Category: Diversity and Equity

The 19th annual Womxn of Color Celebration was successfully held online on March 8th. An event for and by womxn of color was a coming together to find community and share stories and experiences from around the campus to build a stronger future.

Polly Olsen, Director DEAI & Decolonization, Tribal Liaison at the Burke Museum and Charlotte Cote, łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Tseshaht/Nuu-chah-nulth), Ph.D.; Associate Professor, Department of American Indian Studies joined this celebration to share stories and their research to shed light on the difficult history of the region and the land we stand on and circled back to resilience and restoration for the indigenous peoples of this land.

On behalf of our colleagues at the Population Health Initiative, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity, Race & Equity Initiative, and the School of Public Health Office of the Dean, the PSO would like to share the opportunity for professional staff to participate in the newly launched UW Community Circle:

Are you in search of a space to be in solidarity with other UW faculty and staff about the recent losses and ongoing trauma we are experiencing collectively? If so, we invite you to join us on October 28 for a virtual community circle guided by the work of Resmaa Menakem and his book, “My Grandmother’s Hands.”

 The purpose of the community circle is to come together as a UW community to remember the relatives we are still losing to the pandemic of covid and racism, acknowledge the collective trauma we are still experiencing, and gather together to highlight lessons we have learned in the past 20 months and integrate them into our work as professionals in population health and higher education.

 As we move forward to try to co-create a “new normal”, we strive to intentionally approach that work with an anti-racist, socially just, and equitable lens. This community circle is intentionally created for UW faculty and staff to span the academic year to allow us time to build together to live and work in a healthier space physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

 Part of this circle is a journey with the book, My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, which focuses on how we can build a community of care together by addressing our embodied trauma. E-books are available via UW Library. This opportunity is open to all UW faculty and staff and created in partnership between the Population Health Initiative, the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity, Race & Equity Initiative, and the School of Public Health Office of the Dean. See flyer here for more information.

 Register for our virtual conversation launch by Monday, October 25th here: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/salazar6/412538

A zoom link will be sent to you before the event.

 If you have registration questions, please contact Andrea Salazar-Nuñez at alazar6@uw.edu

If you have questions about the event, please contact Arti Shah at artishah@uw.edu

 The University of Washington is committed to providing access and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by October 14th to Population Health Initiative, Arti Shah, artishah@uw.edu.

The UW Professional Staff Organization (PSO) is joining with staff across the campuses of UW to host a forum, by staff & for staff, on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion at UW and beyond. Taking place on October 20-21, the event goal is to create an intersectional space to come together 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 identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and religion. The primary audience of the DEI Forum will be staff from UW. Faculty and students are welcome to attend!

The DEI Forum will include various sessions, panels, and workshops on aspects of the topic, hosted by professional staff from all over UW. Learn more and register!

More than 350 professional staff attended The PSO’s 4th Annual Diversity Forum held on March 3, 2021. The event, presented by the Professional Staff Organization in partnership with the Whole U, centered on the theme of (Re)Building Cultures of Equity and Inclusion through Policy, Procedures and Budgets.

The remote venue allowed for an engaging discussion between attendees and panelists, who included leaders from the non-profit, private, and academic sectors:

• Annette Anderson, Office of Diversity and Equity, UW-Bothell, and member and ex-officio president of the PSO Board
• Ebonee Anderson, Diversity Recruiter, UWHR, University of Washington
• Mariasol Hill, Global Intern Program Manager, Microsoft, and former Administrator for Residential Life at UW’s HFS
• Jamilah Williams, Board Chair of Sustainable Seattle, and Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications at UW’s College of Built Environments
• Moderated by Deci Evans, Harborview Medical Center Trauma, Burn and Surgical Critical Care and longtime PSO Board member and chair of our events committee.

Full bios of the panelists can be found on the event web page, and you can watch the event recording on YouTube. (Unfortunately we were unable to capture the chat transcript, but have followed up with the panelists and hope to highlight their thoughts to some of the additional questions in a future post.)

Panelists shared their experiences and offered valuable insights as to how necessary it is for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work to be explicitly included in discussions of institutional policies, procedures, and budgeting. Some of the takeaways that the PSO Board left with include the following ideas:

• Representation is important, and it does not mean just offering a seat at the table if the table was designed to exclude you: it means creating a new table.
• Bring an equity lens to all budgeting–because DEI work needs to be funded/paid work and not “stuff we expect people to do for free in addition to their regular job”
• Collaboration and working together is often at odds with the dominant white culture value of the individual. Doing independent work without including other people can be exclusionary, and it leads to a lack of accountability where folks can agree to do something then never show up. Additionally, groups of people who are super focused on getting work done at the exclusion of making connections often don’t look good (or safe). On the other hand, groups of people who work well together, with respect, look inviting; moreover, they are able to develop more robust and inclusive policies and solutions.
• Institutions need mechanisms for sharing DEI resources across the organization. One of the great places this is happening at UW is on the Department of Surgery’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council website, an effort co-led by Deci, our panel moderator. Relatedly, during the event, the PSO made a request to UW-IT to add a DEI event tag to their cross-campus Trumba calendar platform, for more effective sharing of such events. We hope this change happens and will follow up accordingly!
• We must all work to be antiracist and to work toward justice, regardless of our job descriptions or areas of expertise – this is not just the purview of folks working in DEI offices.

The event was a huge success – the panelists were generous with their time and stayed beyond the scheduled hour to answer additional questions and share their thoughts. A huge thank you to the panelists, the attendees, and Whole U. We are so glad to have been able to be in conversation with you all. And we’d love to hear your thoughts – please let us know what aspects of the event resonated with you!

Based on the level of engagement both in the chat and via email after the event, it’s apparent to the PSO Board that many professional staff as well as others across the UW are eager to continue this conversation. We are already planning the next one! We invite you to participate in continuing this conversation – reach out to the PSO Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee to get involved.

Additionally, we invite you to tell us about DEI work that is taking place across campus – each month, we highlight DEI activities from book clubs to discussion groups to campus initiatives in our PSO member newsletter, and we’d love to amplify your work. Email psoboard@uw.edu!