ADDI Update – January 2022

Dear Friedman School Community,

I hope everyone had a restful winter break, and that the semester is off to a good start! There’s a lot going on – thanks to so many of you in the Friedman School community who have made DEI part of your mission and efforts. This month’s update on progress toward the Friedman School’s Anti-Racism Action Plan:  

Culture and Environment

• Please join the Social Justice, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee and Slow Food for a Chinese New Year cooking class featuring NEDS student Yongyi Pan. The event will be on Thursday 10 February at 6:30 PM by Zoom. Dry ingredients will be provided so you can cook along with Yongyi. Open to all in the Friedman School community. 
• Orsolya Szabo has continued working toward creating a very inviting physical space. At 75 Kneeland, the conference room accent walls have been painted with the soothing “St Lucia Skies” color, the clear winner of three colors that the Friedman School community voted on. Photos of New Entry vegetables were also installed, as was artwork contributed by Bea Rogers. 
• You may have noticed the Tufts Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) information on bathroom mirror stickers. A reminder that OEO maintains the policies and resources that safeguard Tufts’ commitment to equal opportunity and inclusion. All members of the Tufts community are encouraged to report any instances of harassment, bias or discrimination. You may speak with someone at OEO or file an anonymous or confidential complaint via the Ethicspoint system. OEO also has trained liaisons who are faculty and staff members.  They can connect students and employees with OEO to receive resources and support. Matt Hast is the Friedman liaison, but any Friedman community member may contact any liaison on the list. 

Education

• The school-wide curriculum review, which was paused due to COVID, has now restarted. The overarching goals are to ensure that the educational programs and curricular content are relevant and timely, that approaches for delivery of curricular content are effective and up to date, and that we maximally prepare our students for success while at the School and after graduation. The curriculum review will culminate in a set of recommendations that will be shared for comments with all Friedman School community members.  The goal is to complete the curriculum review by the end of this semester, with implementation to begin during the academic year starting in September 2022. As ADDI, I will serve on the steering committee for the curriculum review. There are still opportunities to serve on cross-cutting working groups: please click here to learn more. There will be multiple additional opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to contribute by participating in surveys, discussions, interviews and focus groups and by providing commentary to proposed curricular revisions – please keep an eye out for announcements.   
• Postdoc Travis Moore is teaching N277 Nutrition & Racial Inequities Journal Club this semester. This non-credit course is designed to explore literature and generate discussion on topics related to racism and its intersections with nutrition that create inequities in diet and diet-related disease outcomes, and the impact of oppression as well as resistance strategies. 

Faculty Success

• Tiffany House and Rikki Morrow-Spitzer, the Health Sciences Campus Associate Directors for Diversity and Inclusion Education, led a workshop on 25 January on Effectively Mentoring Fellow Faculty. Strong mentorship of faculty is a key factor in overall career satisfaction and faculty retention. Bea Rogers briefly described the new mentorship structure at the Friedman School and Tiffany and Rikki led an interactive session on inclusive best practices to foster faculty success.

Compositional Diversity

• A search is currently underway for a new faculty member in Food and Nutrition Equity. Will Masters is chairing the search committee. Plans for additional faculty searches are also underway. 
• The Nutrition Equity Scholars Program, a “pipeline” program designed and implemented by FANPP student Ricardo Moreno, officially launched on 22 January! The program provides local high school students with opportunities to meet faculty at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition, gain a practical understanding of nutrition, and receive academic tutoring, standardized test preparation (SAT), and support for completing college applications. Ricardo developed the program with support from the Mozaffarian Family Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. There are currently 36 mentors composed of Tufts undergrads, grads, alumni, and staff; mentor trainings were conducted on 22 and 29 January. 

University-Level Activities

• University-wide mandatory anti-racism training is in the works. The training will consist of an online module and a community conversation live sessions. A soft launch is planned for March, with full launch in Fall 2022.There will also be a DEIJ Professional Development Certificate available to faculty and staff, which will consist of six core sessions of additional learning plus two electives. 
• A Campus Climate Survey will be launched university-wide on 14 February. Please be on the lookout for this and be sure to respond! The survey will be repeated over time and will be an important part of understanding where Tufts currently is and assessing the impact of the anti-racism initiatives going forward. 
• There are two new seminar series:
  • A new Tufts-wide DEIJ Speaker Series will be starting in February
  • For the Health Sciences Campus, a Health Equity Seminar Series was organized by Tiffany House and Rikki Morrow-Spitzer, the Associate Directors for Diversity and Inclusion Education. The first one was on 28 January with Robert Sege, MD on bias in clinical and translational research. Stay tuned for announcements about the next seminar. 

RESOURCES

If you are interested, please see The Action Network’s fundraising campaign for Kentucky tornado relief – they prioritize groups that serve Kentuckians who may otherwise be neglected by other relief efforts, particularly Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Refugee, Immigrant, and poor and working class Kentuckians. (One of Ellen Messer’s colleagues sent her this link, which was circulated among farmers groups). 

Friedman School alum Melissa Fuster has a new book, Caribeños at the Table: How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City

EVENTS

10 February, 6:30 PM: SJID and Slow Food’s Chinese New Year Cooking Class – more information and the registration link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rFNklNIZq3rT1Kkz0teuxV1Qw_MpEX5s3tXeDRypAKI/edit

Starting on 14 February: “Unpacking Whiteness: Radical Healing Dialogues” creates a space for healing in response to racism and the impacts of whiteness. Through an examination of racial conditioning and processing traumas associated with racism and other forms of oppression, participants will be empowered to share traumas, healing tactics, dialogue, and more to learn concrete and abstract strategies around radical healing form the traumatic perils of whiteness and racism. Register today!

19 February: Leading While Black: A Legacy of Transformational Black Leadership at Tufts University 1:30 –4:30pm | ASEAN Auditorium, Cabot Intercultural Center, Medford/Somerville Campus. This livestreaming event celebrates the impact of eight influential Black university executive leaders at Tufts and their legacy of transforming governance, advancing equity, traversing boundaries, and enhancing excellence for generations of students, faculty, and staff. The livestream includes two moderated conversations on the legacy and future of Black executive leadership at Tufts.

24-25 February: 43^rd Annual Minority Health Conference: Registration for this year’s conference, Revolutionary Healing and Rebuilding, is now open! More information can be found on the conference registration site. 

3-5 March: 15^th Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy’s Research and Data Symposium for Food and Nutrition Diverse Perspectives in Nutrition Science Research. The symposium creates a forum where students, researchers, academics, and young professionals can share, discuss, and explore diverse opinions, experiences, and expertise on emerging topics in nutrition and public health sciences. This year, our symposium will be FULLY VIRTUAL, and REGISTRATION IS FREE FOR ALL to attend. We hope to build on the success of last year’s symposium, where 920 registrants residing in 50 countries and affiliated with 221 organizations and 158 universities were in attendan

Sara C. Folta, PhD

Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion

Associate Professor