DI&A has developed a menu of evidence-based programs that you can include in proposals, complete with background information, references, and options at different price points. This list should serves as a starting point. Contact us for the full text that you can include in your proposal and to collaborate with us to customize these programs for your specific proposal. The idea behind these offerings is not to simply check DI&A boxes, but that collectively, we all will have more impact if we collaborate and leverage programs and resources that are already in place.
For more information, or for a letter of support or collaboration, contact Dr. Amy E. Landis (amylandis@mines.edu) Alyssa Von Lehman Lopez (avonlehmanlopez@mines.edu).
Managing internal nomination and peer review processes to reduce bias (courtesy of University of Michigan).
Programs to Support Proposals & Grants
Overview of DI&A Requirements in Federal Proposals:
NSF for most proposals requires a statement on broadening participation and/or diversity, equity & inclusion. DOE now requires similar statements. USDA and other federal agencies are developing similar requirements. For large proposals, a successful DI&A approach must include three components: 1) recruitment, 2) culture of inclusion for retention & success, 3) measurement of impact. Other areas that are a bonus for NSF and required for some DOE programs is outreach, community engagement, and research on social justice and equity for the system of study.
Broadening Participation via Student Recruitment
Research shows that making personal and meaningful contact with potential underrepresented students, in coordination with a university-wide recruitment program and a strong commitment to DI&A, can improve the diversity of applicant pools. DI&A will collaborate to diversify students in your recruitment efforts.
Mentoring Programs
High quality mentoring programs for students and faculty in STEM yield many benefits, but unfortunately people from underrepresented groups tend to have limited access to these opportunities. You can enroll your entire team in the Mines-wide mentoring program, and even create a custom track for your program.
Unconscious Bias & Minimizing Microaggressions Workshops
We all bring unconscious bias to our interactions with others. DI&A offers 5 different workshops on demand: Minimizing Unconscious Bias can help during recruitment, grading, evaluations, etc, while Mitigating Microaggressions trains people to intervene when they experience a microaggression. These workshops are for ALL PIs and students and can help foster an inclusive research culture and broaden participation through hiring decisions.
Fostering an Inclusive Research Culture
nclusion is critical to encourage participation, foster innovation, support career growth, and retain diverse populations of students and faculty. DI&A offers coaching and workshops to help research groups, large and small, plan for and implement strategies successfully cultivate an inclusive research culture.
Inclusive Classrooms
DI&A and Trefny have an inclusive classroom checklist that you can use to improve your classroom climate. Trefny also offers a workshop on inclusive classrooms that you can request and integrate into your proposal; particularly useful for education and workforce development proposals.
Advocates & Allies
DI&A Advocates help to mentor and train people to be allies for equity. DI&A can help you create your own advocate group, or request that our DI&A Advocates give ally workshops for your team.
Learning Communities for Teaching, Unconscious Bias and Microaggression
DI&A supports biweekly learning communities (LCs) to help the campus community practice DI&A skills; these include an inclusive and equitable classroom LC sponsored in collaboration with Trefny and a DI&A unconscious bias and microaggressions learning community where participants practice identifying, minimizing, and intervening when unconscious bias and microaggressions happen.
Climate Survey
Women and underrepresented groups in STEM are likely to encounter gender and racially stigmatizing experiences in daily academic life. DI&A’s Climate surveys can help you understand the baseline climate in your group, identify problem areas to address, and measure progress as you implement strategies to improve the climate.
Girls Lead the Way (High School Outreach via Society of Women Engineers)
The annual Girls Lead the Way conference welcomes approximately 200 high school girls to a full day event, introducing them to engineering, and the Mines campus. Participants leave more aware of the wide variety of careers available to them, and more confident that they have the ability to succeed in pursuit of their passions.
Girl Scout Engineering Day (4th & 5th Grade Outreach via Society of Women Engineers)
Girl Scout Engineering Day is one of Society of Women Engineer’s (SWE) signature outreach events and is an exciting and rewarding venue for SWE members to share their love of STEM with aspiring young scientists and engineers.
Girls on the Rise (Middle School Outreach via Society of Women Engineers)
Middle school girls interact every fall with current Mines students in nine, half-hour long engineering and/or applied math and sciences activities designed to engage students with STEM majors at Mines. Each activity is set up as an experiment where girls hypothesize an outcome, test their hypothesis, collect results, and make conclusions on the scientific principles they witness. Girls on the Rise was introduced in fall 2019 to complete efforts to outreach to girls at all levels of K-12.
Girls are SMART (1st- 5th Grade Outreach via Society of Women Engineers)
The annual Girls are SMART event gathers girls in grades 1st – 5th on the Mines campus to engage in STEM through art and explore what it means to be an engineer and scientist. A variety of topics are covered that relate to many of the disciplines studied at Mines.
K-12 Virtual Classroom Takeovers
The K-12 Virtual Classroom Takeover aims to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers by sending Mines students or faculty to classrooms across the state of Colorado. The experience involves “zooming” into classrooms for a 50-minute “takeover.” Includes a short interactive STEM demo, an overview of Mines and a question and answer panel.
K-14 Outreach and Collaborations
We are developing a K-14 outreach center “Collaboratory” that will have programming and relationships with pipeline schools that PIs can tap into, increasing the effect of Broader Impacts activities. Contact Lori Kester lkester@mines.edu, Associate Provost for Enrollment Management, for more information.