Diversity Committee Annual Report 2017-2018

Committee

• Michael Brown
• Daniel Castro (undergrad)
• Kian Flynn
• Lawrence Knopp
• Will McKeithen
• Emma Slager

2017-18 Overview

This year the diversity committee put into practice a broader, more inclusive form of
committee governance, namely by involving an undergraduate representative (Daniel) and a staff member (Kian). The committee had regular meetings to share ideas and discuss themes. Our main focus was disability allyship and had planned an event with a facilitated discussion of departmental transitions.

Events

Winter Quarter

The committee began talks with a freelance facilitator about a possible department-wide discussion of various diversity and inclusion issues, but for a variety of reasons this did not materialize. The facilitator was compensated for their time and the 2017/18 committee suggest this could be picked up by future committees.

Spring Quarter

The UW D-Center (Lesley Ellis)
Title: Disability Allyship and Inclusive Pedagogy Event
Date: Friday, May 25, 3:30-5:00 PM in the UW D-Center
Agenda: The D Center collaborating with the Department of Geography’s Diversity Committee to hold a Disability Allyship workshop on learning how to support UW's disability communities (rooms were mobility aid accessible and CART captioning and ASL interpreters were available; participants were asked to refrain from wearing scents.). The event was facilitated by D Center Advisor Lesley Ellis, with significant organizing help from Michael Brown.
Lesley led a discussion on the basics of disability justice (i.e., the social model of disability, ableism, etc.), discussed basic services at UW for assisting disabled students, and then led us in a Q&A session working through possible teaching scenarios and general questions from the audience.