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Moderator: Kristen Porter-Utley, Bridgewater State University
Monica Loryn Linden, Brown University
Judy Awong-Taylor, Georgia Gwinnett College
Loretta Brancaccio-Taras, Kingsborough Community College
The Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) is a community of life sciences faculty leaders committed to fostering the educational practices and programs that best prepare undergraduate students to tackle 21st-century challenges. PULSE has developed the PULSE Rubrics (Brancaccio-Taras et al. 2016), a set of five rubrics which are used by departments to assess their work in the areas of curriculum, assessment, faculty practice and faculty support, infrastructure, and climate for change. Spurred by recent events of violence, injustice, systemic racism, and the national movement to rethink how colleges and universities could address such inequities, PULSE developed and added the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Rubric. The purpose of the DEI Rubric is to have STEM departments self-assess their DEI work by: reviewing their practices and pedagogies; beginning a dialogue about educational, departmental, and institutional equity gaps; and determining a departmental consensus score for each rubric criterion. Most of the DEI rubric is also applicable and useful to non-STEM departments. In this session, presenters will describe the use of the DEI Rubric and participants will work in groups to engage with the rubric. Throughout the session, presenters will facilitate group discussions; engage participants on how the rubric works; demonstrate how to facilitate departmental consensus scoring; and discuss how to enhance DEI work in a department or on a campus by addressing barriers, finding allies, and developing strategies to improve DEI work. Presenters include PULSE Fellows from various institute types, thus providing diverse institutional perspectives.