SBS Community

The School of Biological Sciences (SBS) is committed to a scholarly community where everyone feels welcomed and encouraged to contribute and where everyone is supported to be successful. We aim to foster excellence in life science education and research through a supported and empowering departmental environment. Our faculty, students, and staff value the multiple perspectives that each person’s lived experience brings to our community.

The SBS Community Committee provides a structure to facilitate reflection and action related to these shared values. As faculty, staff, postdocs, and students, we aim to proactively drive SBS’s intent to build an anti-discriminatory community that welcomes all people and provides an atmosphere in which every person and every interaction matters and each person can achieve their own unique goals. We do not take sole responsibility for reaching these objectives, rather we seek to provide a catalytic mechanism that enables SBS to leverage community resources and work together in pursuit of these goals.

Roles

This committee is uniquely positioned to take on:

Determining priorities
Amidst many important needs, we work with the Director, Executive Committee, and other relevant committees and groups to help SBS identify the most critical directions each year.

Revising policies and practices
We work with other SBS committees and groups to reflect on the origins and impacts of current policies and practices. We work to create processes that better align with our stated values.

Listening to experiences within our community
We proactively listen to how people experience and engage with the SBS community, and we aim to cultivate forums in which community members can share their unique voices.