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The F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital is fully committed to recruiting and supporting the full spectrum of our population and ensuring that everybody has a place in our research community.
OUR COMMITMENT
We are firmly committed to promoting a departmental culture centered around the values of equity, differences, inclusion, and belonging. We practice our dedication to these values through regularly organizing educational workshops about behaviors, biases, statements, and processes that perpetuate discrimination and impede mutual respect. Our members strive to dismantle prohibitive and discriminatory structures that bar access from the neuroscience field through the development of sustainable programs that attract talent from underrepresented backgrounds to our labs. We foster a strong sense of community and respect within the Kirby Center through frequently coordinating social events that celebrate differences and collegiality.
Dr. Elizabeth Engle, MD
Director, Kirby Neurobiology Center
A Message from the Director
I fully support the critical efforts of our community to help make the Kirby Center welcoming, safe, supporting, and sensitive by identifying shortfalls and ways to remedy them, as well as helping us recruit a broad range of students, fellows, staff, and faculty into the neurosciences. This is something we all need to be full engaged in, now and always, this is a way of life that requires ongoing commitment. I am committed.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Anti-Racism Pledge
A voluntary pledge offered by the Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) Research EDI Committee
I, a member of the Boston Children’s Hospital Research Community, aspire to embody the highest ideals of equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging (EDIB) and anti-racism. I recognize that individuals from specific racial and ethnic groups, individuals with disabilities and neurodiverse conditions, and individuals who hold specific identities (including women) have been historically and systematically marginalized and underrepresented in research communities. I understand that fostering and sustaining EDIB and anti-racism requires sustained action, time, and resources. Here, I articulate my goals and pledge to actively work toward achieving them.
My goals:
Equity
To treat every person with dignity and respect.
To appreciate and accommodate our differences.
To address inequality and inequity effectively and fairly.
To use equitable principles in the pursuit of equal outcomes for our community.
Diversity
To recognize that diversity in thought and background leads to greater scientific creativity and reduces health disparities.
To embrace diversity, including that of ancestry, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, belief, nationality, and disability.
To ensure that recognition of differences does not produce direct or indirect forms of discrimination.
To actively foster and promote diversity in each research activity and at every level of our organization.
Inclusion and Belonging
To contribute to creating a safe and accepting work environment.
To cultivate professional relationships with trust and transparency.
To eliminate languages and behaviors that perpetuate biases and suppression.
To draw strength from our differences.
To advocate for each other.
Anti-racism
To practice anti-racism.
To dismantle racism within the research community.
To reach these goals, I pledge:
To create and promote a welcoming, respectful, and equitable research community where everyone is valued, can access opportunities, and can reach their full potential.
To recognize that trust and innovation take risk, and mistakes and misunderstandings may occur along the way. Thus, I will approach interactions from a place of cultural humility, including self-reflection and a willingness to learn from others.
To listen to, acknowledge, and elevate the voices of individuals underrepresented in the research community in discussions, decision-making, grant applications, publications, and award nominations.
To work actively to increase training, recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of those underrepresented in the research community.
To include speakers from groups underrepresented in research in events that I plan.
To examine the representation on panels I am asked to participate in and, when necessary, to work with the organizers to include those underrepresented in bioscience research.
To collectively share experiences, knowledge, and best practices for growing EDIB and anti-racism, and to hold one another accountable for measuring action and progress.
To challenge organizational structures, policies, and decisions that do not promote EDIB and anti-racism.
To include EDIB and anti-racism objectives in my professional development goals.
To be a continuous learner and life-long mentor regarding how to promote EDIB and anti-racism most effectively.
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