Creation of an Equity Council

[kariljordan]

Goal 2 of the Carpentries Strategic Plan is to Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community. One of the objectives under this goal is:

• Create an Equity Council to work with the community and Core Team members on establishing and implementing equity, inclusion, and accessibility metrics for all of our programs and our administrative processes, including employment and contracting.

This issue will track our progress on the creation of an Equity Council.

[kariljordan]

The following is a brief report of the outcomes from the September Equity Council Meeting.

Attendees

• Alycia Crall (she/her), The Carpentries
• Kari L. Jordan (she/her), The Carpentries
• Erin Becker (she/her), The Carpentries
• Karen Word (she/her), The Carpentries
• Sher! Hurt (she/her), The Carpentries
• Michael D. Smith (he/him), The Carpentries Executive Council
• Gerica Brown (she/her), NAMEPA, University of Dayton
• Rochelle L. Williams (she/her), NSBE
• Nathan Alexander (he/him), Morehouse College
• Karl D. Schubert (he/him), Univ. of Arkansas / NAMEPA
• Whitney Gaskins (she/her), University of Cincinnati (NAMEPA)
• Joslynn Lee (she/her), Fort Lewis College, SACNAS
• Roneisha Worthy (she/her), Kennesaw State University (NSBE)

Apologies

• Daniela Bernal (she/her), SACNAS

Meeting Overview The first meeting of The Carpentries Equity Council was held on September 20, 2021. The goals of the meeting were to provide council members with an overview of The Carpentries, including our mission, vision, values, and programming. The meeting consisted of the following presentations:

• Overview of The Carpentries
• Overview of Sloan Grant
• Overview of The Carpentries Instructor Training Curriculum
• Developing an Instructor Recruitment Plan
• Participant Recruitment Planning
• Assessment at The Carpentries

After each presentation, council participants provided feedback in several brainstorming documents to share resources, best practices, and ideas to help improve our programming, assessment, and recruitment approaches.

Summary of Feedback The council provided several bits of feedback that we are able to immediately apply, as follows:

1. Include universal design learning in the Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility module of Instructor Training; include not only physical disabilities but also cognitive; provide instructors with tangible practices they can walk away with and use immediately.
2. Consider using more video resources; provide “profiles” of our instructors and/or recruiting material beyond https://carpentries.org/become-instructor/; recruit professionals as they could use this experience to transition from industry to academia.
3. In our surveys, add a space for individuals to enter their own gender identity and racial/ethnic identity; make those questions more open-ended

Next Steps The Core Team members on this project will be working on the following tasks moving forward:

• Review feedback from Equity Council; take back to appropriate teams; incorporate as needed.
• Organize the upcoming workshop that coincides with SACNAS’ annual meeting.
• Review feedback from in-person meeting survey; come up with a plan for the Equity Council meeting (Q1 2022).
• Planning for NAMEPA virtual workshop in Jan/Feb

[kariljordan]

Per @ErinBecker: We have an Equity Council, but there work is limited in scope and does not include advising on our administrative processes. We did receive consulting from Understood on accessibility of our processes, including employment. Brynn (Accessibility Manager) is working through Understood's recommendations and creating an action plan.