Department of Psychology Diversity Committee Discusses Infrastructure for New Committee 

The Department of Psychology Diversity Committee at UW-Milwaukee discussed a possible restructuring of the department committees and a desire to infuse activities that have been generated by the diversity committee over recent years.  

Bonita Klein-Tasman, professor in the Department of Psychology, said they are trying to figure out how they can be more efficient at the department committee level.  

“We want to be inclusive,” said Klein-Tasman. 

The Department of Psychology Diversity Committee is a forum for the exchange and development of ideas and actions to support UWM’s Psychology Department. The Psychology Department promotes an inclusive, equitable, anti-racist and anti-discriminatory environment. The committee upholds their shared values as they work to improve diversity, equity and inclusion within their department and UWM.  

The committee is composed of graduate students, staff and faculty in the Department of Psychology. The committee is committed to their shared values of community, education, improvements and growth and ethics and professionalism.  

One of the committee’s themes this year is shared responsibility, according to Klein-Tasman.  

The professor said the idea is to put together a set of department committees and infuse activities within those committees. She said the new committee structure will take the infusion and activities they have been doing within the diversity committee into general department committees.   

“The diversity committee would still maintain an important role within the department, but it would not be the place where all the discussions are happening,” said Klein-Tasman. 

She said other committees within the department can come to the diversity committee meeting and let them know what is going on and the diversity committee will be able to weigh in on that. 

Klein-Tasman said the other change will be to maintain a productive partnership with graduate students.  

“We think the idea of consolidation is a really good idea,” said Klein-Tasman.  

Klein-Tasman asked about the graduate student roles in the department committees including the level of expected involvement, if graduate students should be expected to attend, what kind of work outside the general meetings should be expected and how many graduate students should be on each committee.  

“We are very conscious about the amount of work graduate students put into the activities in the past couple of years,” said Klein-Tasman. “We are concerned about having manageable and reasonable expectations, and for the idea of graduate students on the committees is not to lighten the workload of faculty, but rather to ensure representation of stakeholders in the activities of the department committees.” 

Shawn Cahill, associate professor of psychology at UWM, said the way students get involved in the committee depends on what the goal is.  

“I think student attendance needs to be a high priority, otherwise we cannot have either participation or observation if they are not there,” said Cahill. 

Cahill said there are two ways they could go if there was a consensus that student attendance became mandatory. He said one is to have as few students on a committee as possible so students do not double up on committee service or have two students per committee so the students could rotate to ensure student representation. 

“We have to treat the graduate students as a collective instead of three separate groups,” said Cahill.  

Cahill said they need a mechanism for the graduate students to circulate information among themselves, so committee members do not become repositories of knowledge and that they redistribute other students and function as representatives. 

Klein-Tasman prefers students to be expected instead of mandatory because that is how they approach things at the faculty level, but she likes the idea of multiple students to a committee. 

Rodney Swain, a professor of psychology at UWM, agreed that attendance is great, but that the real question is about the level of involvement. 

“Not all of the activities are devoted to diversity and inclusion,” said Swain. “Do students become a regular working member of these committees?”  

Swain thinks students that are serving as full members of the committee is the least confusing way to go, but he is worried how this may affect graduate student progress in the future.  

His hope is that if students move on to the department level committees, that they need to have a discussion on how to protect them, according to Swain. 

“This committee is a lot of work for this to be done right,” said Swain. 

Klein-Tasman said she would rather the graduate students be involved in several ways and contribute to the broad way of activities that committees and stakeholders are doing. 

“If we want to engage the largest number of people and get the biggest bank for our buck then we might consider redesigning student appointment,” said Swain.  

Graduate students now are evaluated on their academic performance and their research and adding a service component to their appointment would make the students participate, according to Swain. 

“I am always concerned about the one or two students who volunteer for everything and that becomes a disproportionate burden on their shoulders,” said Swain. 

He said this would be a drastic change, but it is a way to energize all the committee members in the department.  

Nicole Schueler, academic department manager for the Psychology Department, agreed with Swain.  

“We had a tough time filling teacher aid slots and finding people to take lectures with the graduate students this year,” said Schueller. “I feel like a lot of people who are going to volunteer this year already have so much on their plate.”  

Chandler Zolliecoffer, a graduate student, said her group wondered about power differential. She said the graduate students were curious about the number of students that would be represented in the committees and if that might impact whether students feel outnumbered or can confidently share.  

“We want our voices to be as fully recognized and heard,” said Zolliecoffer.