“This is not somebody else’s problem” – President Ana Mari Cauce

In spring 2015, UW President Ana Mari Cauce launched the Race and Equity Initiative with a challenge to all of us to take personal responsibility for our own biases and improving the culture on the UW campus. With this in mind, beginning in 2016-17, the three UW campuses have been given a combined $1 million for the Office for Faculty Advancement to work collaboratively with the schools, deans, chancellors, and department chairs toward recruitment and retention of diverse and inclusive faculty.

One of the goals of sustaining and supporting diversity and equity at the UW is to begin to confront bias and racism at the individual, institutional and systemic levels. The three goals:

• Confronting individuals' biases and racism
• Transforming institutional policies and practices
• Accelerating systemic change

At the iSchool, we are implementing our own theme, “Diversity in Everyday Practices: Small Wins.”

Our goal at the iSchool is to begin to look at our everyday lives and how we interact and impose our ideas into our work, school, and play. How do we choose to respond? Or how did we react? Is there something we can learn about ourselves and our community to help us begin to function and collaborate in a way that allows our people to be diverse and rich in their own culture, while enriching our iSchool community?

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