Michele is the Assistant Provost for Diversity Education in the Office for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Tech. Her main role focuses on education initiatives at the university, such as “Diversity EDU”, an online module that all new students must visit to learn general diversity language and concepts and ties it to the school’s principles of community. Find out how to prepare for a career in diversity education, whether in academia or industry.
Transcript
My name is Michele Deramo. I'm the assistant provost for diversity education in the Office for Inclusion and Diversity. My role in the mission of the Office for Inclusion and Diversity is specifically around educational initiatives. And there are several initiatives that are apart of the office. The first would be Diversity EDU, which is a new initiative, and it is every student who comes into the university is expected to view a 45 minute online module that introduces them to just general diversity in language and concepts and ties it to the university's principles of community. My work in relation to that is to assist faculty and student leaders who are going to be extending discussions related to Diversity EDU. Two of the large projects I'm responsible for is, one is this advancing the human condition, Symposion, which is happening for the first time in November. So in the fall, a good bit of my time is spent in planning for that. And then in the spring, we do a national conference, Faculty Women of Color in the Academy, and the spring is when that ramps up. So there's a lot of the kind of work, not so much in the weeds event planning, but building relationships, determining topics, finding the right people who are going to address certain things, putting it all together. A lot of work spent on communicating, whether it be through messaging through email or through canvas, or communicating just through phone calls, or going to meetings. That is a big responsibility in the Office of Inclusion and Diversity because it's not so much a functional office or an office that does programs, but rather one that is setting objectives. So everyone wants, you know, if someone has a question, if something happened and they don't know how to deal with it, or there was an incident and they felt offended, that's the office people go to. How should I have handled this? Or we want to advance this initiative, we need to get the vice president for Inclusion and Diversity on board. And so Dr. Clark's team basically all work to support the demands that are made of her.
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