The Orfalea College of Business DEI Action Committee was formed in the fall of 2020 to work within the college to help foster a more diverse, equal, inclusive, and productive community in OCOB’s classrooms and beyond.
Led by OCOB’s DEI Faculty Fellow, professor Ahmed Deif, the team consists of three students, three faculty, and two staff members. Among other initiatives, part of its mandate is to help organize events and forums that help foster inclusive, honest, and healing discussions about the state of diversity and equity at Cal Poly and within the Orfalea College of Business.
Currently, the committee is working to gather data and input from students, faculty, staff, alumni, and our community in order to help organize an inaugural DEI Townhall Meeting.
More About The 2021 OCOB DEI Townhall
This Zoom conversation is scheduled for Wednesday, April 14, from 6-8 p.m. and will be moderated by campus leaders, including OCOB Interim Dean Al Liddicoat, Interim Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Denise Isom, Multicultural Business Program Coordinator Yovani Alexander, and OCOB Interim Associate Dean Stern Neill.
The goal is to bring all members of the OCOB Community together to heal and explore how we can support each other as a college, a university, and individuals to make our campus community reflective of the best values of our society.
The more voices and perspectives the moderators can bring into this conversation—from students, faculty, staff, and alumni—the more representative it will be of all members of our community. “We want to gather and open our hearts together,” says Professor Deif.
How You Can Be a Part of the Conversation
The OCOB DEI Action Committee wants to hear your stories to better implement programming and training for faculty and students—and to help steer the townhall discussion.
The initial phase of this effort consists of a survey, distributed by the committee in order to gather information and perspective from our students and our community to help guide the conversation. Please consider responding now and sharing your thoughts and experiences.
The second phase will be the townhall itself, during which the moderators are planning to make use of audience questions, comments, chat features and the survey responses to help guide the conversation. The goal for the event is to heal, listen, and express ourselves together—and also to help propose real solutions in programing, policy, and training that the college can implement to help inform further DEI efforts going forward.
The more voices and perspectives the moderators can bring into this conversation—from students, faculty, staff, and alumni—the more representative it will be of all members of our community. “We want to gather and open our hearts together,” says Professor Deif.
Act Now
We can all be a part of this important conversation as we work to Please consider filling in the survey and RSVP for the townhall now. It’s vitally important to lend your voice to this conversation.create a better community.