Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

The ACS Bridge Program seeks to "strengthen the chemical sciences in the United States by increasing the number of underrepresented minority students who receive doctoral degrees in chemical sciences." In 2021, our Department was named an ACS Bridge Partner based on our history of thoughtful and individualized mentorship and our success to date in training scholars from diverse backgrounds. As one of 27 official Partner programs nationwide, we are delighted to be able to provide support to Bridge programs at other institutions and to recruit Bridge scholars into our PhD program.

The Chemistry faculty have convened a working group to address inequities in outcomes for our introductory chemistry sequence. Reforms could include curricular, pedagogical, administrative, and/or structural changes that will promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in introductory Chemistry courses. We anticipate that our initial reforms in this area will be implemented beginning in Fall 2022, with continuous assessment and adjustments in subsequent semesters.

The Chemistry faculty have convened a working group to reform the processes through which undergraduates are introduced to chemistry research and join research labs in our Department, with the goal of making undergraduate research more inclusive and accessible. We expect that changes in this area will begin to roll out by Fall 2022.

To create a larger community of Chemistry students at Tufts, and to allow more students to identify as belonging in our Department and in our discipline, we have developed a series of Chemistry Minors. These Minors will allow students to gain expertise in a specific Chemistry sub-discipline without having to complete all the requirements for a Chemistry Major. The Chemistry Minors were developed and approved during the 2021 Academic Year and will become available for students to declare beginning in 2022.

Our Department has created a dedicated privacy room in our building, which offers support for a variety of personal needs, such as those of lactating mothers among our students, staff, and faculty. We have also partnered with PERIOD, the menstrual movement at Tufts, to supply free menstrual products in common bathrooms in our buildings so that no student has to choose between menstrual products and other basic necessities. We continue to identify ways to provide infrastructure and supplies that support the personal needs of individuals in our department.

Our Department has recently started a new initiative to invite our seminar speakers to provide a brief retrospective of their life and/or career stories at the start of their talk. This idea is based on the popular "Growing up in Science" series that was started at NYU in 2014. Growing up in Science emphasizes and normalizes the personal stories behind a polished CV, revealing the challenges that we all experience during our careers.