The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering advances the mission of translating advances in basic physics, chemistry, biology, and computation into new tools to address important societal problems and to create a research and teaching environment that enhances and transmits these capabilities to future generations. The school affirms a commitment to equity, diversity, respect, and inclusion, and aims for broad representation, accountability, and participation among our faculty, other academic appointees, research and administrative staff, and students across age, gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, ability and disability, religion, belief, and backgrounds.
The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering is charged with working in concert with the PME administration to continuously strengthen and improve PME's working environment in matters of EDI and anti-racism (AR). The committee should discuss, design, propose ideas, plans and means to evaluate and assess the status and progress of the EDI and AR situation in PME. Another responsibility of the EDI Committee is to advocate for, engage and lead all members of the PME community in participation in EDI- and AR-enhancing activities. This responsibility includes communicating proposals, programs, outcomes, and assessments by posting committee minutes and updates to the EDI pages of the PME web page, intranet, and other communication channels. The EDI Committee should coordinate with other university units and activities where that coordination will enhance PME's EDI and AR work.
Trends, summaries, and aggregated data on bias can and should be discussed and inform decision-making. The discussion of bias complaints related to particular individuals is not the committee's purview. Existing mechanisms and protocols exist for reporting bias incidents that protect individual privacies.
The committee shall convene approximately monthly.
The PME EDI Committee shall comprise the Dean, Vice Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Senior Associate Dean for Education and Strategy, and one or more representatives from PME faculty, administrative staff, instructional staff, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students. The committee will also comprise one junior (3rd year) undergraduate and one senior (4th year) undergraduate representative. The committee membership shall typically comprise around 15 members. Members are selected and replacements are made by nomination and solicitation by the EDI Committee.
The Dean, Vice Dean for EDI, and Senior Associate Dean for Education and Strategy are permanent committee members. Undergraduate representatives will join the committee in their junior (3rd) year and serve for two years. A new junior (3rd) year representative will join the committee each year to replace the graduating senior (4th) year representative. All other committee members will serve two-year terms. Terms shall be staggered within each representative group. Ordinarily, no member should serve more than two consecutive terms, but there is no limit on the total number of terms that may be served.
The Dean chairs the committee.