Last Update: November/4/20222
Planned Check-In: April 2022
This page contains concrete, clear, measurable steps that the lab is implementing to break down discrimination in academia and psychological research. It is publicly viewable, and based on the larger goals made in our Our Long-Term Goals for Changing Exclusionary Academic Culture.
Most of the time, these initiatives are a product of targeted lab meetings, but if you have comments or suggestions for other ones even outside the regular lab meeting schedule, please let somebody in the lab know right away, or comment on this page. When thinking about ideas for initiatives we can take, consider them at various levels: at the level of our lab culture, at recruitment of students and staff, at subject recruitment, at the level of the Department of Psychology, and at academia as a whole. While we have more power to do more at the level of the lab, brainstorming ideas that can be taken to other levels is crucially important and welcomed. Whenever possible, these initiatives should have clear success/failure conditions so that they can be reliably reviewed and updated. Accountability and transparency are key.
If you would like to make an anonymous suggestion for any improvements to lab policies or structures, you can use our anonymous suggestion form here: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6R52wbC2jm5WRVk
List of Current Lab Initiatives
- Have BIPOC and graduate/post-doc speakers invited to come visit us for lab meetings to give research talks: we can give more visibility by inviting more external speakers, especially when COVID makes Zoom meetings easier.
- Self and Other Nomination Sheets [Miranda + Kiana + Stephanie M.] (Success if done by January 1st, 2023)
- Create a page for nominations – Google Forms? Qualtrics?
- Identify potential sources to advertise to for self-nominations, as well
- Integrate “would you like us to try and invite this person for a lab meeting” into the reading proposal place
- Reach out to Nancy Sin about mentorship group and inviting them
- Advertising more publicly once self-nominations are made
- Revisit this and make sure that we have at least one per semester for a 12 month period (Success if done by April 15th, 2023)
- Spend more time reading about intersectional issues in psychology
- January 2022: in the very first lab meeting in January, beginning of the term invite the entire lab to find readings and submit them to a wiki page
- Revisit this and make sure that we have at least one reading per semester for a 12 month period (Success if done by April 15th, 2023)
- To connect our work with the community, begin creating public versions of our published papers: it helps our work get easily communicated, teaches us to communicate better, and bypasses copyright issues.
- Email RAs to get one or two volunteers for a recent paper or a project they are working on
- Denny + Miranda will follow-up with the four RAs who expressed interest in September 2022.
- From that, either writing will continue or they will decide to hold a broader meeting to discuss ideas around structure and how this can be done.
- Ideally, by January 1st, 2023 we have a clear timeline for when things are going to be written and in what structure.
- What about doing videos instead of write-ups (easier to make, broader, uses existing platforms EDRG is building)?
- Build in short checking-in on some of these initiatives in smaller-scale admin meetings once a month. Evaluate for how we are doing on this by January 1st, 2023.
- Create anonymous suggestion form for lab, including EDI initiatives [Ayshe + Admin Team] (Success if done by January1st, 2022)
- Create a public RA document about expectations and typical roles RAs take in our lab, and post it on our website before the next major round of RA recruitment [ideally done by May 1st, 2023]
- Suggestions for Department-wide Initiatives:
Plan/Suggestion for Future Initiatives to be Discussed
- Lab Discussion on Diversity in Subject Recruitment: we recognize this to be in need of a broader conversation than the time we had today. Consider assigning a reading on the topic (one has been suggested by Carolyn) in either July or September lab meeting. Update this on next follow-up.
- Look at our RA recruitment forms with fresh eyes and make sure we are not implicitly communicating that the “ideal” student is narrower than we intend to (though, e.g., asking for GPA).
- Should we promote our work more in the media? How do we find the balance between usefulness and shameless self-promotion for own gain?