Director of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
How do we work to transform an institution to become anti-racist?
As the Director of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Columbia College Chicago from 2021-2023, I worked “towards the structural transformation of the institution to reflect anti-racism in all of the ways we approach and reflect our scholarship, creative practices, and educational mission.”
Columbia alum Sam Kirk '05, who has exhibited work widely in the US and abroad, creates artwork that recognizes and celebrates underrepresented communities.This detail from “Weaving Culture” (2016), a collaboration with Sandra Antongiorgi and located in the Pilsen neighborhood, was commissioned by the Chicago Public Art Group. Photo: Phil Dembinski '08.
I served as the Director (and Co-Director) of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Columbia College Chicago from 2021-2023. As Director, I led and managed the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum strategy which included creating faculty trainings and resources, recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, developing DEI programming, and leading the work of the Anti-racism Transformation Team. I met bi-weekly with the President’s Cabinet, served as a member of the Provost’s Council, and led the DEI initiatives in the Strategic Plan as well as the President’s DEI Executive Committee.
As Director of Academic DEI, I led initiatives on campus to shift curriculum and pedagogy at individual, unit, and institutional levels. To support faculty, I employed a critical leadership praxis and embodied pedagogy of DEI and anti-racist strategies to shift pedagogy so that it moved from exclusive to transformed curricular design across course content, structure, form, and assessment. I created and delivered workshops on DEI and anti-racist pedagogy, and began creating internal resource sites so that these offerings can be on-demand and self-paced. I also initiated the development of resources and multi-modal training for topics such as undocumented student allyship, accessible and trauma-informed pedagogy, discipline-specific approaches to DEI, and identity-based caucusing.
In this role, I sought to leverage existing expertise across a decentralized campus and develop capacity for others to lead DEI work within sustainable structures of accountability. With my colleagues across the college, we focused on building capacity across academic units by fostering a culture of sustained learning. I also designed and launched a departmental DEI strategic planning initiative, an intensive facilitation process to support departments as they assessed current efforts, envisioned future goals, and developed implementation plans with measurable impact. This work combined relationship-building and deep listening with capabilities assessment and strategic project management. I shared this project as part of my work as one of three inaugural NADOHE Academic Diversity Officer Fellows in 2022-23.