Organizational Structure

How does CEE-FAR work?

  • CEE-FAR meets as an entire group for general meetings on a monthly basis. General meetings are facilitated by CEE-FAR group members and curated by the admin team and can consist of Action Group updates and feedback, discussion of current events, or any other agenda items that group members wish to bring to the group.

  • CEE-FAR is driven by the work of action group members who work on various initiatives in pursuit of the group's collective mission and vision. Action group members meet generally on a biweekly basis during meetings generally set up by the action group lead.

  • The ADMIN TEAM is primarily tasked with supporting the action group leads, maintaining the organization's budget, and answering questions about CEE-FAR to people inside and outside the organization

  • The ACTION GROUP LEADS are responsible for setting up action group meetings, communicating with the admin team on budget needs, and answering questions that arise from members of that respective action group. Nevertheless, at the core, action group leads are just one member of their respective action groups. It is the action group members that take on and lead initiatives within the action group.

  • The ACTION GROUP MEMBERS are the heart of the organization and drive forward the pursuit of the organization's mission and vision. Action group members do one or more of the following: fulfill action items requested by the action group leads, suggest ideas for the action group, take on new initiatives, develop new action groups, and communicate with action group leads on budget issues. Without the efforts of the action group members, the action groups cannot do the work they set out to accomplish and the organization as a whole cannot achieve its goals.


CEE-FAR is united by three distinct Action Groups:


ACADEMIC REFORM

Academic Reform is focused on integrating anti-racist and inclusive ideas into curriculum and classroom practices and helping faculty and GSIs make changes to ensure more elements of anti-racism and social justice are incorporated into their courses.

Past projects:

  • Development of CE 290 (Social Equity and Justice in Civil and Environmental Engineering) - offered Fall 2021 semester

  • "Engineering Justice" book analysis


DEPARTMENT CLIMATE -> RECRUITMENT & RETENTION (DC/RR)

Department Climate/Retention and Recruitment is an action group focused on improving the CEE’s department climate through the pursuit of anti-racism. We work on collecting CEE student experiences to diagnose issues with the climate and inform how they can be mitigated. A large part of this work includes providing the CEE community with more resources to not only survive but also thrive in their academic and professional journeys, with a particular focus on graduate students. By improving department climate we also hope to improve the retention of students from underrepresented groups and improve our ability to recruit a diverse student body into the CEE department.

Some previous projects include:

  • Planning and execution of interviews for graduate students exiting the department

  • Hosting a Visit Day event for prospective students

  • Development of qualifying, preliminary, and comprehensive exam guides for all CEE programs

  • Creation of the CEE-FAR website

INCREASING AWARENESS

We are the Increasing Awareness action group. Our main focus is to facilitate meaningful discussions to encourage the CEE-FAR community to think deeply about anti-racism. We call ourselves "increasing awareness" because our main goal is to work behind the scenes to gather resources for our members to learn from and engage with in meaningful ways. Some of our projects include movie nights with follow-up discussions, connecting students in book clubs, attending local lectures, museum visits, volunteering, and 5-minute history/current event lessons during the general meetings. All of these media are selected with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind to bring awareness and engagement to various social issues. We also have gathered educational resources/links for students to engage with independently, found in the resources section of this website.

Upcoming events:

Past events:

  • Movie nights: Minari, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, When the Levees Broke, Blindspotting, The Farewell, If Beale Street Could Talk, Hidden Figures

  • Book clubs: How to Be an Anti-Racist, The City We Became, The 1619 Project, Race After Technology

  • Lectures: CityArts and Lectures Nicole Hannah-Jones and Barry Jenkins

  • Museum events: Afrofuturism exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California

Are you interested in signing up for an action group? Fill out the form below: