Student Training and DEI

As UTA Libraries is gearing up for the fall semester, planning the training session for our student employees is key to preparing for classes to begin. This year looks very different from past training sessions, as we met online with our students. Another new change comes from the efforts of UTA libraries to increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) priorities. We decided to include a new section related to DEI and customer service. The session featured an introduction and an icebreaker, as well as a section discussing the new COVID-19 policies and protocols within the Libraries. To discuss the DEI portion, we asked Melanie Johnson, the Director of Multicultural Affairs, to give a presentation on Recognizing, Identifying and Removing Stereotypes and Bias.

The committee group came together to tackle the following goals: “to revise our student employee leadership training to center around diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The group wanted to include and DEI-focused activity for the fall’s training session as a good start to increasing leadership training. We hope that in the future, we can create new activities for student employees to engage them in thinking differently about their environment and interactions with coworkers and users.

A new year also means new Libraries gear! This year, we have new shirts for Libraries staff, and we are very excited to get them in. 

DEI Working Group S6 Committee Members

Claudia Catanzaro Solis

Jeffrey McCulley

Alexandra Pirkle

Kerri Ressl

Whitney Russell