Equity Initiatives
Welcome to the Social Sciences and Humanities Equity page! Here you will learn about equity initiatives being undertaken by the division and resources for faculty and students. This includes the Equity Core Team, upcoming events, resources for faculty members who wish to infuse their curriculum or pedagogy with equity practices, and student resources available on- and off-campus.
Equity Core Team
The Social Sciences and Humanities Equity Core Team serves as a vital force in fostering dialogue and driving equitable practices within our academic ecosystem, particularly in a large division like ours. Through initiatives like the MOMENTUM series, our quarterly Student Voices events, the Faculty Studio, and the CAR Book Club (Conversation, Application and Reflection), we create spaces for meaningful engagement and collective learning. What we gain from these experiences directly informs our best practices and efforts to implement inclusive policies and champion equity, both within our division and across the college.
The Equity Core Team model was created by the college Office of Equity to enable divisions to work with their faculty on equity projects and to hold discussions across departments on how to improve equity and success rates for the students in our classes.
In 2015, the Social Sciences and Humanities Equity Core Team introduced a series of student panels on campus, called Student Voices. This series of campus conversations focuses on equity issues like student housing, mental health, economic struggle, grading policies, changes in educational requirements, racial and immigration issues, course scheduling, and technological effects on student learning and faculty teaching practices. We identify issues that students share with us as our guide to what topics to focus on.
In our efforts to build nurturing relationships on our campus community, we do our best to bring together staff, faculty and administrators with students to share our honest perspectives and to develop cultural strategies and actions towards more equitable learning environments on campus. The students are the focus of these panel discussions, and hearing about their challenges and successes allows faculty members to better understand how to meet student needs, so that our students can find more successful outcomes in and outside the classroom.
Our current core team membership consists of the following: Elvin Ramos, dean of Social Sciences and Humanities; Steve Nava, Student Voices liaison and chair of Sociology; Jim Nguyen, instructor in Political Science; Ameeta Tiwana, chair of Anthropology; Mylinh Pham, instructor in History; Laura Chin, instructor in Political Science; and Lori Clinchard, instructor in Humanities and faculty coordinator of the California History Center.
We meet weekly Mondays at 1:30 p.m. through Zoom during the academic year and hold a Student Voices panel once each quarter on campus. We warmly welcome the participation of new members. If you are interested in joining the core team or have a topic that should be addressed, please email Steve Nava at navasteve@deanza.edu.