Our values

The Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures is committed to fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement of all students, faculty, and staff. We strive to produce, maintain, and improve learning, teaching, and working environments in which every individual feels welcome, respected, supported, and invited to participate. In this, we embrace a broad definition of diversity to include race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ability status, socioeconomic status, immigration status, and other forms of difference. As guardians of academic freedom and intellectual diversity, we also promote diversity in ideas, perspectives, values, and expressions.

Ensuring equity

Each person has a valuable contribution to make to our common goals in teaching, research, and service. To benefit from the richness and diversity of our communities, we must redress historical barriers that have kept marginalized populations from contributing and enriching our educational and research missions.

Equity in teaching rests on diversifying our teaching delivery and assessments to redress barriers to academic success.

Equity in research actively embraces a variety of research methodologies and content that critique historical inequities. It also encourages public-facing research activities that remove barriers to intellectual engagement with our underserved local and global communities.

Equity in service provides specialized service to marginalized student populations, faculty, and staff, ensuring equal treatment.

Ensuring inclusivity

In order to contribute to the best of their abilities, everyone must feel welcomed, respected, supported, and invited to participate. We ensure inclusivity by fostering a department environment and culture sensitive to the implicit biases and inherited discriminatory practices.

Inclusivity in teaching rests on respectful and inviting classroom environments, supportive and inviting department events and extracurricular activities, and safe spaces for critical examination of implicit biases in our everyday practice.

Inclusivity in research fosters rigorous critical examination of our situatedness in systems of inequality and oppression.​ It also promotes a critical reassessment of our institutional history as well as our canonical corpora and methodologies.

Inclusivity in service aims for a variety of programming and support services to retain and build upon the diversity of our department and campus communities.

The Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures is wholly committed to the principled promotion and practice of these values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our teaching, research, service, hiring, and admissions.