UGA Career Center’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - 2022
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The UGA Career Center is committed to celebrating difference and diversity on our campus while supporting all UGA students and alumni in their career development. We work to provide inclusive and impactful environments, programming, career coaching, and resources that increase access to career readiness for our students of color, students with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ students, indigenous students, first generation students and historically marginalized students as a meaningful way to expand the social capital of our diverse student body.
We recognize that our students who belong to marginalized communities are more deeply impacted by challenges to gain social capital and/or the networks of relationships that help graduates enter and thrive in the workplace. Therefore, we bring a social justice lens to our work to better empower students to design their own version of career success. We acknowledge that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts will never be completed or perfected, rather they are ongoing and evolving. Because of this, we are committed to evolving our office and efforts as needed for our students, colleagues, employers, and each other. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, we have developed definitive efforts toward DEI. Below, we describe our specific efforts to offer equitable, accessible, and inclusive career development services to all UGA students and alumni. We call this our DEI Action Plan.
Next Steps and Continued Commitment
While the UGA Career Center is proud of the work we are doing, we know that work in diversity, inclusion, and equity is ongoing. Over the next semester and year, we hope to create new resources and processes to ensure we are providing diverse, inclusive, and equitable services to our students, employers, campus partners, and staff. Below is a list of action items that we plan to complete.
- Implicit Bias and Microaggressions Training (scheduled for July 2022)
- Virtual DEI Networking Event (scheduled for September 2022) and in-person DEI Networking Event at Maggiano’s in Atlanta (scheduled for November 2022) to connect students with employers committed to DEI and build their social capital
- Evaluate career outcomes data to understand disparities; ensure students from historically marginalized communities are gaining equitable access to employment opportunities
- Assess student and employer websites to ensure inclusive language is used and sites are accessible
- Evaluate how campus and external partnerships are developed to support staff and students with diverse identities
- Establish a digital DEI Resource Library for staff and student workers to reference
- Continue to enhance training modules and education opportunities for staff and student workers
- Provide ongoing DEI learning programs for staff that include guest speakers to discuss specific DEI-related issues, training on supporting various student identities
- Consistently share DEI related articles, podcasts, and books, stay up to date and informed on current issues and topics
- Integrate advocacy into our work by empowering our team to self-advocate, advocate as an ally, and help students develop strategies to advocate for themselves in the workplace through workshops, programming, and the development of accessible resources
- Write and share career development blog posts that are inclusive of identities
- Create brave spaces to engage in difficult, but necessary dialogue around inequities and discrimination and decompress local and national tragedies