Building an Inclusive Future: UBC Psychology Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee Mission Statement
Vision
Our committee strives to advance EDI in our Department for all who work or study in our academic community.
History
We build upon the contributions of a Departmental Equity Committee, originally launched in September 2016. In January 2021, Psychology graduate students sent an open letter to the Department, asking for better representation of racialized individuals among our faculty. The letter and further Departmental discussions led to the creation of an EDI Task Force containing 16 members representing faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, postdocs, and staff. The Task Force met weekly in the summer and fall of 2021. After consultation, discussion, and a process where all Department members could submit amendments, the Task Force produced a final report containing 45 recommendations for advancing EDI in our Department. Our faculty voted to adopt these as a 5-year EDI strategic plan from July 1 2022 through June 30 2027. The final year of the plan contains an external review, solicitation of Department members’ perspectives, and formal voting on a new or revised EDI strategic plan going forward.
Guiding Principles
- Equity, diversity and inclusion are necessary conditions of the academic work we do. Striving for excellence requires the inclusion and collaboration of Department members with diverse identities, backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, ideas, and other visible and non-visible expressions of diversity.
- UBC, and the field of Psychology in North America, were created at a time when societal norms privileged some groups and disadvantaged others. This history has left a legacy of day-to-day, ingrained, systemic discrimination that has contributed to past inequities, and perpetuates and maintains current inequities in our Department. In recognition of this history, and with the goal of addressing this legacy, we take deliberate measures to remove barriers to opportunities that are needed to ensure equity. We pay particular attention to Department members with historically, persistently, and systemically marginalized identities in academia and/or Canada, and the intersectionality of these identities, while striving to listen to the voices of all individuals and groups in this Department.
- Promoting EDI requires continual effort and intentional change, and our committee is constantly learning to do this work better. We commit to self-reflection and ongoing education, dialogue, and engagement with EDI topics. We also commit to tracking and reporting our progress and shared learnings to support the improvement of our efforts.
Activities
Our committee aims to carry out the 45 recommendations of the EDI Task Force through:
- Strategic Guidance: We advise Department leadership on strategic directions related to EDI, such as the UBC Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism framework, the importance of EDI, and what are currently considered to be best practices to promote EDI in academia.
- Implementation Support: We make recommendations to Department leadership regarding potential EDI-related policies or procedures that could be implemented in our unit. When appropriate, we support Department leadership in implementing such changes.
- Data Collection: We conduct yearly climate surveys and polls of the EDI goals of each Departmental area. We also review research literature that pertains to how we can better carry out our committee goals. These data-driven insights contribute to the priorities and directions of our committee.
- Collaboration: We collaborate with relevant partners such as the Psychology Department Indigenous Initiatives Coordinator, the UBC Equity and Inclusion Office, and the Arts Associate Dean for EDI, to support one another and exchange feedback.
Scope of Work
We are guided by the 45 EDI Task Force recommendations that compose our Department’s EDI Strategic Plan from July 1 2022 to June 30 2027. These recommendations were carefully researched and developed by the Task Force. Sixteen of the recommendations occurred directly in response to the graduate student open letter calling for hiring more racialized faculty. The other recommendations were created in the spirit of growing the pipeline of diverse scholars who will eventually apply for faculty jobs, and how to support diverse department members once they are here. The 45 recommendations underwent an extensive process of discussion and solicitation of feedback from faculty, staff, postdocs, and students, and an official vote before being adopted as our Department’s 2022-2027 EDI Strategic Plan. This process was an attempt to ensure that the Task Force recommendations fairly reflected the priorities of the broader Department community at the time they were adopted. In the 2026-27 academic year, another formal process will happen where all Department members will be invited to revisit the 45 recommendations and to decide what should comprise the next EDI Strategic Plan, and another official vote will occur.
The 45 recommendations were developed by the Task Force with the responsibilities of our Department in mind, which are primarily to educate and train students and to contribute to discovery of knowledge via psychological research. They reflect our aim to create an academic environment where diverse students are included and equitably supported in their learning, diverse faculty and staff are included and equitably supported in doing their job duties, and where the discovery of knowledge benefits individuals and groups equitably (in recognition that research is not always conducted in this way).
Our primary role during the years of the 2022-2027 EDI Strategic Plan is to carry out the Task Force recommendations. Nonetheless, we attempt to remain flexible to new learning, voices, and experiences, such that in some cases, we enact work that we think aligns with the intent of a Task Force recommendation but might not be explicitly prescribed by the recommendation. We define our scope of work so that we can be more transparent about our goals and priorities. Additionally, it helps us as a committee to be effective and to reduce risk of burnout, overextension, or disappointment.
See below for a chart that maps our committee goals to the EDI Task Force recommendations and the Working Groups that are currently carrying out these recommendations:
| Committee Goal | Associated Task Force Recommendations | Working Groups |
|---|---|---|
| Equity: There is parity in our Department in power, policy, access, and outcomes for historically and/or currently underrepresented or marginalized people and groups in academia and/or in Canada, in terms of representation (at all levels of our Department; e.g., students, faculty, department leadership) and resource allotment (distribution of resources in order to close equity gaps). | Inclusion 4: Consultants work 1 on 1 with Department members on equity goals (sometimes inclusion and/or diversity goals) for the members’ lab procedures, classroom teaching, or mentorship. Inclusion 5, 7: Dialogue and Learning workshops raise Department members knowledge about equity issues and gaps (sometimes also about inclusion). Inclusion 6: Our website contains easily accessible resources and information regarding EDI, with the goal of taking down barriers to this information - obstacles which disproportionately impact some individuals or groups in this Department. Progress Monitoring 3: This involves tracking how equitable the distribution of resources is in our Department currently, and making recommendations to address equity gaps. | EDI Consultation EDI Dialogue and Learning EDI Website and Resources EDI Supports Equity in Resources |
| Diversity: With consideration of current and historical equity gaps or under-representation of certain individuals or groups, our Department members have differences in their lived experiences and perspectives that may include (but is not limited to) race, ethnicity, colour, ancestry, political belief, religion, marital or family status, physical or mental disability, body type, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, biological age, immigration status, educational background, and/or socioeconomic situations. | Hiring 1-16: All concern efforts to incorporate EDI criteria and considerations into the faculty job search process in this Department, and to diversify our faculty. Inclusion 16-18: These are written under Inclusion but pertain to efforts to recruit more diverse undergraduate research assistants and graduate students in our department. These can also be thought of as diversifying the pipeline of scholars who may later be applying for faculty jobs. | EDI in Hiring EDI Funding Diversity Mentorship Program EDI Consultation |
| Inclusion: Our Department engages in active, intentional, and continuous processes to bring marginalized individuals and/or groups into activities and decision-making to address inequities in power and privilege, and to build a respectful and diverse community that ensures welcoming spaces and opportunities to flourish for all when working or studying here. | All recommendations concern changes to curriculum, research, or student training in this Department. An aspiration is that these changes will create a more welcoming environment for members with diverse backgrounds, in particular those with historically and/or currently under-represented or marginalized identities. Inclusion 8-13: These recommend decolonizing or Indigenizing curriculum in our Department. Inclusion 14-15: These are about supporting research in our Department that is related to or that advances EDI. Inclusion 19-21: Meaningful community partnerships also create a more inclusive curriculum and research opportunities for Department members. Progress Monitoring 4: Although initially envisioned as a mediation service, based on research and guidance from UBC we have changed this to be about providing accessible information about resources and supports for Department members with EDI-related concerns. | EDI Consultation EDI Dialogue and Learning Graduate Minor in Diversity EDI Supports EDI Community Engagement |
| Other: Our Department has appropriate structural support for carrying out our EDI goals. | Inclusion 1-3: These are administrative changes to support carrying out our EDI initiatives. Inclusion 22-25: These concern establishing ongoing funding lines for our EDI initiatives. Progress Monitoring 1-2: These are about tracking and being transparent about our progress on all EDI initiatives, to increase accountability and to improve our future efforts. | EDI Progress Monitoring EDI Funding |
Matters Outside of Scope of Work
Our EDI Committee scope of work reflects where we can realistically be most influential, which is specifically within the UBC Psychology Department. Although EDI issues exist outside of our Department and impact us in our personal and professional lives, we primarily focus on things occurring within our Department. We will consider involving ourselves when an external EDI issue has ramifications that directly affect our Department, and/or influence things that are part of our Department responsibilities. For instance, UBC- or Arts-wide procedures may affect us because our Department operates within these spheres. Political decisions that concern things that are part of the direct mission of our Department could also be relevant (e.g., laws related to considering EDI in faculty hiring in BC), but this would be the exception. Department members are always free to express a view on behalf of themselves as individuals. We also invite Department members to raise issues internal and external to our Department with any of us, and we will bring it to the larger EDI Committee to discuss.
As our ways of thinking and our committee membership have evolved over time, we recognize that our practices in the past have not always fit within this scope of work. For instance, our committee (and its predecessor, the Equity Committee) have issued statements on national or world events in the past. We leave these statements on our website in their original form to respect the decisions that were made at the time. We continue to learn the best approaches for advancing EDI and being effective as a committee.
Relation to StEAR and ISP
The Psychology Department is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nation. Our committee’s work cannot take place without recognizing and engaging with the history of settler colonialism which underlies the presence of our Department on these territories. Indigenous issues are deserving of their own distinct place and committee in our Department, and these issues are crucial to consider/incorporate within broader EDI initiatives. We commit to actively supporting our Department’s Indigenous Initiatives Coordinator and the goals of UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP), which was put into action in 2021. To that end, our EDI Committee has contributed to Department-wide efforts to complete the ISP Self-Assessment, individual consultations with instructors about Indigenizing curriculum in our Department, and Dialogue and Learning workshops related to ISP goals.
Our work is also guided by UBC-wide anti-racism and inclusion recommendations in the Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force report and the UBC Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism (StEAR) Framework, released in 2021. We seek to foster an environment in our Department in accordance with strategies 1, 3, 4, 10, 15, and 20 of the UBC Strategic Plan core areas.
Conclusion
We believe EDI is a shared community responsibility and we welcome (and need) the efforts of others within our Department to contribute to dialogue and action. We are grateful to the large number of people who are involved in our EDI working groups. We look forward to collaborating with all Department members to advance EDI in our unit.
