DCDI Mission Statement

Read our full length mission statement describing DCDI's work and goals

The Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is committed to convening and nurturing a diverse community of individuals dedicated to promoting excellence and leadership in neurobiology education, research, and service. Diverse perspectives, talents, experiences, and contributions as HMS students, trainees, faculty, staff, and administrators are the foundation and drivers of our excellence. Department administration and faculty members are committed to supporting historically marginalized identities in our department, and to strengthen our department members’ sense of inclusion, equity, and belonging.

Very directly: we believe that it is our moral imperative to achieve the goals of inclusion, equity, and belonging in our community. We acknowledge that the historical oppression of members of particular racial and ethnic groups and the perpetuated racism within society that exists today - including within institutions of higher education - have produced unacceptable racial inequities in academia. Dismantling oppressive and exclusionary structures while striving for racial equity is a priority for our Department; we are poised to implement changes that will lead us to become an anti-racist Department and set an example at HMS, at Harvard, and academia in general.

In addition to race and ethnicity, we recognize that many other identities continue to be marginalized within academia, including those related to sex and gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic circumstances, national origin, geographic background, immigration status, ability and disability. These facets of identity are interdependent and, when combined, yield complex systems of discrimination and oppression that must be taken into account. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment that elevates the voices of all members of our community and which promotes collective reflection to measure our own shortcomings toward the goal of self-accountability. Our overarching goal is to institute concrete and permanent changes in the Department that will increase diverse representation at all levels of training, elevate and support diverse voices within our community, and create platforms that cultivate a sense of belonging and inclusion among department members, one that promotes inclusive excellence and allows everyone to be successful and thrive.

Toward this end, we launched the Departmental Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (DCDI) to execute on a series of actionable steps, as laid out by the Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience (USN) Call to Action. Working closely with USN, we reached a consensus that DCDI’s priority goals should fall into the following areas: training, education, outreach, and “in-reach.”

We founded the DCDI on the premise that we can do more toward our goals by operating in parallel workstreams. In the Summer of 2020, we launched DCDI with the following structure: we have a standing Core Committee composed of Department Chair, Department administration, Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience (PiN) leadership, and USN Executive Board members. The Core Committee provides oversight of progress by defining milestones and providing essential administrative support to subcommittees, centrally organizes the community around actionable agenda items, writes grants to create new programs, and facilitates cross-department activities.

The Core Committee interfaces with subcommittees that focus on our four priority areas. Each subcommittee is chaired by a member of the community who coordinates the activities and projects of their respective group. Subcommittee leaders are compensated in recognition of the additional time required of them to generate progress in DCDI efforts. Subcommittee leaders meet with the Core Committee every month to provide updates, share challenges, and identify ways to collaborate across teams.

DCDI Core Committee is also working on seeking out professional support in many of our efforts (we have already collaborated extensively with a member of the Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships office to help design nerveimPulse and with mentoring efforts to create new Training modules; see below) so as to minimize the onuson the trainees who comprise our subcommittees. We are actively identifying ways in which to integrate DEI experts in DCDI activities, for example as part of our annual Department retreats or recruitment events (see Aim 1.1).

Speaking as scientists to scientists, DCDI proposes to achieve our DEI goals through the following Aims and based on the following preliminary work:

Aim 1: Increase belonging and inclusion in our community

1.1: Create platforms to elevate community voices: We feel strongly that bringing the community together to share experiences and discuss topics related to DEI are incredibly powerful for fostering mutual understanding. Indeed, DCDI receives feedback that  mechanisms, such as departmental town halls, create a sense of comfort, validation, and inclusion for community members. We have also observed a high attendance of department members (and even neuroscientists working in other departments) in our Town Halls, suggesting that the community values these platforms. 

In preliminary work, the DCDI in-reach subcommittee has hosted a series of events, modeled after the successful Growing Up In Science series,  called ‘Listening Labs’, small group meetings in which members of the community come together to discuss and share insights on various topics including “Embedding the Values of Racial Equity and Justice at Work” and the personal stories of being an underrepresented minority in science. The goal of these sessions is to elevate diverse voices and to provide platforms for people to come together through shared experiences. We also host social sessions under the auspices of other community groups, such as the Women in Neuroscience series and the Neurobiology Postdoc Club. We also publish a weekly departmental newsletter, The Action Potential, where we regularly feature voices from the community and shine a spotlight on community groups representing diverse scientists working in Harvard neuroscience. We will also include DEI workshops and content at upcoming Department retreats hosted by DCDI members and if possible invite DEI experts to participate in the events in person.

While we strongly believe that fostering mutual understanding is achieved through community dialogues, we also recognize that the onus to educate the community should not fall on marginalized individuals or minoritized groups. Therefore, we will actively work on DEI education (Aim 2) to engage more community members and to strive to create safe and welcoming space for all.

1.2: Generate longitudinal data to assess the impact of DCDI activities: To assess the efficacy of our DCDI efforts, our inreach committee has generated a custom “pulse” survey for the Department called nerveimPulse. Members of the DCDI In-reach subcommittee designed this survey in partnership with the HMS Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership office. Questions are designed to provide us with a rich dataset about demographic composition of our department, as well as attitudes and opinions on various DEI-related topics. Our overarching goal is to have a mechanism for annual self-assessment of DCDI progress and to longitudinally assess the impact of DCDI activities as they relate to the demographic diversity in the Department, as well as attitudes and sentiments of members of our community on issues of support, inclusivity, and belonging. For example, we can determine the impact of our DCDI’s Outreach subcommittee on recruitment of trainees to our Department by monitoring the trend of nerveimPulse demographic data. Another example of how the data will be used pertains to what extent respondents feel like the Department values their voices or sentiments related to belonging and inclusion. Our goal is to see a rising trend in positive feelings of belonging, and if we do not see such a positive slope in nerveimPulse data, we will know that DCDI activities need to re-prioritize efforts in this space. In addition to assessing our progress, the collected data will guide us identify places for improvement in the future. Thanks to the parallel structure of DCDI, we believe we will be able to shift our focus in favorable ways based on these data.

Aim 2: Educate our community

2.1: Educate the community in DEI scholarship: We believe that impactful efforts towards DEI in the Department relies on disseminating knowledge pertaining to the vast field of scholarship on these topics. Instead of relying on minority groups in the Department to teach us (risk perpetuating the “minority tax”), we believe that it is the responsibility of DCDI to learn and teach the community about DEI. To this end, the Department publishes a weekly series Theme J that provides relevant analysis and resources. Another major initiative is building and curating the vast array of literature and resources on DEI topics in a digestible form on an upcoming dedicated site.

An exciting future direction is the development of a new program that will empower department labs to take the lead on structured and impactful DEI discussions in lab meetings and/or journal club meetings. Encouraging structured conversations around DEI within the laboratory is necessary for transformative change within our community, as our Departmental culture is constructed from the cultures of individual laboratories. To this end, we will create de novo educational guides on primary literature related to DEI in STEM and neuroscience that will include discussion prompts, key definitions, essential context (grounded in DEI scholarship) for concepts discussed in research articles, as well as a list of additional suggested readings. We strongly believe that a DEI professional is critical to the success of this program, and DCDI Core Committee and Education Subcommittee leaders are spearheading efforts to recruit experts for this work.

2.2: Train our community in DEI topics through the design of original training modules made by Department members for Department members. The training sessions are responsive to the unique culture of our Department, and are developed within the context of our particular environment and department needs. Research indicates that mentorship is the keystone to DEI in STEM, and so initial training efforts have focused on mentorship training. Members of the DCDI Training subcommittee have sought out expertise from an external expert who regularly leads and develops evidence based-mentorship training for STEM and higher education institutions to develop new Department-specific training modules. By this Spring, nearly 100% of faculty will have undergone mentorship training. There is currently work to provide training to Department trainees and staff as well on topics related to DEI allyship. A major charge of the Training Subcommittee will be regular offerings of training sessions, feedback and evaluation of training efficacy, and importantly actionable items based on discussions that emerge from training sessions.

Aim 3: Continuously work to increase diversity at all levels of training

3.1: Recruit with diversity and inclusion as priorities in ongoing hiring efforts: This is a longstanding goal of the Department and HMS at large, with the goal of increasing representation at the administrative, technician, student, postdoctoral, and faculty levels. There are various local and institutional efforts in this space, including PiN recruitment and the recent HMS “cluster hire” initiative. We are sponsoring educational booths at conferences and local science fairs that we hope will demonstrate to the community that DCDI is actively seeking to recruit neuroscientists from diverse backgrounds to our Department.

Work in this area will be continuous; we will assess the success of these efforts through the annual dissemination of a Department survey nerveimPulse (Aim 1.2). Our Departmental seminar series and other community events will continuously highlight outstanding scientists who are underrepresented in science; indeed thanks to Department faculty members, USN and Women in Neuroscience groups will now annually host a seminar speaker as part of the Department seminar series.

3.2: Launch new outreach programs to encourage scientists from all backgrounds to engage with the Department: the DCDI Outreach subcommittee has begun to develop recruiting pipelines at various levels of training, from high school programs to graduate and postdoctoral fellows. Programs vary in scope, length, and format. For example, some will be hands-on in lab training, while others will be more ‘tea time’ like events where students can talk to neuroscientists in the Department about their experiences in academia, and make real world connections with us. The goal of all Outreach events is to increate interactions and try to promote the formation of critical networks between anyone in interested in neuroscience and our wonderful community.

As we design these programs, we fully recognize that recruitment is only the first step to a better department, and must be done in parallel with efforts to retain talented individuals. Thus we believe strongly that all outreach work must be done in concert with “inreach” efforts to increase inclusion and belonging in the Department, and so we are also focusing a large majority of DCDI efforts to inreach (Aim 1).

Summary

DCDI’s preliminary work suggests that we can make inroads toward the three aims, but that we need sustained work and resources to make concrete progress. Thanks to the department, we have preliminary fundraising efforts to galvanize DCDI efforts, and we are actively searching for more financial support through the institution and beyond. Albeit slowly, progress will come if we continue to work together toward the three aims. Research dictates that academic departments need to devote resources and seek out experts to accomplish DEI goals. Like any large scale scientific project, DCDI cannot achieve its goals without support from collaborators and experts in DEI, and so we are actively working on seeking out these resources.

Through sustained and steady work, it is our aim to make each member of the Department feel that they belong, that their voice matters, that their experience is valued and contributes to our Department’s research and education mission, and that no matter what happens in the world, the Department feels like a safe place where we can thrive as scientists and individuals.

The Specific Aims of our DCDI Mission Statement

The Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) is committed to convening and nurturing a diverse community of individuals dedicated to promoting excellence and leadership in neurobiology education, research, and service. Diverse perspectives, talents, experiences, and contributions as HMS students, trainees, faculty, staff, and administrators are the foundation and drivers of our efforts. Department administration and faculty members are committed to supporting historically marginalized identities in our department and in the scientific community more generally, and to strengthening our department members’ sense of inclusion, equity, and belonging. Our overarching goal is to institute concrete and permanent changes in the Department that will increase diversity at all levels of training, elevate and support diverse voices within our community, and create platforms that cultivate a sense of belonging and inclusion among department members, one that promotes inclusive excellence and allows everyone to be thrive and succeed. 

To this end, we have built Departmental Committees on Diversity and Inclusion (DCDI) on the premise that we can do more toward our goals by operating in parallel workstreams. DCDI launched in 2020 with the following structure: a standing Core Committee composed of the Department Chair, Department administration, Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience leadership, and Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience Executive Board members.  

The Core Committee interfaces with subcommittees that focus on four priority areas: training, education, outreach and in-reach. Each subcommittee is chaired by a member of the community who independently coordinates the activities and projects of their respective group, and is compensated for these important efforts. Additionally, the DCDI is seeking out professional support across its various initiatives, both to minimize the onus on trainees, and to ensure that our efforts are maximally impactful.

Speaking as scientists to scientists, DCDI proposes to achieve our DEI goals through the following Aims and based on the following preliminary work [full Constitution here]:

Aim 1: Increase belonging and inclusion in our community

In order for all members of our Department to produce their best work, we believe it is essential that all members of the community feel that their voices are heard and valued. Creating spaces for community discussion on topics related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a powerful way to foster such mutual understanding. Preliminary work by the DCDI Inreach subcommittee has hosted numerous events such as town halls, our new “Listening Labs” seminar series, and social sessions through other community groups to convene department members and engage in dialogues about shared experiences. To longitudinally track how these events and others impact communal sense of inclusion and belonging, the DCDI is also launching an annual anonymous survey, called the nerveimPulse, to assess the status of demographic diversity as well as attitudes towards DEI related topics and efforts. In the future, the nerveimPulse Survey (its deployment and subsequent data analysis) along with continued efforts to create honest and comfortable spaces for all members of the department will become a critical driver of inclusion within HMS Neuro. See more about our In-reach efforts here. 

Aim 2: Educate our community

Advancing DEI in the department relies heavily on the continual engagement and education of department members on anti-racism, allyship, and on successful mentorship of diverse trainees. We have preliminarily begun work in these areas in a multi-pronged approach. To collect and disseminate resources pertaining to anti-racism, systemic barriers in academia, the DCDI Education subcommittee has begun publishing a weekly series of compiled resources and literature on DEI topics, and will soon be launching a dedicated centralized web platform for our community members. Furthermore, the DCDI Training subcommittee has been charged with regularly offering evidence-based training sessions for both faculty and trainees on best mentorship and allyship practices. By Spring of 2021, 100% of HMS Neuro faculty will have undergone at least one such training, and several more training programs are currently being designed with the aid of external DEI experts. Future work entails development of new training modules for staff and trainee department members. See more about our DCDI Education and Training Subcommittees here. 

Aim 3: Continuously work to increase diversity at all levels of training

Preliminary demographic data describing the race/gender/SES breakdown of our department members revealed gaps in representation at all levels of hiring. In order to remedy these gaps, we are continually committed to hiring diverse candidates, and advertising available positions on broad, public platforms such as conference booths, local science fairs etc. Additionally, we have begun to develop recruiting pipelines to HMS Neuro, including high school programs and post-bacc programs, to lower the barrier to entry to academic neuroscience. Further programming is being built to increase retention of URM PhDs and postdocs onto higher academic positions. The progress of these outreach and recruiting efforts, as well as our retention and inclusion efforts, will be tracked through the nerveimPulse survey (see Aim 1) over the coming years. See more about the DCDI Outreach committee here. 

Summary

Our preliminary work suggests that we have made progress towards achieving the three aims, but that we need sustained work and resources to achieve true equity in academic neuroscience.  

 Through sustained and steady work, our aim is that each member of the Department feels that they belong, that their voice matters, that their experience is valued and contributes to our Department’s research and education mission, and that no matter what happens in the world, the Department is a safe place where we can thrive as scientists and individuals.

Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience

The Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience (USN) is GSAS organization aimed at creating and maintaining a supportive network for all neuroscience scholars in the Harvard community from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, as well as their allies. Founded in the Neurobiology Department at HMS, we welcome all graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research technicians and undergraduate/co-op students in Neuroscience labs who are interested in our events. We foster career development, community building, and networking through informal data talks given by members to strengthen scientific presentation skills; community dinners to foster conversation, mentorship, and support; neuroscience seminars featuring minority faculty from other institutions; and recruitment events for prospective underrepresented graduate students. USN seeks to foster an intellectually rigorous, supportive network between underrepresented scholars interested in neuroscience to facilitate the advancement of their careers.

Graduate students affiliated with GSAS can join us on our Engage page https://engage.gsas.harvard.edu/organization/usn

email gsas-usn@fas.harvard.edu

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Sign the Petition! Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience Call to Action

June 4, 2020

PDF of letter found here

In response to the messages sent by various leaders in the Harvard community regarding the recent injustices, the executive board of the Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience (USN) would like to voice a call to action for our entire community. Police brutality towards black people is just the tip of the iceberg – the sad reality is far more pervasive within American culture as inequality in healthcare access, wage distribution, and education persist. The current political and socio-economic climate fails to value, affirm, and protect members of our community from distinct backgrounds. As one of the preeminent scientific departments in the world, we have both the power and responsibility to create an inclusive environment that can catalyze broad systematic change necessary across academia. It is from this lens that USN requests the Department of Neurobiology and Program in Neuroscience (PiN) to mount a meaningful response to issues of diversity and inclusion through concrete actionable items.

  • Diversity training:
    • For PIs: There has been past discourse between USN and PiN leaders on the need for mentorship and diversity training for current PIs. Such training has only been completed by certain faculty such as those with HHMI Gilliam fellows and has been encouraged for SAC faculty. With a community of over 100+ faculty,this is unacceptable. We request this training to be expanded to all faculty, including PiN faculty affiliates. It is imperative that our faculty is equipped to handle the needs of students and postdocs from all backgrounds to facilitate their success.
  •  
    • For students:In coordination with Dean Segal, Samantha Reed, and the GSAS Office of Diversity and Minority Affairs, the GSAS Diversity and Inclusion Fellows have planned a DMS Culture and Community Workshop to take place during orientation and follow-up workshops during the academic year. These workshops aim to establish and sustain an inclusive culture and community for incoming and current students and are aligned with the University’s commitment to inclusive excellence. These workshops must be required for our incoming students and strongly encouraged for our current students. This effort mirrors established and effective workshops in the BBS and SysBio programs that cover the interpersonal, internalized, and institutional components of racial and gender bias in academia.
  • Statements on Diversity and Inclusion: As we strengthen our department through the recruitment of new investigators and students, it is important for us to understand how they will contribute to our shared values of diversity and inclusion. From this, we ask the department to require all applying students and faculty to submit a statement of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Several California based institutions have included this requirement for several years and can serve as a model to structure our own. Both faculty and student statements would be reviewed by designated members of USN.

These statements would play a significant contribution to the final admissions and hiring decisions.

  • USN Involvement in Recruitment and Admissions: The dearth of Black, Latinx, and Native American students in PiN is apparent, often leading to feelings of isolation or imposter syndrome. For several years USN has led efforts for recruiting minority graduate students on behalf of the Program in Neuroscience. While the opportunity to engage and advise students has been fulfilling, we often feel we are given this responsibility without any authority in the decision making process. The opaque nature of the admissions process gives students little say in who our future colleagues will be. Additionally, the admissions committee consists of members with almost no ethnic diversity. This can create avenues for implicit bias in the selection of incoming students. To this end, we ask that senior members of the USN board serve as advisors in both the application triage and final admission decisions. This should be paired with the creation of paid department-based Diversity and Inclusion Fellow roles held by senior members of USN who would be devoted towards managing the extra burden recruitment activities place on USN. As advisors we can provide perspectives and insight on the applications of minority students that the admission committee may miss. An Oversight Committee that recently evaluated PiN suggested that students should be involved in the admissions process as done in other institutions such as Stanford, UCLA, and Brandeis. They also highlighted the need for PiN to have a stronger presence at conferences made for students from underrepresented backgrounds such as ABRCMS and SACNAS. These comments from the Oversight Committee serve as an external validation for the needs to act towards the measures we propose.
  • Community Engagement: A primary issue we would like to address is the severe lack of community engagement in the discussion of the barriers that underrepresented groups face during their scientific training. For far too long the conversations on improving diversity and equality on our campus have fallen under the jurisdiction of the minority affiliation groups. It is not the sole responsibility of the diverse members of our community to tackle these conversations. The tragic murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor allowed many of us to glimpse the reality of social injustices and inequalities that minority communities face everyday. However, such tragedies should not be the impetus for discussions about diversity and inclusion.

 We ask our department to provide town hall discussions centered on broader systemic injustices in academia where underrepresented groups have a chance to be heard, and others to be informed. These discussions may seem difficult or uncomfortable, but they would serve to educate and strengthen our community and must become commonplace.

  • Investing external facilitators to coordinate culture and institutional change in the department: We ask that the department make a multi-year investment in facilitators  who can guide the department through the process of becoming an antiracist institution. Profoundly changing our departmental culture will require a sustained and structured effort that needs the guidance of trained professionals. The facilitators will keep us accountable and provide expertise on best practices. They will be essential for coordinating the efforts described in this letter and can serve additional key roles including consulting with leadership, leading an ongoing task force, and leading racial affinity-group and community-wide discussions.

In his recent email, Mike Greenberg suggested that we still have a long way to go in working to eliminate the prejudice, implicit bias, and feelings of isolation that underrepresented minorities feel. Unfortunately, the politics of everyday society cannot be separated from our lives as scientists, as political decisions and our socioeconomic structure greatly impact who is able to do science and what resources they have at their disposal. Towards a better future, we urge the department to create a standing Diversity and Inclusion Task Force to not only enact the changes described here but also to serve as a platform for continued discussion about what it means to be an inclusive community in the years to come.

Since its establishment USN, in cooperation with leaders of our department and PiN has played an active role in our efforts to foster a more inclusive and welcoming community. However, our goals cannot be achieved without action from our broader community. We ask that you show your support by adding your name to this petition, regardless of academic title.

Whether you express your support, or remain silent is a decision that ultimately determines if change will happen. As this is a time to promote dialogue rather than silence or indifference, USN is also hosting a zoom conversation on Tuesday June 9th at 5pm for all USN members as well as allies in the PiN and HMS-Neuro community to have a place to discuss. We invite those who are able to share stories about injustices they have faced on our campus as a result of their diverse backgrounds. If you would like to remain anonymous, you can send your message or story via this google form. And we invite everyoneto help these voices be heard. In this time, as always, USN is committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive community for all of us already here, and for those to come. We are extremely grateful for the help and guidance we have received so far and hope that our voices are heard in these actionable items.

Sincerely,

USN Board Members

Krissy Lyon, Isle Bastille, Melanie Basnak, Dionnet Bhatti, Chris Reid, Salvador I. Brito, and Olubusola O. Olukoya

Contact Us!

Chloe Denelsbeck, Community Programs Coordinator

chloe_denelsbeck@hms.harvard.edu