2023 - 2024 SMLR DEI Committee Members
- Tracy F. H. Chang (Chair)
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and
Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department - Jie (Jasmine) Feng
Associate Professor, Human Resource Management Department - Christopher Hayes
Assistant Teaching Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department - Douglas Kruse
Distinguished Professor, Human Resource Management Department and Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department, and
Director, Program for Disability Research - Akhila Naik
Assistant Teaching Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department - Marta Pulley
Instructional Technology Specialist, Office of the Dean - Mayelin Torres
Career Management Specialist, SMLR Career Services - Anuja Rivera
Student Counselor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations Undergraduate Programs
SMLR DEI Past Events
SMLR Faculty DEI Learning Circle
(October 2022)
Developing Cultural Competencies Lunch-n-Learn
(November 2021)
On November 30, 2021, Lawrence Houston, HRM faculty member, led 35 SMLR faculty and staff in a discussion on “Developing Cultural Intelligence: Working Effectively Across Cultures”. During this session, we learned that cultural intelligence, also known as CQ, is the capability to function and relate effectively in culturally diverse situations. In just one hour we had the opportunity to think about the cultural challenges we face in our respective roles, had a lively discussion about how low cultural intelligence can lead to unintended consequences and be harmful to the community at large as well as your own organization, and reviewed a series of statements aimed at helping us think about our cultural value differences at a deeper level. Overall, participants gained knowledge to get them to think about how to improve their cultural understanding and improve cultural interactions moving forward.
Building Community Through Shared Group Experience
(October 2020)
Like institutions across the U.S., we have been challenged to engage with our community on issues of diversity and address systemic racism in particular. During the summer of 2020, the entire SMLR faculty and staff read the book, So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo.
On October 30, nearly 100 faculty and staff from across the school's various departments, programs, and centers came together for a morning of discussion to explore our personal experiences reading Oluo's book. Small group breakout sessions allowed for individual reflection on what resonated within the book for each person and established a setting for group discussion about actions that can be taken – both individually and collectively – to battle systemic racism in our own workplace to positively impact SMLR and its culture, perhaps even the larger university community as well.
