and areas of interest will really benefit you both in the job search in academia and outside of academia as well. In terms of best practices, format wise this really is it's not a real extremely lengthy documents so really this is usually no more than one page, and the narrative structure is first person so similar to a teaching statement. This would be using I statements your own experience so it's not a theoretical statement or talking in the third person. So really this is important to keep in mind just that you're speaking from your own perspective on diversity and your own experiences. So as I we sort of mentioned earlier, the National Center for Institutional Diversity has done some research in terms of these relevant areas of contribution to DNI. And so the rubric that's been created and that we're going to be applying to a sample statement in a little while is sort of has come out of these kind of key areas. So we really encourage students to consider one or more of these areas where you've made contributions to DNI and so it differs a bit. And I'll probably elaborate a little bit more on this as we look at the rubric, but it differs from rubrics you may have seen in the past and what you're really sort of being evaluated holistically on contributions to every single area, because we acknowledge that there might be areas that you that you have thought about more or that you've done research in, but that there might be other areas where you haven't had as quite as many contributions to DNI and so we'll we'll go into that in a little bit more detail here in a moment. And I think that I will be passing things back over to Laura to talk about common pitfalls and what to avoid. In chatting with our colleagues at the National Center for institutional diversity. They have done lots of reading of diversity statements in order to develop their rubric as Gina mentioned, and in reading these many many statements they also came up with some suggestions of how to avoid pitfalls that they were seeing in students statements that made statements ineffective or, or in some cases even communicated the opposite of the intent so this gets at that intent versus impact. While the student may have had a positive intent in in talking about diversity in a certain way the impact was alienating and and made some readers feel excluded and offended so here are some of the things that NC ID shared with us to impart to students to really be thinking about and be thinking about as these are things you should avoid or be really attentive to when you think about tone or what you choose to share in your statement so the first is presenting yourself in your statement. I want to share examples of your commitment as the, the savior to marginalized students so for example I really saved this one disadvantaged student who was struggling I stepped in and and swooped in and saved this student from, you know, negative outcomes it's not that it's a problem we got a lot of questions about this it's not that it's a problem to talk about working with students from marginalized backgrounds, but you want to be careful to, you know, talk about the, the, the strengths in an asset based way of what you worked with and not be sort of taking credit for their achievements, of course talk about how you supported that student and what you did in working with students from marginalized backgrounds but be really careful and how you present yourself as, you know, taking ownership over the accomplishments of any of the students you've worked with. Again, is what our colleagues at NC ID called diversity by osmosis and this is, you know, just claiming whether it's through your partner or your advisor that coming from a marginalized background that therefore somehow by osmosis of being closely connected to someone from a different, racial or sexual orientation than yourself that somehow that means you've understood the value of diversity through just your relationship with this person who's different from you so avoid any kind of statements that would imply you're committed to diversity just because of, you know, who your partner is or who your advisor is. So, this is something that that students apparently did a lot in statements and so we just encourage students not to assume that you understand diversity just as a result of the relationships that you're in. And lastly avoid making broad generalizations about any groups that could be transfer students first generation students international students, any racial or ethnic groups. So just as an example to, you know, make a broad generalization about that all international students struggle with acclimating to, you know, English language learning context well we know many international students are fluent in English come from English speaking countries. And so to make a broad generalization like that again you, you may have someone who's an international scholar reading your statement so you want to be careful not to be reinforcing stereotypes or making broad generalizations in your statements. When you're talking particularly about historically marginalized groups that that you've worked with. So, another important question that we get this is the most common question about diversity statements is, should I share my personal identities in my statement. So, we want to know that if you are not comfortable sharing your race, your gender identity or any social identity, you have no obligation to share your social identities in your diversity statement so you do not have to start your statement off by saying something like, like for me like I'm a white cis hetero woman I do not need to share that in my statement. And, and so, you know, don't feel you must share those if you're not comfortable. If you are comfortable sharing your social identities, we know our personal life experiences and our social identities do impact. We've interacted with diversity, equity and inclusion do impact what our passions are. The, the work that we've done in terms of our commitments to de I so it's often the case that we may want to disclose that information or be comfortable disclosing that information. We do say to students that if you are comfortable sharing those, make sure that you do make that connection to your contributions and commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. So the goal of a diversity statement is for you to communicate to the institution that you're applying for a job, how you've demonstrated a commitment to equity or inclusion. And just being of a particular identity doesn't mean that you are committed to de I so for example if I disclose that I had a disability. That doesn't mean that I've, I've made any contributions to more equity and access for others with disabilities and so if I chose to disclose disclose that. It would be important to connect how that social identity of mine has led to my engagement in issues around de I so make sure if you're making a disclosure to make that connection for the reader, because your social identities alone marginalized identities alone aren't evidence of a demonstrated commitment to de I. Lastly, we encourage our students to think carefully about how much they disclose, and whether it's necessary to disclose that commitment. There's some really amazing scholarship that a sociology PhD student I a waller Bay here at the University of Michigan is doing. She studies students disclosures of personal identities and personal traumas in their college applications and their personal statements. She's found that often students when they make those disclosures, end up being tethered to those disclosures those disclosures end up being shared in ways that are re traumatizing to those students. So it's important to think about, you know, if you're applying to a job at, you know, University of Michigan and you disclose some personal identities in that statement, and then you end up getting the job there, you know how comfortable are you with having that department know those identities and know about those experiences as you form relationships with them and as they make decisions about your service assignments and things like that so we're not saying don't disclose but we are saying be really careful and think strategically about whatever disclosures you do make. If you were to get that job that means that everyone on the hiring committee knows that information about you for your entire relationship with them so just be really thoughtful. As you think about what disclosures you're comfortable making in a statement and we're happy to answer more questions on this. So as we discuss and have questions at the end because it's an area where we commonly get questions. So I'm going to stop the recordings let me just do that quickly here.