After spending the fall semester of 2019 discussing our priorities as a group, we started off 2020 by toasting all of our successes and failures in the previous year with sparkling cider and chocolate. Then, we looked to the future…
We now have committees to address our major group priorities – see the list here. The international students/personnel committee started us off by reporting on the work they’ve been doing, including talking to the ISO about resources for international students. This committee’s priorities include setting up a “buddy system” for arriving international students, and developing a useful handbook.
Finally, members who were at the meeting officially voted to change the name of our group from WIBS (Women In Biological Sciences) to DIBS (Diversity & Inclusion in Biological Sciences). This is in recognition of our group’s wider interests in promoting diversity and inclusion in our department. For logistical reasons, our listserv and website will continue under their old names (wibs@lists.rochester.edu and http://www.sas.rochester.edu/bio/sites/wibs/), but we’ve changed the title of our website to reflect the change from WIBS to DIBS.
The next DIBS meeting will be on Monday, February 24th at 3 pm in Hutch 316; see you there!