About
ChBE Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee

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About Us

The ARDEI committee is composed of undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and staff stakeholders who work together to bring about positive change. The committee is currently co-chaired by a faculty member and a graduate student. Bi-weekly meetings provide an opportunity for thoughtful discussions and progress updates on our initiatives, while subgroups move forward on initiatives separately. We welcome anyone in our community to join our committee by emailing us your interest at ChBE_ARDEI@northwestern.edu.

Current Initiatives

We are actively working on several initiatives:

  • Department Climate: We launched a Department Climate Survey initiative to seek the perspectives of our community on a range of ARDEI topics, and to understand how we may best prioritize our initiatives. The results of this climate survey are being analyzed with the help of external consultants on an ongoing basis to prioritize and expand our initiatives and guide community conversations around key topics.
  • Department Communications: We are actively working to provide support, resources, and transparency to our community through website updates, community conversations, email communications, and other approaches to ensure that our community can stay actively engaged and informed in this area.
  • Annual Seminar Series: We recently launched an annual Departmental Seminar Series entitled ‘Contextualizing Engineering’. By sponsoring world class leaders and researchers to speak to our department, we aim to expose STEM researchers to research and efforts focusing on environmental justice, research justice, anti-racism, intersectionality, and a range of other important topics.
  • Undergraduate Resources and Course Development: We are actively working to introduce ARDEI topics into our undergraduate courses. We envision multiple routes to achieving this goal, including having topical discussions in courses and developing course content that draws explicit connections between students’ technical work as engineers and social responsibility as advocates of anti-racism. Our current effort focuses on developing problem sets that allow students to explore, for example, how certain chemical engineering processes impact the communities in which they are deployed.
  • Graduate Course Development: Graduate students in our department begin their studies with a Professional Development topic series. Our goal with this initiative is to encourage conversation, reflection, and action in ARDEI as it relates to STEM. Students will learn basic definitions, explain how concepts manifest in technology, careers, and funding, and ultimately develop an action plan to guide their degree and career.

Quarterly Updates

Each quarter we provide updates on our initiatives to keep our community informed. Please follow the links below to see past updates.

Spring 2022

Winter 2022

Fall 2021

Spring 2021

Winter 2021 

Resources

Mental Health Resources

Student Groups

The Department and the McCormick School of Engineering has several student groups that are dedicated to ARDEI topics. Please see the list below to find out more about groups that may be of interest.

  1. McCormick Student Advisory Board
  2. McCormick Graduate Leadership Council
  3. Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
  4. National Society of Black Engineers
  5. Society of Women Engineers
  6. Graduate Society of Women in Engineers
  7. Women in Science and Engineering Research
  8. Association of Undergraduate Women in Science
  9. Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) at Northwestern
  10. Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE)
  11. Out in STEM (Graduate Chapter)
  12. Science Policy Outreach Taskforce (SPOT)

In addition, we recognize student organizations doing ARDEI work are not just within the scope of McCormick, and that these groups may cater to a wider variety of interests, backgrounds, and identities than those within the school. For that reason, we would also like to highlight the following groups:

Social Justice, Advocacy, & Organizing

  1. Advancement for the Undocumented
  2. Associated Student Government (ASG)
  3. Student Counselors for Social Justice
  4. Campus Inclusion and Community
  5. Center for Civic Engagement
  6. College Feminists
  7. Diversity in the Biological Sciences
  8. Masculinity, Allyship, Reflection, Solidarity (MARS)
  9. Northwestern University Community for Human Rights
  10. Northwestern University Fossil Free
  11. NU Community Not Cops (NUNC)
  12. Peer Inclusion Educators
  13. Planned Parenthood Generation Action
  14. Social Justice Education
  15. Students for Justice in Palestine
  16. Students Promoting Education, Awareness, and Knowledge (SPEAK) for Change
  17. Sustained Dialogue
  18. Undergraduate Prison Education Partnership
  19. Wildcats for Israel

Politics

  1. College Democrats
  2. College Republicans
  3. Indivisible 
  4. Northwestern Political Union
  5. Parliamentary Debate Union
  6. Young Democratic Socialists of America

Health & Wellness

  1. Active Minds
  2. Center for Awareness, Response, and Education (CARE)
  3. Gender and Sexuality Resource Center
  4. MENtal Health
  5. Peer Health Exchange
  6. Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators
  7. Wildcats Advancing Total Campus Health (WATCH)
  8. WildCHAT

Affinity & Community

  1. African Students Association
  2. Alianza - Latinx Student Alliance
  3. Alliance of African Scholars
  4. Alliance of Chicago Minority Students
  5. Association of Latino Professionals for America
  6. Black Mentorship Program
  7. CaribNation
  8. Chinese Internal Student Association
  9. Chinese Student & Scholar Association
  10. Chinese Student Association
  11. For Members Only - Black Student Alliance
  12. For Us, By Us - Black Female-Identifying and Nonbinary Alliance
  13. Indonesian Students’ Association
  14. International Student Association
  15. Iranian Student Association
  16. Italian Association
  17. Japanese American Student Association
  18. Kaibigan: Philippine-American Student Association
  19. Korean American Student Association
  20. Koreans Association at Northwestern
  21. Latinx Student Alliance
  22. Minority Association of Pre-Med Students
  23. MIXED Student Association
  24. Multicultural Greek Council
  25. Muslim Cultural Student Association
  26. Northwestern Hawaii Club
  27. Northwestern Quest Scholars
  28. Northwestern University Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance
  29. Northwestern University Veterans Association
  30. Office of Student Enrichment Services
  31. Polish American Student Alliance
  32. Rainbow Alliance
  33. South Asian Student Alliance
  34. Thai Student Association
  35. The Collective - Black Men
  36. The Women’s Network
  37. Transfer Student Organization
  38. Vietnamese Student Association

Spiritual Life

  1. Asian American Intervarsity Christian Fellowship
  2. Canterbury Northwestern
  3. Chi Alpha Campus Ministries
  4. Christian Science Organization NU
  5. Christians on Campus
  6. Cornerstone Anglican Church
  7. Cru
  8. Destino
  9. Fiedler Hillel Student Life
  10. House on the Rock Christain Fellowship
  11. Impact
  12. Interfaith Initiative 
  13. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
  14. Lutheran Campus Ministry
  15. Makenew
  16. MEOR
  17. Northwestern Chinese Christian Student Fellowship
  18. Northwestern University Catholic Association
  19. OM at Northwestern
  20. Reformed University Fellowship
  21. Religious and Spiritual Life
  22. SGI Buddhists for Peace
  23. Shia Muslim Association
  24. Grace Fellowship
  25. University Bible Fellowship
  26. University Christian Ministry
  27. Young Life

Graduate Students

  1. Black Graduate Student Association
  2. Chicago Graduate Student Association
  3. Graduate Christian Fellowship
  4. Graduate International Student Association
  5. Graduate Leadership Advocacy Council
  6. Graduate Student Association
  7. Graduate Student Association for Latino and Spanish Activities
  8. Graduate Women Across Northwestern
  9. Indian Graduate Students and Scholars Association
  10. NU Graduates Mentoring Undergraduates
  11. Queer Pride Graduate Students Association
  12. TGS Cross-Cultural

Contact Us

Do you have additional ideas for this website, ideas for other ARDEI initiatives, a community conversation idea, a desire to join the committee, or another important topic to bring to our attention? We want to hear from you! Please email suggestions or inquiries to ChBE_ARDEI@northwestern.edu. Emails are read and responded to by the ARDEI committee.