Accessibility, Belonging & Community Committee

The charge of the Department of Biology’s Accessibility, Belonging & Community (ABC) Committee is to make recommendations to increase accessibility, belonging and community of the Biology department.

To this end, the committee works to:

• identify roadblocks that stand in the way of a departmental culture that enhances accessibility, belonging and community;
• educate themselves by reading articles, attending workshops, engaging with experts, etc. to provide recommendations based on the best available data;
• synthesize collected information to generate constructive and actionable recommendations to the department;
• regularly communicate recommendations to the faculty and broader Biology community;
• transparently collect feedback, suggestions, and concerns from community members regarding experiences with respect to accessibility, belonging and community .

Note that it is not the ABC committee’s role to replace existing entities or reporting structures: thus, specific issues need to be reported to the relevant entities, including the Chair of Biology, Directors of Graduate Studies, or the Title IX Office; if such issues are reported to the ABC committee, the ABC committee will forward the communications to these relevant entities.