Ongoing Initiatives

The goal of this page is to share information with the larger Olin community. It is a living document – please check back regularly. It is compiled from community input – if you don’t see something here and think it should be included, please let Alisha or someone on the CCAT team know. 

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group (DEI-WG)

The DEI-WG will be comprised of the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Alisha Sarang-Sieminski, Associate Dean; and Sharon Woodward, Director of Human Resources. This working group will begin to facilitate the creation of a community-wide strategic plan around DEI based on community assessment and in consultation with external advisors. The working group is also embedded in the work of CCAT. Contact Alisha Sarang-Sieminski for more information.

Community Education Opportunities (past, present and future)

Supporting Transgender and Non-Binary Students 

Training for faculty and staff with Mass Transgender Political Coalition

  • Part I: Basics, October 28, October 30, and November 8

  • Part II: How can we make our work more inclusive? Scheduled with individual groups.

  • Contact: Alisha Sarang-Sieminski

Understanding Transgender and Non-Binary Identities

Training for students with MaeBright Group LLC

  • Sessions offered Wednesday November 13th, Friday November 15th, and Saturday November 16th, with additional sessions available as demands indicate.

  • Contact: Alisha Sarang-Sieminski and Seth Hodge

Restorative Justice Training

To be offered to faculty, staff and students March 19th and 20th, 2020 (the last 2 days of Olin Spring Break). Participants will engage in talking circles to have conversation in order to get a sense of what it looks like and means to resolve conflict restoratively. For more information read this. Contact Alisha Sarang-Sieminski with questions or express your interest in participating here.

Identifying and Interrupting Implicit Bias 

Training for faculty and staff with a focus on racial equity, with Lawrence Alexander of Carney Sandoe

Sexual Assault Prevention 

  • 2-part online training for students, starting with the class of 2023. This training may be offered to a larger group in the future.

Inclusive Environments Workshops

Student Mental Health: what's Happening and What We Can Do About It

  • Workshop for faculty and staff on May 21, 2019

Proactive inclusion of students with non-visible disabilities

Name Changes

Email, Directory, and ID

As per the Student Handbook, to change the name appearing on an ID card, Directory and email from (the default of legal name), students can fill out the name change form and submit it to StAR. 

Student Records, Financial Aid, Registrar and Other Records

Olin uses the Jenzabar CX platform to manage administrative records and processes for student records (i.e., Registrar data), financial aid, student accounts (term bills), and financial affairs. This is our central “system of record” and directly and indirectly feeds data to dozens of other applications and tools, from email to course rosters to Babson Health records and more. The Jenzabar CX platform does not natively support anything other than a single legal name (and legal sex markers).

We are in ongoing negotiation with Jenzabar as a vendor to add paid customizations to the product to support other-than-legal names, as well as gender identity and pronoun data. If these customizations can be made by the vendor at a reasonable price, we will schedule the work to happen as quickly as feasible while not creating disruption for other sensitive processes (fall semester grading, spring semester start, Class of 2024 financial aid processing, etc.).

A longer-term solution may be an upgrade to a more modern central administrative platform, but such a project has a duration measured in years, and a cost measured in millions of dollars. In this case, additional interim measures will be explored.

For more information contact: Alisha Sarang-Sieminski or Rick Osterberg

Legal Name Change

As outlined in the Student Handbook, legal name changes may be requested through the Registrar’s Office. Changes made via this process will update the College’s system of record and other ancillary systems that feed off system of record.

For more information contact: Registrar’s Office

 

Staff/Faculty Pronouns

The process to create an option to add staff and faculty pronouns to the Directory and on the Olin website is underway. New employee intake forms are also being updated to collect pronoun information. We will continue to work on adding pronouns to other publicly facing media, such as name badges and business cards. Human Resources is also working to add a pronoun field to the employee information system, ADP. ADP currently provides a “preferred first name” field.

For more information contact: Jeremy Goodman or Sharon Woodward

Gender-Neutral Bathrooms

We are investigating the conversion of additional bathrooms to gender neutral bathrooms. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Plumbing Code only allows multi-person bathrooms to be designated as exclusively male or female. Two approaches are promising: First, we are requesting a variance from the state code that would allow for the conversion of additional bathrooms. Second, a bill, H2686: An Act establishing gender neutral bathrooms, is under consideration in the Massachusett legislature that would relax the prohibition.

For more information contact: Jeremy Goodman.

Title IX

There are a number of efforts underway in the Title IX space:

  • A new Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Title IX Coordinator has recently been hired. 

  • A staff member has been appointed as the Deputy Title IX Coordinator.

  • Educational sessions on the Title IX process will be offered to the community; these sessions are currently being organized.

  • This is a focus area for the Campus Culture Action Team; stay tuned for updates.

  • Also see the Title IX webpages.

For more information contact: Guilene Prepetit, Interim Title IX Coordinator. 

Hiring

Human Resources, the Faculty Appointments and Search Committee, and others are working on continuous improvements to the processes involved in recruitment and hiring in order to share with potential candidates our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and ensure equal opportunity for candidates. For example the Presidential Search Committee participated in a training about interrupting bias in search processes, we have broadened the distribution range of job postings, and are working to increase education of search committees and interview teams on best practices in DEI.

Faculty/Staff Affinity Groups

Faculty and staff are working to create affinity groups for people of color and LGBTQ+ folks.

Other Academic Initiatives

  • Pronouns are now displayed on shop ninja aprons and tiles

  • The Shop mission statement has been updated to include gender identity and expression on machineshop.olin.edu