Faculty and staff in the Department of Biology and Institute of Biochemistry聽are committed to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in our programs.聽We recognize and celebrate the diversity and lived experiences of our students.聽We aspire for our classrooms and research groups to be supportive and affirming spaces for all people regardless of their race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, culture, religion, and socioeconomic status.聽We are committed to listening and learning how to best support our diverse student population.
Current members of the Biology EDI committee
Faculty of Science EDI Committee
The Department of Biology and Institute of Biochemistry are also represented on the Faculty of Science EDI committee, which has organized an engaging new event series that aims to increase Awareness, Collaboration and Engagement (ACE), and advance Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) efforts in the Faculty of Science. Please check out upcoming and previous online and plan to join us at the next one.
Faculty EDI Representative: Jenny Bruin
Ongoing initiatives in the Department of Biology
杏吧原创 Biology Lab Renamed and Scholarship Established in Honour of Henrietta Lacks
This initiative to honour Henrietta Lacks was created by 杏吧原创 HeLa, a team of 杏吧原创 students led by Nadeea Rahim. The initiative includes the establishment of a scholarship, installation of a plaque, and renaming of an undergraduate teaching laboratory.
See the 杏吧原创 HeLa initiative for more information:
Biology EDI Journal Club
November 2021: Hughes BE. Coming out in STEM: Factors affecting retention of sexual minority STEM students. Science Advances, 4: eaao6373 (2018).
May 2021: Asai DJ. Race Matters. Cell, 181 (2020).
April 2021: Claude M Steele. Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Chapter 5: The Many Experiences of Stereotype Threat).
2021-2022 EDI Research Project
With funding support from I-CUREUS and the , the Biology EDI committee has established an undergraduate research internship to conduct an EDI-related research project. Tara Thachet, a fourth year undergraduate student in Neuroscience at 杏吧原创, is leading a research project to survey students in the Faculty of Science regarding aspects of their identity and survey faculty about their perceptions of student identity. The goal is to reveal the ways in which faculty perceive, or misperceive, who their students are. The results from this project will lead to greater understanding of 杏吧原创 science student identity and will lead to ways that the faculty of science can improve access and lower barriers to historically underrepresented groups (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, women) in science.
We will continue to update this page with new initiatives and actions.