The College of Arts and Sciences is committed to creating and sustaining a research and learning environment that truly honors the contributions that diversity makes to our strength. We understand that supporting diversity and inclusion in College not only benefits our university, but benefits all of the peoples and communities our institution was created to serve.
We know that our commitment to diversity must be a commitment to accountability and to action. Through informed investments we are working strategically to ensure that our institutional culture, policies and infrastructure foster an inclusive environment within the College.
Our commitment to diversity and inclusion goes hand in hand with our commitment to equity and social justice. In the College of Arts and Sciences, we value diversity in all forms, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender and gender expression, sexual orientation, language, culture, religion, mental and physical ability, age, socio-economic status, parenting status, citizenship status, and immigration status. Openness, dignity, intellectual curiosity, and inclusiveness are crucial to learning. They are the root of true knowledge and lie at the heart of our academic mission.
The success of our efforts to recruit, retain and support peoples historically under-represented in U.S. universities demand that we rectify the inequalities long perpetuated in higher education. We know that our commitment to diversity must be a commitment to accountability and to action. Through informed investments we are working to ensure that our institutional culture, policies and infrastructure foster an inclusive environment. We know we cannot survive as a public institution without these investments. Our goal is to ensure the full participation and wellbeing of all members of the CAS community. Now more than ever, we must support each other.
We gratefully acknowledge the enormous contribution that diversity makes to our university. We believe that the ability to solve complex human problems depends on including and honoring the perspectives of diverse persons. Homogenous academic settings breed complacency and ignorance. Diversity expands our scholarly horizons and sparks intellectual growth. Diversity exposes us to new ideas and intellectual traditions and enhances our ability to think in complex ways that are critical to our collective future.
In the College, we are committed to creating and sustaining a learning environment that truly honors the contributions that diversity makes to our strength. We understand that supporting diversity and inclusion in CAS not only benefits our university, but benefits all of the peoples and communities our institution was created to serve.
Our commitments to Diversity, Equity and Belonging in the College are anchored in our work to uphold the following values:
Shared Responsibility: Recognizing the importance of our collective efforts to shape and sustain an equitable and inclusive environment within the College and on our campus at large.
Community: Working to serve diverse communities both on and off campus by advancing social justice and racial equity within the College, and investing in community engagement, collaboration and partnerships.
Accountability: Continually evaluating and assessing our progress towards our goals to institutionalize a culture of equity and belonging within the College and across our campus.
Action: Ensuring our commitments translate into tangible results and outcomes that align with our goals to advance equity, belonging and social justice within the College and throughout our campus.
The following are the key initiatives to advance diversity and inclusion that are ongoing or in progress within the College. These priorities are informed by the many written statements, calls to action, listening sessions, townhalls and focus groups that BIPOC students have contributed to.
The College of Arts and Sciences is the recipient of a $3.2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the creation of a new Department of Indigenous Studies with an innovative and interdisciplinary structure. Academic and community engagement within this new department will recognize Indigenous nationhood and sovereignty as foundational to building ethical and productive scholarly, educational, and experiential learning relationships with Indigenous people, organizations, and communities.
Deeply committed in supporting present and future generations of Indigenous students and scholars, UB’s Department of Indigenous Studies will promote research, educational, and outreach initiatives aligned with community priorities to ensure the continuity of Indigenous knowledge and languages, and the health and sustainability of Indigenous people, land, and water. The mission of the Department of Indigenous Studies is to foster excellence in Indigenous-centered scholarship, research, and teaching, and to promote multidisciplinary research and teaching beneficial to Indigenous Nations, communities, and organizations in local, national, and global contexts.
Theresa L. McCarthy
Theresa McCarthy, of the Onondaga Nation, Beaver Clan of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory is the associate dean for inclusive excellence and the interim chair of the Forthcoming Indigenous Studies Department.
McCarthy has advanced Indigenous inclusion in higher education for over twenty years, which has been particularly challenging since institutions have long blamed low Native student enrollments and the small size of our communities for our under-representation, while ignoring the root causes of educational and other disparities among Indigenous peoples. Instead of seeing low numbers as cause for concern and attention, the imperatives of Indigenous inclusion are often dismissed and overlooked. McCarthy and many of her Indigenous colleagues have argued that we need to be taking the opposite approach. Addressing the issues that have created and sustained the marginalization of Indigenous people in higher education will help improve the conditions that effect all peoples of historically marginalized communities and groups.
Her approach to this work emphasizes the need to embed anti-racism and decolonization into all of our efforts to advance diversity, equity and belonging in the College. This work of anti-racism and anti-colonialism cannot be done without the leadership of peoples who have experienced these structures and hierarchies most intimately across generations and who know them best.
At the same time, dismantling these systems should not always fall to those who are most effected by them. Addressing issues of equity, inclusion and belonging in higher education is an enormous undertaking. It requires the collective responsibility of everyone to do their part, especially those who have long been privileged by the structures that remain in place.
What is especially exciting to McCarthy about this work is the space that these efforts will create for under-represented intellectual traditions and experiential knowledge. At long last this innovation and brilliance can truly shine within our research and learning environments, moving us all forward to a more just and equitable future.
Luis A. Colón
Colón brings immense administrative experience, including previous service as the department chair in the Department of Chemistry from 2013-2020; the associate dean for graduate and postdoctoral education in the Graduate School’s office of Postdoctoral Scholars; and is currently the co-director and founder of the Institute for Strategic Enhancement of Educational Diversity.
In addition to prestigious awards, honors and grants in his area of specialization in separation science and measurements, as well as for excellence in teaching in mentoring, he has long been an advocate for advancing underrepresented and disadvantaged students in science.
Colón was named by President Barack Obama as a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. He was the recipient of the ACS Stanley Israel Regional Award for Promotion of Diversity in Chemical Sciences in 2010 and the ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in Chemical Sciences in 2016.
Javier Bustillos
Senior Staff Assistant
javier@buffalo.edu
Published March 29, 2021
Dear Faculty, staff and students,
The College of Arts and Sciences stands with the victims, families, and communities in Atlanta and with the broader Asian and Asian American communities now coming to grips with the recent mass shooting that has taken the lives of eight people, including six Asian women. As we offer our heartfelt condolences to the families and communities affected, we are compelled to speak out and act against the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia that motivated this latest atrocity. As we learn more of this tragedy, our concerns turn immediately to our students, staff, faculty and to all members of Asian communities on our campus.
Our ability to act in solidarity and to provide more effective support requires that we recognize a number of fundamental factors that have shaped the current circumstances. First, we must recognize that this was not an isolated event, but part of a long and ongoing history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the Unites States. Second, we must understand how this violence is rooted at the dangerous intersections of racism, sexism, colonialism, and xenophobia, rendering all peoples of Asian descent and their communities as targeted and vulnerable. And, third, we acknowledge that since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen a spike in violence against Asians and Asian Americans across the country.
In condemning this violence, it is the responsibility of everyone in the College to work together to make our community - and nation – more inclusive. We must intensify our efforts to normalize the understanding that everyone belongs. These painful times serve as a stark reminder that equitable and safe environments are not accessible to all. We must continue to strive to make this a reality through our actions and investments. Our commitments to equity and belonging must include commitments to ensuring everyone’s safety and well-being.
Robin G. Schulze
Dean
College of Arts and Sciences
Theresa McCarthy
(Six Nations, Onondaga)
Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence
Published June 8, 2020
Dear Faculty, staff and students,
The College of Arts and Sciences condemns the brutal killing of George Floyd. Mr. Floyd’s death is the latest in a wave of police and civilian violence, rooted in anti-Black racism, that has also taken the lives Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade in recent weeks alone. These latest tragedies have catalyzed a collective reckoning with the long and ongoing histories of racial discrimination and injustice in this country. They have exposed a flagrant devaluing of Black lives increasingly emboldened in the present.
While we express our solidarity with the current protests and calls for justice, we recognize that it should not take a crisis of this magnitude to draw our attention to the complexities of systemic and structural racism, anti-Black racism, and colonialism that continue to shape the lives of Black Americans. As we are moved to strengthen our commitment to change, we are challenged to confront the ways in which we have failed to alter the conditions that have made the Black Lives Matter movement necessary.
If we hope to truly stand in solidarity with African American students, staff, and faculty on this campus, we must do more. Our heartache in the current moment must translate into actions that center the aspirations of the Black communities at UB in all efforts to build a more accountable and inclusive institutional culture.
We decry the uses of excessive force against citizens protesting police brutality, anti-Blackness, systemic discrimination, and the erosion of civil liberties in this country. We renounce all efforts to criminalize and silence the crucial work of transformation that is underway in the streets of the cities and communities across this nation. Through this work emerges new possibilities that we will draw upon in moving towards a more just and equitable future.
Robin G. Schulze
Dean
College of Arts and Sciences
Theresa McCarthy
(Six Nations, Onondaga)
Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence
"I loved UB the very first time I visited. I saw the diversity on campus and loved the professors – I knew it was a fit.” – Mike Hunter, student in the Department of Media Study
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