Mines DEIA Fellows
Program Overview
The Mines DEIA Fellows program recognizes highly accomplished and motivated faculty and staff for their exceptional DEIA leadership and service and provides support as they to gain leadership experience and drive institutional change at Mines. Each Fellow drives a strategic initiative or program that furthers the vision and mission of Mines DEIA. Fellows also learn about all the innerworkings of Mines DEIA and serve as a representative for campus internally and externally.
2024 Fellows
Dr. Katy Armstrong
Associate Director of Career & Professional Development
Mines Career Center
Liz Cox
Director of K-12, Transfer and Community Relations
Mines Enrollment Management
Sheena Martinez
Assistant Vice President of Student Life for Equity and Engagement
Mines Student Life
Advancing Pay Equity through Expanded Offer and Salary Negotiation Education
Pay equity begins at the undergraduate level. Education related to offer and salary negotiation, as well as career management, is critical. Researchers from the National Association of Colleges and Employers and Break Thru Tech found that women who utilized campus career services received more job offers than their male counterparts. This Fellowship program will build upon existing programming within the Career Center in dedicating funds, energy and time to increasing student education and awareness in offer and salary negotiation. Ways in which this goal will be achieved include strengthening campus collaboration in offering this education, expanding student program offerings and training faculty/staff on best practices in coaching students through salary and offer negotiation.
Mines Academy Engagement Plan – Bolstering diverse enrollment at Mines through outreach to community college students
The Mines Academy Pathway to Mines (MAP to Mines) builds community, sense of belonging and transfer readiness for community college students in the Mines Academy as they prepare for future transfer to Mines. Strengthening the transfer pathway is a diversity initiative of Enrollment Management, and MAP to Mines will support future community college transfers, often low-income, first-generation, veterans and/or underrepresented students, to pursue a STEM degree at Mines. The MAP to Mines program will use an asset-based approach to engage Mines Academy students for successful transfer through orientation, workshops, resources and specialized campus events to be delivered while students are at the community college. Evaluation of MAP to Mines will provide new understandings of the challenges and opportunities of the transfer process and transition to Mines.
Succession Planning for Kickstart Dialogue Programs at Colorado School of Mines
Colorado School of Mines graduates enter cutting edge STEM fields and play a crucial role in helping solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Of these challenges is a critical need in today’s workplace and greater society – the ability to communicate effectively across difference. By providing intentionally designed dialogue opportunities, students can cultivate skills necessary to collaborate and learn across differing perspectives. This project focuses on supporting Kickstart, an existing registered student organization committed to addressing this need through campus dialogue programs. “Kickstart is dedicated to building an inclusive community that enables the sharing and exploration of diverse identities.” Established in 2020, Kickstart has been actively engaged in this important work, which is vital for current and future generations of engineers. Grounded in the Intergroup Dialogue model, this initiative aims to establish a sustainable framework for engaging students in building dialogue skills.
Centering Inclusive Mentoring for Advancing DI&A at Mines
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Dr. Lakshmi Krishna |
Engaging undergraduates in research has been championed as a high-impact practice that increases student retention and success. Furthermore, engaging underrepresented students in a meaningful research experience can foster a sense of belonging, increased self-efficacy, persistence in STEM, research productivity, and career satisfaction. Inclusive mentorship is the key to engaging students in meaningful research experiences. Inclusive mentorship is about cultivating authentic mentoring relationships and acknowledging the role of mentees’ social identities in their career development to foster a sense of belonging. This project aims to develop a research mentoring workshop based on the “Entering Mentoring” curriculum designed and developed by Center for Improvement in Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) to ensure mentors and mentees can receive training and skills to sustain productive mentoring relationships. |
Leadership Coaching for Mines Employees
 Annette PilkingtonDirector Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics Program |
Annette Pilkington, Director of the Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (WISEM) Program will design and implement a leadership coaching program for Mines employees. The program will use ontological coaching, an approach that focuses on the nature of being, or the way a person “is” in the world. This focus is the basis for a person’s behavior, communication, perceptions and attitudes about themselves. This type of life and leadership coaching helps people see new and expanded possibilities for their actions, thereby enabling them to overcome barriers to change and learn new behaviors. With increased awareness, participants can achieve significant personal and professional growth. The Mines pilot program for approximately 40 participants will use both individual and group coaching during the spring of 2023. |
Neurodiversity@Mines: A celebration of all kinds of minds at Mines
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Professor Susan Reynolds |
People with differences in brain behavior should be valued for their uniqueness, not stigmatized for their differences. Neurodivergent individuals may have a wide array of strengths, such as incredible focus on preferred projects, strong passion for social justice, an ability to think broadly and creativity, excellent pattern-recognition skills, and the capacity to work independently. Despite these strengths, neurodivergent people often face significant challenges, such as feeling misunderstood, coping with overt or subtle bullying, masking neurodivergent characteristics to better fit in, and experiencing anxiety or mental burn-out. This project will create a dialogue around neurodiversity so that we foster an environment in which bright and quirky people are supported and celebrated as a core part of the Mines community. Project webpage: https://www.mines.edu/diversity/neurodiversity/ |
PATHWAYS TO MINES THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS WITH BIPOC STUDENTS IN DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS
 Dr. Derrick HudsonAssistant Teaching Professor, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences |
Dr. Derrick Hudson will further develop pathways to Mines via the iSSACHAR Center for Urban Leadership in partnership with Denver Public high schools. Founded in 1999, the Issachar Center provides a 10-month leadership and academic training program for college-age adults and an incarnational leadership program for existing young leaders to develop their skills as emerging leaders in their communities. Organized into cohorts, students will participate in a one-credit hour experiential, service-learning (non-degree granting) course led by Dr. Hudson next fall. The course will dig into systemic inequality within Denver neighborhoods, contributions of underrepresented groups to society and connect personal experiences to the larger context. The course’s curriculum modules are portable to other classes as micro-insertions to help foster diversity and inclusion dialogue on campus. Mines faculty will also visit local high schools and other venues to raise the profile of Mines as a destination for students of color who aspire to attain a STEM education. |
DEI TOOLKITS FOR STUDENT LEADERS
 Alex LeachAssistant Director, Case Management and Clery Compliance, Office of Institutional Equity & Title IX |
Alex Leach will work to identify campus efforts to increase students’ multicultural competency and support these efforts via a Student Leadership Institute, a multi-day program followed by monthly learning and skill development opportunities. The Institute will lay a foundation for all participants to understand their own social identities and the ways their identities influence how they see and experience the world. Students will be equipped with a toolkit designed to empower critical thinking and challenge inequities across a system, resulting in organizational culture change. The toolkit will be designed “for beyond Mines” in mind, portable diversity, equity and inclusion skills for the workplace. Alex will use her experience with restorative practices in addressing conflict and increase understanding of how stories and data can be leveraged to spur change. |
SOCIAL JUSTICE ACROSS THE CORE CURRICULUM
 Dr. Shannon MancusAssociate Teaching Professor, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences |
Dr. Shannon Mancus will direct initiatives designed to scaffold social justice across the Mines curriculum. Using best practice, and building off the diversity, equity and inclusion integration she has implemented in Nature and Human Values, she will work with course coordinators and the core curriculum committee to identify opportunities to further integrate justice content. Dr. Mancus will also design an asynchronous course to help professors facilitate difficult conversations in the classroom, a DEI curriculum roadmap and an immersive simulation for professors to practice techniques for supporting underrepresented students when experiences of implicit bias and microaggressions occur in the classroom. |
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TRIO PROGRAM
 Dr. Justin ShafferAssociate Teaching Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering |
Dr. Justin Shaffer will lead campus’ grant application process for the Department of Education’s Trio program. Programs such as Upward Bound, help attract and support low-income, first-generation and rural students to and during their years at Mines. Upward Bound provides high school students access to mentoring, tutoring, classes and help with college preparation and the application process. |