Hi! My name is Monique Thomas. My pronouns are she, her, and hers, and I’m program coordinator
at the Caltech Center for Inclusion and Diversity. Today I'm going to be talking to you about the
CCID, our mission, the programs we provide, and ways that you can get involved and stay connected.
So what is the CCID? Our mission is to provide awareness, education, advocacy, and allyship
in order to increase institutional and personal capacity for diversity
and ensure Community committed to equity and inclusive excellence.
So the foundation of our work is awareness and education. We work to make sure that our campus
community as a whole are aware of the issues and topics related to diversity and inclusion.
Based on that foundation, we then move to advocacy.
We collaborate with many faculty members, and resources, and campus divisions and departments
to ensure this advocacy. We also work towards allyship. The more informed you are,
the more likely you are to be involved in the work of equity and diversity.
Our CCID staff currently includes: Dr. Cindy Weinstein, Chief Diversity Officer,
Dr. Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux, AVP for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Assessment,
Taso Dimitriadis, Acting Senior Director, and also a non-clinical confidential resource, myself
as Program Coordinator, Alison Tominaga, Program Coordinator, and Marlene Moncada, our Department
Administrator. All of us work together as a team to increase diversity and inclusion on our campus.
So each year the CCID comes up with a theme that really talks about how we're
going to go forward - what is our vision for diversity and inclusion for the year.
And for 2021 that theme was “NAVIGATE.”
We work towards this theme through a multitude of programs and projects.
The first is our STEMinar series. STEMinars are essentially STEM
seminars and this is where we bring in scientists and researchers from local areas, from throughout
the country, and throughout the world, actually, to talk about their style research and how their
identity plays a role in that. How their identity has maybe
played a role in their professional development and professional choices.
Next we celebrate cultural heritage months. That includes everything from Black History month,
to Women's History month, Pride month which we actually celebrate in April. We call it Gaypril,
because pride month is in June and school is out usually by then.
We celebrate Native American Heritage month and Latinx Heritage month as well.
For those, we provide a multitude of speakers and projects and programs to celebrate the diversity
of our community and our campus. We also focus on current events. We hold space to talk about
important cultural events and current events and, most recently, we held a space to deconstruct
and discuss and process, the Capitol violence that happened in early January just this year.
We provide space for alumni connections. We understand that as grad students,
as anyone, you need to be connected to alumni to find out what was their path
and maybe get some advice as you’re on your professional and academic journey.
We provide space for professional development. This is everything from talks and topics,
when we bring in speakers to talk about imposter syndrome and.
overcoming barriers, to writing a diversity statement. We provide other resources, as well,
as well as outreach and connections to other departments on campus.
So one of the things that I am actually most proud of and really love that we do is that we
also are advisors to student clubs and the clubs are all based on identity.
We have a multitude of clubs. And first, and these are in alphabetical order,
is AAPI+. This is our newest club, this is the Asian American Pacific Islander Plus club.
Next, we have the Black Ladies at Caltech,
and this includes Black faculty, staff, students, and postdoc. We have BSEC:
Black Scientists and Engineers at Caltech. Caltech Feminist club, Cub Latino which
is specifically for grabs and postdocs, grads students and postdocs who identify as Latinx.
Techers of Color for students who identify as people of color
to come together and space, and this is specifically for grad students and postdocs again.
Grad/Postdoc Women: this is a space for grad and postdoc women to come
together and discuss and create community. PRISM, our LGBTQ+ Community, specifically
designed again to create space for LGBTQ+ community members who are grads and postdocs.
And finally, Relate. We understand that to have a healthy grad school experience it's really
important that you're healthy and you have healthy relationships. And so we bring in speakers,
licensed clinical therapist and others to talk about relationships to talk about issues such
as balance, work and family balance, and things like dating during the pandemic.
We specifically provide space and programming for women. We understand that women are still in the
minority in terms of STEM and that they need to find connection and community while they're on
our campus and throughout the work in STEM. We advise the Women's Engagement Board,
and this is made up of all of the women's groups from all the different divisions.
Every single division has a group that is specific to women: with Women in Biology
and Biological Engineering, which is Women in BBE, Women in Geological Sciences, Chemistry,
Math, Computing and Math Sciences as well. And again these spaces are created for women to find
space to connect, to find mentoring professional development, and just build community.
We also offer program called Women Mentoring Women, and this is a wonderful
holistic mentoring program. So women are invited to come in and you apply each year.
And once accepted, once you're in the program, you can be a mentor. So if you are an upper
grad student or faculty member, you can mentor another woman in the program as well who's maybe
a first year graduate student or an undergrad. If you’re a first year or an undergrad,
you can also receive mentoring. So you can be a mentor and be mentored at the same time, and again
creating that holistic experience of mentoring. We use an inclusive definition of women at the
CCID which includes trans women and it's designed to be a feminine-centered space.
The CCID provides trainings. Again that goes back to our foundation of education,
because before you can be an advocate or an ally, you need the information.
Our first is Safe Zone Training. This is training specifically designed
for allies of the LGBTQ+ communitie. Once you have attended our Safe Zone Training,
you will receive a Tech Zone sticker and this sort of officially designates you as someone who is an
all. You can stick it on your laptop, and your lab space, and in your office, and it really signals
to those around you that you are an ally. The other training that we have is
Decoding Diversity, and this is basically our Diversity One-on-One. This is where you learn
terms and concepts for the founding of the basics of understanding, diversity and inclusion work.
This is basically the fundamentals of designing an inclusive community.
It is a one-hour workshop, including all of our campus out to provide basic knowledge
around diversity and inclusion, so it really is foundational and again. Both of these are open,
Safe Zone and Decoding Diversity, are open to everyone on campus.
We have a couple of initiatives as well to get you more involved and connected
to the community and to working for diversity. Our Caltech Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors
Program. So this is a really unique, wonderful program where you can either on your own, or
with the group, to come up with an initiative that you think would actually create a more inclusive
environment for Caltech. You can do things such as creating a book group or discussion group. One of
our latest projects to come out of the Ambassadors Program is a DEI database and this basically
has the information for all diversity programs that are happening on campus, whether small or
large. They're all centered in one space, and so, if you go on to our website you're able to access
that database and see all the incredible diversity work that's going on on campus and get some ideas
from maybe things that you want to do as well. The other program that we have is our Compass
Mentoring Program. So as I mentioned we have Women Mentoring Women, but if you maybe want additional
mentoring and you are a woman, or you identified a different identity group or social group,
Compass Mentoring might be good for you. This is one-on-one mentoring that's based on
your identity. So if you want to work with, for example, if you're an African American
student that wants an African American mentor you can apply from a Compass and find someone.
It doesn't have to be someone based on your personal identity, it could be social academics,
someone in your field, perhaps, but it really is a great program to get you connected and to
find that sort of one-on-one mentoring that can be so essential to success of Caltech.
So that is, in a nutshell, what the Caltech CCID is all about, and all the things that we do.
We want this to be just the beginning of your relationship with CCID so we
invite you to stay connected. As you can see on this screen our website is:
diversity.caltech.edu. You can sign up for our newsletter as well at diversity.Caltech.edu.
We also are all over social media. We are on Facebook.
We are on Instagram and we are on Twitter. So please connect with us today.
Sign up for our newsletter and stay connected. We hope to see you soon. Bye bye!