cademia traditionally operates under a rigid hierarchy, where tenure-track faculty sit at the top. From this vantage, decisions that impact student success, faculty hiring, and support staff affairs are drafted in an exclusive fashion, leaving little to no room for student contribution. By excluding students from decisions that concern their success and professional growth, uninformed departmental policy “solutions” can even counter these critical objectives. Trusted avenues for students to communicate unmet needs and feedback that will be valued and carefully considered by departmental leadership are crucial for effective programming designed to invest in the health, safety, and career excellence of researchers from underrepresented groups in STEM. With these goals in mind, the Emory Department of Chemistry has recently implemented a series of synergistic mechanisms designed to advance dialogue between students, administrators, and faculty on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Much like laboratory research, these strategic diversity leadership experiments have met with varying degrees of success. But while devising such programs—including establishment of a departmental DEI learning community, creation of a DEI standing committee, and assimilation of students into the faculty hiring process—the parallel development of student–staff and student–faculty relationships can build a foundation of trust, respect, and caring on which further work progresses. We describe a process-oriented, systems thinking approach to student–department relations, in which intentionality in power-sharing fosters mutual buy-in and cooperative discourse towards global improvements in the chemistry DEI climate.

Systems thinking approach towards improving student–department relations

ACS Spring 2022

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