Five-Year Strategic Plan for Equity and Inclusion

ISCRM UNITE has developed a measurable five-year strategic plan for equity and inclusion. Our vision is a community that is representative of the US population (including foreign-born individuals) at the undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, staff, faculty, and leadership levels, that is open and just, and which empowers people of all backgrounds to contribute to and benefit from the pursuit of scientific truth.
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Overview of Strategic Plan

The Unite team has developed a measurable five-year strategic plan for equity and inclusion. Our vision is a community that is representative of the US population (including native and foreign-born individuals) at the undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, staff, faculty, and leadership levels, that is open and just, and which empowers people of all backgrounds to contribute to and benefit from the pursuit of scientific truth.

Our plan was developed around two unifying principles. The first principle is to empower, celebrate, resource, and fund diverse voices (ECRF). The second principle is to create structures that facilitate systemic change (S).

Under this strategic plan, ISCRM will: 1) develop and adopt practices to broaden participation at all levels, and 2) proactively promote a culture that supports the success and well-being of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We expect that success in these goals provides a major opportunity for ISCRM to attract and develop the most talented scientists from our community and the world, from a wide range of backgrounds and demographic groups.

Our committee welcomes ideas and feedback from community members on how the goals and strategies should be improved!

Five-Year Goals

The plan details actions in three areas: Institute Climate and Policies, Trainees (Undergraduate, Graduate, Postdoc), and Faculty. In total, we have formulated 10 key goals across these areas:

  1. Have a plan to achieve well-articulated goals to assess and improve equity and inclusion at ISCRM
  2. Track progress and report to institute community
  3. Develop policies to establish accountability and to get buy-in on the importance of initiatives related to equity and inclusion.
  4. Empower members of ISCRM to achieve E&I goals through awards, sponsorship, training, and resources.
  5. Diverse communities outside of UW are educated about stem cells, their use in research, and the way in which research at ISCRM may have potential benefit to medicine. In addition, ISCRM is actively participating in STEM outreach.
  6. Increase the awareness and attractiveness of ISCRM among diverse trainees–undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral–by recruiting, presenting ISCRM as an inclusive training environment, and funding research positions for trainees from URGs.
  7. Build and sustain an equitable training climate such that all trainees feel supported by ISCRM and their advisor/research group and that they are able to succeed academically and professionally.
  8. Build and sustain an inclusive and welcoming social climate in which all trainees feel like they belong and have a voice in ISCRM affairs and policies.
  9. Increase the attractiveness of ISCRM among diverse faculty candidates, implement practices to reduce bias and increase diversity of candidate pool, and place greater prioritization on preparedness to work with diverse populations and contributions to diversity in future hires.
  10. Identify and reduce barriers to faculty success, and ensure these barriers do not differentially impact faculty from URGs. Ensure mechanisms for inclusion in networks, decision-making, mentoring and obtaining support for all faculty, regardless of rank, tenure status, or demographic group.

For each of these goals, we have specified the desired five-year outcome, with specific strategies to achieve them.

Acknowledgements

The ISCRM Strategic Plan for Equity and Inclusion was developed by the following faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate student members of Unite (in alphabetical order of last name):

Eileen Brady
Ross Bretherton
Chelsea Fortin
Thatcher Heldring
Ronald Kwon
Julie Mathieu
Ernesto Morfin Montes de Oca
Colleen O’Connor
Ayokunle Olanrewaju
Emily Olszewski
Lil Pabon
Hannele Ruohola-Baker
Sarah Saxton
Marta Scatena
Susana Simmonds Bohorquez
Kelly Stevens
Jeannie Stuyvesant
Kris Vosk
Maja Zavaljevski

The authors would like to acknowledge the people, events, and organizations whose work shaped the strategies proposed in this document. This plan is based on the Equity and Inclusion Strategic Plan developed by the Stanford Physics Department, and adapted to suit the unique needs of ISCRM. Many of the ideas in this plan originate from talks, events, and workshops held in Summer 2020. These events include the PR2ISM UW 2020 Summer Series, organized by Dr. Tam’ra-Kay Francis, and Experiences of Black STEM in the Ivory: A Call to Disruptive Action. The initiative to form a mentoring network stems from a series of lectures by Dr. Beronda Montgomery given at the PR2ISM 2020 Summer Series and STEMMS mentoring and training series at UW. The “Connections Program” is inspired by the work of Dr. Tumaini Coker who developed a similar program at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. The national stem cell award is based on the Eddie Méndez Scholar Award program established at Fred Hutch. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Tam’ra-Kay Francis for consulting on aspects of this plan.