The Economics Department is committed to fostering an inclusive environment among its students, faculty, and staff that encourages diversity, and acknowledges inequities due to systematic racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and other barriers. Overcoming these systemic inequalities is a complex and difficult task and our work on this is ongoing. The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee includes many faculty representatives that are actively working on this task.
EDI Committee Mission Statement:
The CU Denver Economics department Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee is committed to fostering a culture that is welcoming to all, prioritizing and encouraging diversity, and, in so doing, creating an equitable environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed. We will work to identify structural barriers faced by students, staff, and faculty, especially those in under-represented minorities (including based on race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status, among others). Further, we will identify best practices to eliminate these barriers, and communicate these strategies to the entire department, as well as benchmark the progress we make using data. Our ultimate goal is to further diversity and perspectives in the economics profession, as well as at the University, consistent with the CU Denver Equity Task Force’s mission. To achieve this goal, the committee’s work will include, but is not limited to, increasing the number of students taking economics courses and, in particular, increasing the number of traditionally underrepresented students, as well as increasing and encouraging the diversity of the faculty and staff.
Economics Department EDI Committee Members:
- Chloe East, committee chair
- Enoch Chen
- Nick Golding
- Hani Mansour
- Kyle Montanio
- Andrea Velasquez
To date, the EDI committee has collected data on our student body so as to monitor our progress in diversifying the economics’ student body. We are also actively working on changing our teaching practices to create a more inclusive classroom by moving towards a more comprehensive picture of what the economics profession is. In addition, we have hosted several events for students with the goal of encouraging students who might not otherwise study economics to do so. This work is not solely on changes that affect our student body. We are proactively taking steps to make our hiring practices inclusive and encourage a diverse set of applicants. Additionally, in the past, we have implemented a number of changes in order to better serve our diverse faculty members including moving our seminar time to accommodate childcare needs, disseminating information about bias on student evaluations of faculty teaching and reducing our emphasis on these types of evaluations in our tenure and promotion decisions, as well as formalizing language about how parental leave should be treated in tenure and promotion decisions, which was eventually adopted by the entire College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at CU Denver. We look forward to continuing this important work.