The work of the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE) has been driven by the "top-down" hypothesis: Academic middle managers—namely, department heads and chairs—held accountable for diversity and inclusion will make sustained and significant improvements in the representation and climate of their deportments. This can translate into changes in the demographics, but such changes take time because of the long half-life of tenured professors. A department's culture can be changed more quickly, leading to significant impacts on students, researchers, faculty and staff. We will review recommendations for advancing such diversity culture that have been generated through a disciplinary-based lens by chemistry department chairs and heads informed by social scientists. We conclude that creating diversity culture—akin to the successful efforts of creating a safety culture within the chemistry community—using these recommendations and other effective practices is a key strategy to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in academic chemistry departments.

Promoting diversity culture

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.