In late October, for 2 half-days, collaborators including the PSO, UW Tacoma Staff Association, Foster School of Business, Department of Surgery, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, Whole U, and others, put on University of Washington’s first-ever DEI Forum. Supported in part by the UW Diversity Council Seed Grant program and featuring professional staff from across the university discussing topics broadly ranging from title IX to antiracism workgroups to bringing an equity lens to student experience, the Forum brought together hundreds of staff, as well as faculty and students, over Zoom, on October 20 and 21.
Beginning and ending each half-day with opportunities for reflection and discussion on the community mural board, the Forum sought to center the needs, perspective and priorities of professional staff at UW, creating an intersectional space to share ideas, to network, and to build collective capacity to advance anti-racism and social justice efforts across UW and beyond: including intersecting aspects of identity such as race, ethnicity, ability, age, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and religion.
The DEI Forum grew out of the PSO’s annual Diversity Forum, held since 2018. Originally a one-hour event, every instance of the Diversity Forum brought more staff together than the last, and always ended with calls to have more such spaces at UW for discussing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Shared one attendee, “we hold so much knowledge across our departments and campuses, and the opportunity to gather and share resources and experiences is invaluable.”
The DEI Forum was thus designed to provide not one but 8 hours of opportunity to share, ask, learn, and discuss topics such as White Supremacy culture, emergent strategy as a model for collaboration, and many others.
Session videos, slides, and shared resources are being posted on the DEI Forum event page, and we encourage all to explore them.
And, in recognition of the continued need to hold space for these conversations, the planning team–and anyone else who’d like to get involved!–is getting started on the next event: the 2022 DEI Forum will be held April 20-21, so save the date, and please reach out to psoboard@uw.edu if you’d like to get involved in planning! https://www.washington.edu/pso/get-involved/pso-events/2022-dei-forum/