Diversity Liaison to UNM Linguistics (2017-2019)
Between 2017 and 2019, I was the Diversity Liaison to the University of New Mexico Linguistics Department. The Diversity Liaison is a position I helped establish with the goal of supporting students and faculty in our department achieve equity of access to the university’s resources.
Some of the current projects I undertook included:
- Training sessions for graduate Teaching Assistants of Introduction to Linguistics courses. Topics addressed:
- Representation and inclusion in textbook and class materials
- Diversity as a framework for differentiating instruction
- Evaluation of LGBTQ+ graduate students in the Department. Issues investigated:
- What are the challenges LGBTQ+ students face in a graduate program?
- How do those challenges impact the population’s academic progression?
- What actions can faculty take to make their allyhood more explicit?
- Recruitment effort to increase enrollment of minority students in undergraduate an graduate programs. Goals and reasoning:
- Reframe perceptions of linguistics through increasing visibility of groups that have historically been under-represented in the field
- UNM linguistics courses attract very diverse student populations (e.g. Hispanic/Latinx populations, Southwest Native Americans, students from the Deaf community) yet these groups account for only a very small fraction of linguistics majors and grad students
- Reframe perceptions of linguistics through increasing visibility of groups that have historically been under-represented in the field
Ricardo Napoleão de Souza 