OUR PLEDGE – UPDATE WINTER 2022

In the summer of 2020, the Office of Undergraduate Research made commitments to focus on anti-racism and social justice with the work that we do. At each Advisory Council meeting, we agreed to update on our progress. Below are all items within the original pledge and the current status of our response. 

• We pledge to work with leading scholars on our campuses to support their work through undergraduate involvement, including funding from OUR grant programs. Having undergraduate researchers learn from and engage with historic and persistent forms of erasure with diverse scholars doing innovative scholarship within the research/academic context is essential.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We have 16 faculty available for the second cohort of the Emerging Scholars Program, including 5 new additions: Danielle Bell, Tabitha Bonilla, AJ Christian, Melissa Foster, and Almaz Mesghina.  All of the scholars center their work in areas of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we hope to promote both their work and the opportunity for students to learn from them.  We also work to ensure diversity within our faculty review committees and on the OUR Advisory Council.

• We pledge to create new online, freely-available resources to support first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized students who want to get involved in research. These resources also will help support the development of more informed and engaged mentoring by faculty. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We completed work on our new web series and podcast that seeks to answer core undergraduate questions about the research experience.  Each of the 11 web series episodes seeks to address a concern that students have raised, providing key advising in a quick and entertaining format.  We also have a 4 episode podcast which delves into additional content such as research ethics.  The show is called Semple’s Words, and it can be found on our YouTube page.  We held a well-attended screening event and information session in the fall, and we are developing new promotional materials that will be distributed to students in winter.  We continue to develop more material for CIMER’s Entering Research curriculum, centering on experiences in the arts, humanities, and non-lab social sciences.  We are workshopping the material with the Emerging Scholars Program, with an aim to use it more widely this summer.

• We pledge to establish a new grant program focused on developing a community of undergraduate research scholars from first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized communities on campus. The program will provide funding to students conducting research and/or creative projects over an extended period of time and will also include extensive personal and professional development workshops. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We are working with the first cohort of Emerging Scholars to transition from working as a faculty research assistant towards their own independent projects.  We held monthly professional development workshops combined with one-on-one advising with Peter or Megan to help them learn to write a grant proposal for their upcoming summer project.  We are also holding information sessions and doing other outreach to help recruit applications for the second cohort.  When we received clearance to raise the Summer URG stipend to $4,000, we also increased the summer stipends for Emerging Scholars to the same level.  Finally, we are working on a funding request for FY23 to provide regularized funding for the program after the AVDF pilot money ends next year.

• We pledge to continue OUR’s work with Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that ethical research practices are robustly followed in all aspects of student research, including the Principles of Ethical Practice in Community-Engaged Learning, Research, and Service developed in partnership with the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. OUR will also continue to collaborate with campus units, including Campus Inclusion and Community and Student Enrichment Services.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter continues to work with IRB Social and Behavior Manager Braden Van Buskirk to get all Academic Year URG winners who require IRB clearance completed before they begin their projects.  We have a meeting scheduled with the new head of Campus Inclusion and Community along with SESP reps in January to discuss and plan for further collaboration.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) to support the development and funding of student research projects. Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, and it is our responsibility as an academic institution—and as the Office of Undergraduate Research—to help foster the dissemination of existing scholarship and the development of further Native and Indigenous research.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We continue to collaborate with CNAIR, and we have recently posted a new sample grant proposal that focuses on indigenous research methods in order to offer students an example of how this work is best done. We are working with them to include a definition of indigenous methods in our methodology guide, and we will reference the website they were developing as part of our collaboration for the Alumnae Grant awarded last year.

• We pledge to work with current Northwestern programs, including Chicago Field Studies, the Center for Civic Engagement, the SESP Civic Engagement Certificate to help further facilitate the collaboration of undergraduates and community groups through OUR’s existing grant funding programs.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter and Megan met recently with WCAS representatives around closer collaboration and coordination around our programs, particularly looking to support WCAS Posner Scholars after their summer experience.  We also began discussion with leaders of the Northwestern Prison Education Program to find ways to support their mission.  It will likely take time, as they are still developing their program.  Finally, we are working with NUIT to develop a new grant application system, allowing us to change to a more equitable process based on rubric assessment.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with Northwestern’s Institutional Research Office to obtain and analyze OUR application and award rate data for first generation, low income, and/or minoritized students.  We pledge to share the results publicly and use them towards our goal of at minimum having these groups apply at levels commensurate to their group size and with success rates at minimum equal to the overall success rate of the program.

CURRENT RESPONSE: The 2020-21 analytics revealed great strides in reaching diverse students, but also showed that more work needed to be done.  We redoubled our outreach efforts, and led by Diamond we had 150 class visits to discuss opportunities found in undergraduate research.  In comparison, all of last year we had 111 class visits.  These efforts have led to increased advising; advising appointments through fall quarter are up 21% (from 600 to 726 across our 4 advisors).  Diamond has done dedicated outreach to student groups, although it is difficult to get responses back.  It is our intention to continue extensive, targeted outreach with the hopes of seeing increased interest in core grant programs.

• We pledge to work as a staff to continue our ongoing education around anti-racist practices in order to inform our outreach to and advising for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students to more effectively support them and their research projects. We will devote staff time to these efforts.

CURRENT RESPONSE: The entire staff used the Strengths Finder framework during a staff retreat, specifically exploring it through the lens of an article on its perceived frame of whiteness.  Christina led microaggression training for peer mentors supporting the winter research workshop series.  Megan attended a new training on supporting students with disabilities, and resources from the training were shared with the whole staff.  We are still awaiting word from the University on their plans for increased diversity training.

• We pledge to continue our work with groups within the Evanston area that support these communities, and we pledge to promote to our students the work of local community groups through posting their events in our undergraduate e-newsletter.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter continues to collaborate with the NU Partnership Office in Evanston Township High School.  He participated in multiple events in the fall with their STEAM program, and he has resumed coaching with the ETHS Mock Trial Team.  Tori is about to launch a new section in our e-newsletter that shares Evanston opportunities with our undergraduate community; she also posted campus events connected to Indigenous, Latinx, and Queer & Trans Empowerment month(s).

• We pledge to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and women owned businesses in Evanston whenever possible.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We continue to support these businesses with every purchase possible.  For example, we used Semicolon Bookstore for staff book purchases.  We used Hewn Bakery for staff birthday treats, and Mickii’s for gifts for the Fletcher Undergraduate Research Award ceremony attendees.

We realize that these pledges are preliminary steps, but they speak to our stated commitment to engage more fully in issues regarding anti-racist practices in general and within the worlds of research and Evanston in particular.

OUR PLEDGE – UPDATE FALL 2021

In the summer of 2020, the Office of Undergraduate Research made commitments to focus on anti-racism and social justice with the work that we do. At each Advisory Council meeting, we agreed to update on our progress. Below are all items within the original pledge and the current status of our response.

We pledge to work with leading scholars on our campuses to support their work through undergraduate involvement, including funding from OUR grant programs. Having undergraduate researchers learn from and engage with historic and persistent forms of erasure with diverse scholars doing innovative scholarship within the research/academic context is essential.

CURRENT RESPONSE: All 17 faculty mentors selected for the new Emerging Scholars Program received student requests to work with them, indicating strong student interest in the areas of research we are seeking to highlight.  We are currently in the process of creating the second cohort of potential faculty mentors using the same selection criteria established above.

We pledge to create new online, freely-available resources to support first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized students who want to get involved in research. These resources also will help support the development of more informed and engaged mentoring by faculty. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We continue to adapt the WiSCIENCE’s Entering Research curriculum to speak to experiences in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and other non-research group environments.  We have piloted new activities with the first Emerging Scholars Program cohort over 8 weeks this summer.  As we continue to refine them, we are also sending them out to other groups for testing and feedback before they are eventually added to Entering Research.  We also completed filming of 11 episodes of our new web series Semple’s Words, along with 5 complementary podcast episodes.  They are in post-production, and we plan to have them on our YouTube page early in the academic year.

We pledge to establish a new grant program focused on developing a community of undergraduate research scholars from first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized communities on campus. The program will provide funding to students conducting research and/or creative projects over an extended period of time and will also include extensive personal and professional development workshops. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We created the Emerging Scholars Program, and we funded 10 faculty-student pairs.  The students have been working with faculty as research assistants this summer while attending weekly personal/professional development workshops.  During this fall, the workshops will help them to start developing their own independent projects.  We are also preparing to recruit a second cohort in the coming academic year.

We pledge to continue OUR’s work with Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that ethical research practices are robustly followed in all aspects of student research, including the Principles of Ethical Practice in Community-Engaged Learning, Research, and Service developed in partnership with the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. OUR will also continue to collaborate with campus units, including Campus Inclusion and Community and Student Enrichment Services.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter worked with IRB Social and Behavior Manager Braden Van Buskirk to get all 38 Summer URG winners who required IRB clearance completed before the start of summer.  We are scheduling our annual meeting with SES and MSA to go over last year and plan for the coming one, including introducing them to our new Outreach Coordinator Diamond Jones and new Education Program Manager Christina Ginardi. 

We pledge to continue to collaborate with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) to support the development and funding of student research projects. Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, and it is our responsibility as an academic institution—and as the Office of Undergraduate Research—to help foster the dissemination of existing scholarship and the development of further Native and Indigenous research.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan, Peter, and Professor and Director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research Patty Lowe were awarded a grant by the Northwestern Alumnae for a summer project to create open source resources to promoting and supporting best practices in indigenous modes of research.  We also added a new annotated Sample Grant Proposal that features indigenous research methodologies.

We pledge to work with current Northwestern programs, including Chicago Field Studies, the Center for Civic Engagement, the SESP Civic Engagement Certificate to help further facilitate the collaboration of undergraduates and community groups through OUR’s existing grant funding programs.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan continues to do outreach with faculty and departments at Feinberg, which is creating greater opportunities for students to get involved in research on the Chicago campus.  When our new staff are in place, we will reach out to build new partnerships with CFS, CCE, and SESP CEC.

We pledge to continue to collaborate with Northwestern’s Institutional Research Office to obtain and analyze OUR application and award rate data for first generation, low income, and/or minoritized students.  We pledge to share the results publicly and use them towards our goal of at minimum having these groups apply at levels commensurate to their group size and with success rates at minimum equal to the overall success rate of the program.

CURRENT RESPONSE: The 2020-21 OUR Annual Report outlines the results of this data analysis, which identified many strengths in our ability to reach and fund diverse student populations while also indicating areas for continued improvement.  The report is publicly available on our web site. 

We pledge to work as a staff to continue our ongoing education around anti-racist practices in order to inform our outreach to and advising for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students to more effectively support them and their research projects. We will devote staff time to these efforts.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Current staff continue to get appropriate trainings, such as Bystander Intervention and Diversity in Hiring training, and we plan to have new staff trained in areas as needed.  We are still awaiting plans from the University on their training strategy on implicit bias training.  We will pursue additional topics on our own as a staff.

We pledge to continue our work with groups within the Evanston area that support these communities, and we pledge to promote to our students the work of local community groups through posting their events in our undergraduate e-newsletter

CURRENT RESPONSE: Through Evanston Scholars, Peter continues to offer advising to a couple of their students looking to get involved in research.  He also continues to volunteer at ETHS, including helping to coach the Mock Trial team to their first state championship (and 8^th place nationally). 

We pledge to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and women owned businesses in Evanston whenever possible.

CURRENT RESPONSE: While our remote operations have limited purchases, we have sought out opportunities to support these businesses, including catering for the web series filming.  We hope to expand our use of these businesses as we return to campus life.

We realize that these pledges are preliminary steps, but they speak to our stated commitment to engage more fully in issues regarding anti-racist practices in general and within the worlds of research and Evanston in particular. 

OUR PLEDGE – UPDATE SPRING 2021

In the summer of 2020, the Office of Undergraduate Research made commitments to focus on anti-racism and social justice with the work that we do. At each Advisory Council meeting, we agreed to update on our progress. Below are all items within the original pledge and the current status of our response.

• We pledge to work with leading scholars on our campuses to support their work through undergraduate involvement, including funding from OUR grant programs. Having undergraduate researchers learn from and engage with historic and persistent forms of erasure with diverse scholars doing innovative scholarship within the research/academic context is essential.

CURRENT RESPONSE: All 17 faculty mentors selected for the new Emerging Scholars Program received student requests to work with them, indicating strong student interest in the areas of research we are seeking to highlight.

• We pledge to create new online, freely-available resources to support first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized students who want to get involved in research. These resources also will help support the development of more informed and engaged mentoring by faculty. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We continue to adapt the WiSCIENCE’s Entering Research curriculum to speak to experiences in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and other non-research group environments. We have 9 activities in final review, and we are on track to pilot new workshops using them this summer.
Primary filming has been completed for 7 of the 11 episodes of our new web series Semple’s Words. Final filming dates are set for May. We still hope to have the videos publicly available by the end of the summer.

• We pledge to establish a new grant program focused on developing a community of undergraduate research scholars from first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or marginalized communities on campus. The program will provide funding to students conducting research and/or creative projects over an extended period of time and will also include extensive personal and professional development workshops. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: 36 first year students applied to the Emerging Scholars Program with 81 different requests to work with faculty made (they could request to work with up to 3). We have just awarded the first cohort of faculty-student pairs. Given the strong interest in the program and the strong support of the faculty mentors, OUR decided to expand the cohort beyond the funding of AVDF. We funded 2 additional
student-faculty pairs to bring the total to 10 awards. We also worked with faculty in 7 instances where they were willing to take on more than one student. We are transitioning those students and faculty into Summer URAP, guaranteeing their slots in that program.

• We pledge to continue OUR’s work with Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that ethical research practices are robustly followed in all aspects of student research, including the Principles of Ethical Practice in Community-Engaged Learning, Research, and Service developed in partnership with the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. OUR will also continue to collaborate with campus units, including Campus Inclusion and Community and Student Enrichment Services.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter is working with IRB Social and Behavior Manager Braden Van Buskirk on the development of new training workshops for student researchers. OUR continues to collaborate with SES and MSA on multiple fronts, including having dedicated office hours led by Outreach Coordinator Jennah Thompson-Vasquez.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) to support the development and funding of student research projects. Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, and it is our responsibility as an academic institution—and as the Office of Undergraduate Research—to help foster the dissemination of existing scholarship and the development of further Native and Indigenous research.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan, Peter, and Professor and Director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research Patty Lowe submitted a joint grant proposal to the Northwestern Alumnae for a summer project to create open source resources to promoting and supporting best practices in indigenous modes of research. Jennah is working this quarter working on new annotated Sample Grant Proposal, including one that features indigenous research methodologies.

• We pledge to work with current Northwestern programs, including Chicago Field Studies, the Center for Civic Engagement, the SESP Civic Engagement Certificate to help further facilitate the collaboration of undergraduates and community groups through OUR’s existing grant funding programs.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan continues to do outreach with faculty and departments at Feinberg, which is creating greater opportunities for students to get involved in research on the Chicago campus. Megan is also partnering with the Institute for Policy Research on jointly funding URAP students through their summer program, potentially increasing the number of student opportunities. We are still trying to establish a connection the SESP Civic Engagement certificate folks.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with Northwestern’s Institutional Research Office to obtain and analyze OUR application and award rate data for first generation, low income, and/or minoritized students. We pledge to share the results publicly and use them towards our goal of at minimum having these groups apply at levels commensurate to their group size and with success rates at minimum equal to the overall success rate of the program.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We have collected the necessary data from all AY URG cycles, AY URAP and URAS cycles, the Circumnavigators Grant, the Conference Travel Grant, Summer URGs, ULGs, and the Emerging Scholars Program thus far.

• We pledge to work as a staff to continue our ongoing education around anti-racist practices in order to inform our outreach to and advising for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students to more effectively support them and their research projects. We will devote staff time to these efforts.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan and Evangeline have completed Bystander Intervention training, and it our hope to have all staffed trained in this and in implicit bias. We are still awaiting plans from the University on their training strategy on these topics. We will pursue additional topics on our own as necessary.

• We pledge to continue our work with groups within the Evanston area that support these communities, and we pledge to promote to our students the work of local community groups through posting their events in our undergraduate e-newsletter.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Through Evanston Scholars, Peter offered advising to a couple of their students looking to get involved in research. He also continues to volunteer at ETHS, including helping to coach the Mock Trial team to their first state championship.

• We pledge to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and women owned businesses in Evanston whenever possible.

CURRENT RESPONSE: While our remote operations have limited purchases, we have sought out opportunities to support these businesses. For example, we used local business (including one minority owned: Viet Nom Nom) to provide catering for web series filming. We plan to use Tomate and Viet Nom Nom moving forward for spring web series filming. Tomate was closed in the winter due to COVID.

OUR PLEDGE – UPDATE WINTER 2021

In the summer of 2020, the Office of Undergraduate Research made commitments to focus on anti-racism and social justice with the work that we do.  At each Advisory Council meeting, we agreed to update on our progress.  Below are all items within the original pledge and the current status of our response.

• We pledge to work with leading scholars on our campuses to support their work through undergraduate involvement, including funding from OUR grant programs. Having undergraduate researchers learn from and engage with historic and persistent forms of erasure with diverse scholars doing innovative scholarship within the research/academic context is essential.

CURRENT RESPONSE: As we developed the new Emerging Scholars Program, we focused on recruiting faculty mentors whose scholarship centers on issues of diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice.  In our student advising, we are emphasizing the value and importance of this type of scholarship across all programs.

• We pledge to create new online, freely-available resources to support first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized students who want to get involved in research. These resources also will help support the development of more informed and engaged mentoring by faculty. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We have begun work adapting the WiSCIENCE’s Entering Research curriculum to speak to experiences in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and other non-research group environments.  Megan is leading the efforts to create activities that can be combined to make customizable workshops for students. Jennah Thompson-Vasquez and Tori Larsen are helping to write these activities. In addition to creating a new inclusion activity, we are revising and significantly expanding the inclusion statements on all activities.

Peter has written 11 episodes for the new web series Semple’s Words.  Each episode addresses specific student concerns gleaned through a survey of undergrads sent out through OUR, SES, and MSA.  While the two initial filming weekends had to be cancelled due to COVID, we hope to begin filming in winter quarter.  We still hope to have the videos publically available by the end of the summer.

• We pledge to establish a new grant program focused on developing a community of undergraduate research scholars from first-generation, lower income, undocumented/DACA students, and/or minoritized communities on campus. The program will provide funding to students conducting research and/or creative projects over an extended period of time and will also include extensive personal and professional development workshops. This work will be achieved with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

CURRENT RESPONSE: The new Emerging Scholars Program is open for its first application cycle, with a deadline on March 19^th.  We built a web presence for the grant, including pages with full information on the program and the potential faculty mentors.  19 faculty were recruited to serve as potential mentors for this first cohort.  These faculty come from all 6 undergraduate schools, and all of their scholarship addresses issues of diversity, inclusion, equity, and/or social justice.  The web and application materials were created in collaboration with Dav Velázquez Phillip from MSA and Kourtney Cockrell from SES, who are also helping to promote the program to their students.  We held one information session for students in the new Knight Scholars program in late November. On January 14^th, we will co-host another information session open to all students.  We have funding for 8 faculty-student pairs from AVDF, and the Entering Research adaptations will be used for the personal and professional workshop curriculum.  We have already begun extensive individual advising with students seeking to apply to the program.

• We pledge to continue OUR’s work with Northwestern’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that ethical research practices are robustly followed in all aspects of student research, including the Principles of Ethical Practice in Community-Engaged Learning, Research, and Service developed in partnership with the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. OUR will also continue to collaborate with campus units, including Campus Inclusion and Community and Student Enrichment Services.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter met with IRB Social and Behavior Manager Braden Van Buskirk.  Braden was a part of the crafting of the OUR Pledge, particularly around studies and issues around anti-racist (and racist) research practices and histories.  We worked to update all of the language around research ethics on our web site.  Peter also met with Senior Associate Director of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs Patrick Eccles around potential collaborations for the summer, if international travel is approved by the University administration.  OUR continues to collaborate with SES and MSA on multiple fronts, including having dedicated office hours led by Outreach Coordinator Jennah Thompson-Vasquez.  Research Workshop Coordinator Evangeline Su continues to develop peer mentor training materials addressing DE&I work.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) to support the development and funding of student research projects. Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, and it is our responsibility as an academic institution—and as the Office of Undergraduate Research—to help foster the dissemination of existing scholarship and the development of further Native and Indigenous research.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Megan and Peter met with Professor and Director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research Patty Lowe.  We are working on a joint grant proposal to the Northwestern Alumnae for a summer project to create open source resources to promoting and supporting best practices in indigenous modes of research.  Megan and Patty are also working on a new annotated Sample Grant Proposal that features indigenous research methodologies.

• We pledge to work with current Northwestern programs, including Chicago Field Studies, the Center for Civic Engagement, the SESP Civic Engagement Certificate to help further facilitate the collaboration of undergraduates and community groups through OUR’s existing grant funding programs.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Jennah met with staff from Chicago Field Studies and the Center for Civic Engagement; she is still working schedule a meeting with the SESP Civic Engagement Certificate program.  In all cases, she promoted our grant opportunities and worked with them to find new ways to conduct outreach to students.  The goal of these collaborations is to create an avenue for students to continue deepening relationships with community partners.  After discussion with the URG Committee, it was approved that students in CFS would be eligible for AY URGs, and Peter will meet with their faculty in winter quarter.

• We pledge to continue to collaborate with Northwestern’s Institutional Research Office to obtain and analyze OUR application and award rate data for first generation, low income, and/or minoritized students.  We pledge to share the results publicly and use them towards our goal of at minimum having these groups apply at levels commensurate to their group size and with success rates at minimum equal to the overall success rate of the program.

CURRENT RESPONSE: We have collected the necessary data from the first two AY URG cycles, URAP and URAS cycles, the Circumnavigators Grant, and Conference Travel Grant.

• We pledge to work as a staff to continue our ongoing education around anti-racist practices in order to inform our outreach to and advising for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students to more effectively support them and their research projects. We will devote staff time to these efforts.

CURRENT RESPONSE: OUR purchased Ibram Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning as a work for us all to read, and we hope to begin conversations around it in winter quarter.  We have also discussed what additional trainings we would like to receive, such as implicit bias and bystander intervention training.  The University is currently develop a training strategy on these topics, so we are waiting to see what will be covered by them.  We will pursue additional topics on our own as necessary.

• We pledge to continue our work with groups within the Evanston area that support these communities, and we pledge to promote to our students the work of local community groups through posting their events in our undergraduate e-newsletter.

CURRENT RESPONSE: Peter met with the Executive Director Steve Newman and the Career Readiness Associate Alison Segal of Evanston Scholars on plans to further support their work helping students get into and then persist/thrive in college.  Peter began advising one of their students, and we developed plans to offer workshops on getting involved in research.  In addition, Peter met with NU/ETHS Partnership Office Coordinator Kristen Perkins-LaFollette on volunteer opportunities to support the high school.  Peter continues to volunteer with the Senior Studies, Senior Design Capstone, and the Mock Trial Team at ETHS.

• We pledge to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and women owned businesses in Evanston whenever possible.

CURRENT RESPONSE: While our remote operations have limited purchases, we have sought out opportunities to support these businesses.  For example, the staff selected Ibram Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning as a work for us all to read, and we purchased them from Chicago’s only black woman-owned bookstore Semicolon instead of using Barnes and Noble or Amazon.