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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Newsletter
Fall 2022

What's new?

School of Biological Sciences Director of Diversity Initiatives

We are very excited to announce that we now accepting applications for a new position, the School of Biological Sciences Director of Diversity Initiatives (BDDI). The BDDI provides leadership, strategic planning, and counsel to the Dean of the School of Biological Sciences. The BDDI is a cabinet-level member of the Dean’s leadership team and serves as a key strategist and subject matter expert in all EDI-related matters. The BDDI’s portfolio includes faculty, staff, and student EDI and climate improvement; mediation and conflict resolution; and consultation. Please feel free to let potential candidates know about this important position. Candidates can learn more and apply at the job posting for the Biological Sciences Dir. of Diversity Initiatives - 120100. The position is open until filled.

Connections

Please stay tuned for our new Connections event in May 2023! Connections is an informal gathering of students, postdocs, faculty, and staff, where we can all get to know one another better and promote a stronger sense of community within the School. Every day, we all work hard to learn, experiment, discover, and publish. We share the pride and enjoyment of making contributions and celebrating our achievements. However, one of our greatest assets is our collective family of colleagues. While you may know some with whom you interact regularly, you probably still don’t know many others who share the School of Biological Sciences as their home base. A goal of the School is to promote a stronger sense of community among students, postdocs, faculty and staff. Every day, we all work hard to learn, experiment, discover, and publish. We share the pride and enjoyment of making contributions and celebrating our achievements. However, one of our greatest assets is our collective family of colleagues.

EDI calendar

We are pleased to announce that the UC San Diego Multicultural Calendar is now posted on our BioSci EDI calendar site, which we hope you will check for EDI events. In addition, major holidays are observances are now shown in this website. We hope that people will consider these dates when scheduling events.

What Can You Do?

Misconceiving Merit in Academia, Book Talk and Panel Discussion, Friday, January 13, 2023. We encourage you to attend a talk by Professor Mary Blair-Loy about her latest book, Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering, about the cultural ideas of merit in academic science that produce unfair and unequal outcomes, followed by a panel discussion. The first 50 guests will receive a copy of the book. RSVP for the Event.

We encourage faculty to seek out funds to support undergraduates working in their labs and to help undergraduates find funding. For example, NSF provides supplemental funding for undergraduates seeking research experiences on NSF funded research. Similarly, NIH RO1’s provide diversity supplements.

We also have a general list of all undergraduate funding opportunities.

In addition, please check out the one-stop Undergraduate Research Hub for undergraduate research and funding opportunities at UC San Diego.

Interested in EDI? Have an idea? Tell us what you are up to!

The Get Involved page on our Diversity Website has a webform that communicates directly to the Diversity Committee and is a permanent repository for all this information.

Get Funding to Improve BioSci EDI

The School of Biological Sciences welcomes applications for funding projects aimed at addressing equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) issues in the School of Biological Sciences. Proposals could include any activity that you feel could have a positive impact to improving EDI in our School and the campus as relevant to the School. For more information check our BioSci EDI Funds page.


Thank you for your continued commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

"In diversity there is beauty and there is strength."

Maya Angelou

James C. Nieh
Associate Dean, Division of Biological Sciences