The Department of Psychology and Neuroscience recognizes that academic excellence is achieved only by fostering a diverse community that provides equitable opportunities for all students, staff, and faculty. We are excited to launch the CARE Initiative that is being led by the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee comprised of departmental students and faculty. This initiative is rooted in the desire to be intentional, strategic, and transparent in our efforts to create and sustain an academic and social environment that welcomes everyone and values their differences.

CARE Initiative

  • Community
  • Anti-racism and Opening Our Perspectives
  • Representation
  • Educating Through Inclusive Practices

undergrads at CUnity Fest

Students, staff, faculty and administrators enjoy the CUnity FestThe CUnity Fest is held each Fall semester to welcome CU Boulder students by the Center for Inclusion and Social Change. The event showcases the diversity of CU's community by featuring the many student groups that represent students of color, international students, LGBTQ+ students, and offer social justice-themed opportunities on campus. (Photo by Glenn Asakawa/ University of Colorado)

Community: We are striving to provide a community where people feel welcome, empowered, and free from obstacles that may limit their academic experience. This work includes action towards support and dialogue in our community. We will increase our efforts to support and retain existing faculty and students by implementing structural changes in the equitable distribution of resources and by emphasizing the values of diverse research programs, approaches, and service commitments. We are working to establish tools that will allow for reporting of individual concerns and evaluation of our ongoing efforts to develop an inclusive departmental community. We will ensure that departmental planning and decisions are empowering and inclusive of diverse perspectives and minority voices. We will also develop a more thoughtful consideration of our colloquium speakers to ensure that we are modeling and supporting individuals from diverse backgrounds and those with diverse perspectives. Finally, in an effort to support and promote our students beyond their time in our academic programs, we plan to establish an alumni network that will serve to build durable belongingness within our community.

undergrads in classroom

Students participate in the Fall Diversity Summit. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement hosts a Diversity and Inclusion Summit each semester. Each summit has a thematic focus that provides an opportunity for the CU Boulder students, faculty and staff to learn more about our community and work toward developing a more inclusive, diverse and equitable environment. (Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado)

Anti-racism and Opening Our Perspectives: We commit to anti-racism in our teaching, scientific work, and continued learning. We recognize the importance of equipping ourselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to engage with the ever-changing world around us. We will identify programs that will allow our students, staff, and faculty to learn about how inclusivity, diversity, and equity benefit our community, and how white supremacy and other power systems of oppression degrade our community. We will also educate our community on the impact that systemic racism, microaggressions, and implicit biases have on our community. We will also provide opportunities for our community to learn to intervene as a bystander, de-escalate discriminatory and harassing situations, and manage difficult conversations on inclusiveness and diversity.

los seis monument photo

Los Seis de Boulder was conceived by CU Boulder alumna artist Jasmine Baetz and erected on the CU Boulder campus in 2019. Hundreds of students, faculty, staff, community members and family members of Los Seis joined in to contribute to erecting the sculpture which depicts six students, Una Jaakola, Reyes Martínez, Neva Romero, Francisco Dougherty, Heriberto Terán and Florencio Granado, who died in 1974 in two separate car bomb explosions after leading an activist movement to demand equity in education at CU Boulder. It became part of the permanent collection in the University Libraries’ Special Collections, Archives and Preservation department in 2020 and will hopefully serve as a symbol for our community to learn more about an important chapter of Colorado and university history, and confront difficult questions related to race, equity and inclusion. (Photo by Ernest Mross/University of Colorado)

Representation: We are committed to broadening our departmental representation. We will strive to achieve better representation by establishing a more direct and strategic effort to reach and recruit faculty and students of diverse and underserved backgrounds. We plan to create outreach efforts to identify and recruit individuals currently underrepresented in our departmental community. We are also working to recognize and remove barriers in academic programs that limit our success in attracting underserved students.

 

Heidi Day and undergraduates in a teaching lab

Psychology and Neuroscience Teaching Professor Heidi Day with undergraduates in a neuroscience lab class. (Photo by Ernest Mross/University of Colorado)

Educating Through Inclusive Practices: We have a critical responsibility as educators to provide a learning environment that is welcoming and inclusive to all students seeking academic advancement. A key and immediate area of improvement is to expand representation and inclusion in our curriculum. We will work to develop inclusive classrooms by encouraging our faculty to reference materials that highlight diverse perspectives and clearly state the inclusive values and practices in course materials. We will also seek to remove barriers in our curriculum that may be unwelcoming to and dissuade underserved students from participating in our programs. Ongoing curriculum assessments will be conducted to identify courses related to diversity and inclusion and incentivize the modification of existing courses or the creation of new courses that support diverse perspectives.