Our Specific Commitments to Anti-Racism

Last month (June, 2020), the Center for Community and Citizen Science issued a statement committing to take action against racism in the work that we do. As promised in that statement, we have been working on more specific commitments, listed below, which will guide us in the months and years ahead. We intend for this touchstone document to evolve as we learn and grow, and hope that it may be useful to our community of collaborators and beyond. The next step in our process is to identify specific actions, tools, frameworks, etc., linked to these commitment statements.

Center Operations and Culture

• The Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCS) will devote resources including time, language, and space to identify both elements of institutionalized racism built into the systems we work within, and the ways in which we uphold them broadly, in order to dismantle them throughout our work, collaboration, teaching and research.
• The Center for CCS will make active efforts to recruit and retain diverse students, postdocs, and other staff into paid positions.
• The Center for CCS will identify and address where and how norms of white-supremacy operate within our workplace so that our recruitment efforts are supported by an anti-racist workplace culture.

Research and Teaching Practices

• The Center for CCS will engage in strategic collaborations with, and amplify the work of, scholars who have long-held expertise in anti-racist, decolonial, culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogies and research methodologies. This will then manifest in bringing resources to these scholars and the inclusion of these ideas in our teaching,  research, and other programming. 
• The Center for CCS will use anti-racist pedagogical practices. This includes teacher/educator workshops and trainings, and the teaching that faculty and students do at the university.

Evaluation and Assessment of our Work

• The Center for CCS will use tools such as racial equity impact assessments to guide development and assess ongoing implementation of our projects.