Five students study together at a table in a library study room

A HISTORY OF HHMI IE AT OBERLIN

"These communities of practice are designed to encourage and enhance the emergence of new ideas and cultural approaches to tackle some of Oberlin's most-pressing questions of equity."

YEAR 5, 2021-2022

SPRING 2022

Brown Bag lunch hosted for all members of the Oberlin College community to learn more about all 7 of the DART visioning and action plans
Continued updates and meetings from the four current DART groups

FALL 2021

Beginning of DART work for (Bio)Chemistry, Biology, Neuroscience, and Math
Student-faculty lunch for students hosted by the Student Leadership Committee with 20+ attendees across students and faculty!
Geology-sponsered DEI meeting open to all students to promote upcoming and ongoing DEI work

YEAR 4, 2020-2021

SPRING 2021

Regular DART meetings bringing together current DARTs (Geology, Psychology, and Computer Science) to workshop future vision together
DARTs begin implementation of new learning strategies & procedures within their departments / classrooms
2 STEM community lunches open to all departments sharing DEI work during pandemic
Student Leadership Committee engagement with the DART process
3 Student Listening sessions focused around upcoming 4 DART disciplines

FALL 2020

5-day Summer IDEAL workshop to learn how to have effective conversations.
Monthly DART meetings & workshops on future planning with current 3 departments
Intergroup Dialogue series continued reading Race Talk: The conspiracy of Silence

Tenure and promotion forms updated, with a new question added about faculty pedagogical innovations – including those related to inclusive learning – and an existing question about service to the College broadened to include faculty diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and support for underrepresented students.

YEAR 2, 2018-2019

SPRING 2019

Three learning communities met monthly with a Key aim to revising faculty personnel forms relating:

to tenure and promotion
to recognize faculty undertaking inclusive-excellence efforts
to provide greater institutional visibility and value to inclusive excellence.

Building on their separate work in 2017-18 and fall 2018, the learning communities on Incentivizing Inclusive Practices and Inclusive Pedagogies met jointly in early 2019 to discuss proposed changes. The HHMI leadership team drafted language reflecting their work. The revised materials were vetted by the larger HHMI Advisory Board and sent to the College Faculty Council (CFC), the elected faculty body chaired by the Dean of Arts and Sciences that oversees tenure and promotion.

FALL 2018

During August 2018, faculty and staff from Kenyon College and Oberlin College, including many members of the Departmental Action and Reflection Teams, participated in the first Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching held at Oberlin College.

Three learning communities met bi-weekly to discuss:

Incentivizing Inclusive Practices
Collaboration and Communication Across Departments
Inclusive Pedagogies.

A man gives a presentation to a group of faculty and staff about Inclusive Excellence at Oberlin College.

Marcelo Vinces, former Director of CLEAR, presents to a gathering of HHMI learning community members in Oberlin's StudiOC during the 2017-18 academic year.

An audience sits at rows of white tables listening to a presentation by two women.

Faculty and staff participating in the HHMI learning communities at Oberlin College gather in StudiOC for an update on the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Initiative's ongoing projects at Oberlin.

YEAR 3, 2019-2020

SPRING 2020

The Intergroup Dialogue Series for faculty and staff read Derald Wing Sue's Race Talk: Conspiracy of Silence
Departmental Action and Reflection Team (DART) members for began planning work starting in the fall of 2020
The HHMI Inclusive Excellence initiative at Oberlin hosted a reading group centered on student sense of belonging for a group of 12 faculty and staff.

FALL 2019

Faculty and staff from Kenyon College and Oberlin College participated in the second Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching held at Oberlin College in August 2019.
Intergroup Dialogue lead by CLEAR and the MRC series for 25 faculty and staff across 20 departments discussing issues of diversity and inclusion at Oberlin College.
Worked to increase the retention and persistence of historically unserved populations.
Low-barrier faculty and staff reading group centered on research literature pertaining to diversity and inclusion in higher education.

YEAR 1, 2017-2018

SPRING 2018

The learning communities began work as a High Impact Inclusive Practice groups. Concrete interventions and accomplishments emerging from this include:

Developed a reading list of evidence-based inclusive practices in STEM.
Gathered anonymous data concerning implicit bias and stereotype threat from ~400 students
Hosted a workshop on impostor syndrome.
Reimagined the Lab Crawl STEM community event
Met with the director of the Student Union to learn about longstanding traditions and the possibility of a STEM orientation event.

FALL 2017

With the launch of the HHMI Inclusive Excellence grant at Oberlin College, six initial learning communities were established. These included: Building Community and Sense of Belonging; Collaboration and Communication Across Departments; Alumni and Community Connections; Incentivizing Inclusive Practices; Listening to and Advising Students; and Inclusive Pedagogies. All six groups met bi-weekly throughout the semester.

Participation in HHMI Sponsored learning communities engages and empowers Oberlin employees in the change process, deepens their understanding of strategies for leading organizational transformation, and provides an avenue for cross-fertilization and mutual support across the College.

A group of men and women work together to arrange colored sticky notes on a glass window in a conference room.

Faculty and staff from Oberlin College and Kenyon College gather at Oberlin's StudiOC in August 2018 for the first Mobile Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching held in Oberlin.

A group of five men and women present at the front of a conference room at a whiteboard in front of an audience.

Five faculty and staff participating in HHMI learning communities at Oberlin College present to the rest of the learning community members in StudiOC.

"The HHMI Inclusive Excellence initiative at Oberlin mobilized a number of learning communities comprised of faculty and staff from across campus in Fall 2017."