EDI Action Plan

We will enact the inaugural McKelvey Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Plan (“EDI Action Plan”), which includes meaningful investments in our community, support systems, and structures. The EDI Action Plan will advance equity, diversity, and inclusion for the entire McKelvey community. It recommends both general activities and targeted investments in specific parts of our community where we seek to — and believe we can — move the EDI needle. We developed this plan to enhance our culture and make deliberate changes to systems and structures within our School so that our students, postdoctoral scholars, staff, and faculty are empowered to be their best and fullest selves and so that McKelvey is an environment where students want to learn and professionals want to work. The full EDI Action Plan is available for the McKelvey and WashU communities.

Our Commitments

We will:

• Develop infrastructure and dedicate resources to drive and sustain data-driven decision-making, investment, and assessment to actively shape a more inclusive and equitable culture and climate.
• Hire and/or allocate staff dedicated to enacting and advancing McKelvey’s EDI goals.
• Develop practices and policies that reduce disparities in academic performance and increase equity in student success.

Why:

• Diverse scholarly communities and teams ask different questions that target a broader array of problems requiring innovative solutions. Diverse teams produce greater innovation, enhanced learning, and better research outcomes.
• To increase racial diversity in engineering, we must have diverse representation in our faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and students. Interacting with faculty, lab mentors, and engineers who reflect our students can promote student success, encourage student engagement, and improve a sense of belonging.
• We need to reduce barriers to student engagement and success by providing more equitable support structures that meet our students’ diverse needs.

Read the full EDI Action Plan