The town hall facilitated by Dr. Christopher Munt, the Director of Inclusive Excellence at the University’s Division of Diversity and Inclusion, allowed participants to discuss these outcomes, learn from each other's lived experiences, and provide respectful conversation and engagement around ongoing efforts to address disparities within the school. This transparency in communication was welcomed and there was a strong desire to continue these discussions with the same level of open communication moving forward. 

A number of identified areas where additional support is needed for our community included the graduate program which is, even now, undergoing significant updates to increase community funding, support and mentoring. On this note, we have expanded the new Graduate Peer Mentoring Program initiated by the DEI committee with BME Graduate Student Association and Tammy Siemers, the Weldon School’s Senior Graduate Training Program and Professional Development Specialist. This fall, all first-year graduate students have been matched with mentors that they can learn the innerworkings of graduate school from more senior peers who have had the same recent struggles and hold critical insights to successes. Postdocs too have the opportunity to be both mentors and mentees within this program.  

DEI Steering Committee members have further catalyzed the integration of other best practices within the department as well, including developing and formalizing holistic faculty hiring rubrics that are now used in the 3 ongoing faculty searches with the School. We have also worked closely with the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee to expand the undergraduate resource center to 3 nights/week, coordinated by a 25% Graduate Teaching Assistant. 

DEI Steering committee members and Weldon faculty continue to participate in recruiting and engagement activities this fall including the Big10 Graduate School Expo, Graduate Diversity Visitation Program, and Trailblazers in Engineering, as well as further engaging with University-led recruiting events at SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference and Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) this fall. Within the department, the DEI Steering Committee leads journal clubs for Faculty and Staff, and Graduate student/Faculty/Staff (co-led by with BMEGSA) to educate Weldon School members about wide ranging diversity equity and inclusion issues in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) higher education: rural exclusion in STEM, classroom and conference accessibility, LGBQT+ visibility, and the use of active-learning to empower underrepresented students in the classroom.