Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan
Contact
PsychologyOlin/Rice Halls of Science Room 321 651-696-6223
conrod@macalester.edu
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Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are at the core of the Psychology Department’s educational mission and values. This document outlines our evolving plan to embody these principles and support all current and prospective students—especially those who are BIPOC, first-generation, low-income, and/or disabled.
- Ongoing efforts:
- Faculty continue our work as part of the Challenging Complicities Project initiated by the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship during the 2020 International Roundtable. Through this work, all colleagues in the department read articles and books that help us understand and counteract the ways in which the discipline of psychology in particular and the practices of higher education in general are steeped in ideologies based in white supremacy and colonialism. In addition to taking a critical eye toward our discipline itself, we also seek to understand our own positionalities and biases and how these can show up in our work. As examples, some of our recent discussions have focused on these readings:
- Addy, Dube, Mitchell, and SoRelle (2021) What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching
- Meyers (2008) Putting Social Justice into Practice in Psychology Courses
- Cole (2020) Demarginalizing women of color in intersectionality scholarship in psychology: A Black feminist critique
- Ledgerwood et al. (2022) The pandemic as a portal: Reimagining psychological science as truly open and inclusive
- Fish (2023) Interview with a psychologist: Representing marginalized psychologists and diversity science in psychology coursework
- Faculty regularly review our individual and collective practices and policies with a DEI lens. For example, we collectively review our syllabi and course materials using an inclusive syllabus toolkit such as Dr. Kim Case’s syllabus challenge [link to: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1l6hihdEqbwN0_BkC_xhhtRLtBUV7YuPcymtoWn09uTE/edit#slide=id.p1], and we review departmental opportunities such as participation in research labs and preceptorships to ensure that these opportunities are equitably accessible.
- As a department, we support initiatives at the institutional level that are intended to address concerns related to grading practices, workload, and well-being. We recognize that change at the individual and department level is useful, but systemic problems call for systemic solutions.
- Faculty continue our work as part of the Challenging Complicities Project initiated by the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship during the 2020 International Roundtable. Through this work, all colleagues in the department read articles and books that help us understand and counteract the ways in which the discipline of psychology in particular and the practices of higher education in general are steeped in ideologies based in white supremacy and colonialism. In addition to taking a critical eye toward our discipline itself, we also seek to understand our own positionalities and biases and how these can show up in our work. As examples, some of our recent discussions have focused on these readings:
- Priorities for the near future:
- Our readings will primarily come from Mena and Quina’s (2019) Integrating Multiculturalism and Intersectionality Into the Psychology Curriculum.
- We will review our Introduction to Psychology course to address and mitigate the biases rooted in the field of psychology. Our goal is to determine how to effectively incorporate antiracist and inclusive topics and pedagogy into the curriculum.
- We will develop and review our goals and metrics for student success in the psychology department and track our progress in ensuring that all students are well supported to reach those goals.