MCDB Town Hall Meeting May 2021

Dear MCDB community,

We hope that this email finds you doing as well as possible. Over the past year, we have been confronted with multiple challenges including continued acts of violent racism. A year ago, faculty in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Department at UCSB committed to confront institutional practices that disadvantage Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Our first action was to establish the MCDB Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee (https://www.mcdb.ucsb.edu/about/equity). This committee held the first MCDB Town Hall Meeting to initiate a dialogue between community members.

Over the past year, the faculty DEI committee has collaboratively worked alongside the newly formed undergraduate and established graduate DEI committees to continue dialogue while advancing efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our community. It is time to meet again. We will be holding our second Town Hall meeting May 5th, 5-6 PM PDT https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/86087184739

This Town Hall will center on informing the community of the progress that the DEI committees have made while also maintaining this event as a forum to discuss persisting challenges faced by community members. Therefore, we encourage MCDB community members to submit anonymous comments or questions at Anonymous Comment Form. A subset of these submissions will be addressed by undergraduate, graduate, and faculty panellists.

Through these efforts, we will continue to change MCDB and UCSB to create a campus that is inclusive and respectful of all.

On behalf of the MCDB Graduate, Undergraduate and Faculty DEI committees.