Inclusion Interchange: News from Pitt’s Office for Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion

Angela E.B. Stewart is an assistant professor in the School of Computing & Information and a research scientist in Pitt's Learning Research & Development Center. She conducts research at the intersection of the learning sciences, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. She uses multimodal data to understand students' social and cognitive states, particularly in collaborative STEM learning. She also creates equitable educational spaces by designing technologies that support the agency of students and teachers. Angela applies a culturally-responsive lens to her research, with a particular focus in emboldening Black girls' design of transformative technologies.

Yvette Moore is director of the EXCEL program [https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/student/programs/wep/resources/excel/] in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, where she works to recruit and retain undergraduate scholars in engineering disciplines. Through her career, Yvette has held several roles in higher education at various universities and has worked with diversity, equity, and inclusion based programs in the Pittsburgh metropolitan community.   She has earned various diversity awards at Shippensburg University and the University of Pittsburgh for her community engagement among the undergraduate scholars, staff, faculty, and community stakeholders.   She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Shippensburg University and is currently completing her doctorate in higher education management at the University of Pittsburgh.   Her doctoral work focuses on understanding the importance of staff of color, the work they do, and the racial microaggressions, racial campus climate, and racial battle fatigue experienced among staff of color working to protect their undergraduate scholars in engineering.

Ron Idoko [https://www.frederickhonors.pitt.edu/people/ron-idoko] (A&S ’05, GSPIA ’07) serves as director of the office of social innovation in honors education in the Frederick Honors College, associate director of the Center on Race & Social Problems, and founding director of the Racial Equity Consciousness Institute.   He recently was presented with the University’s 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Creating a Just Community Award. The award includes a $5,000 prize.   “To fully address the systemic inequities in our community and society at large, we must recognize and confront it in all of its complexity,” said Idoko, who thanked the award committee with “deep humility and gratitude” for what he called an “incredible” honor. “We as a community are capable of being incredible agents for positive social change,“ he said. “It relies on our willingness to develop and embody mindsets that align with our values, visions, and goals.”

Feminista Jones is a feminist writer, public speaker, community activist and retired social worker. She is an award-winning writer and the author of the critically acclaimed "Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World From the Tweets to the Streets" (Beacon). Her work centers around diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory, intersectionality, mental health, queer identity and social work. She teaches courses on race, gender and LGBTQ experiences at Temple University. Jones will be delivering the closing remarks Jan. 24 at the University of Pittsburgh's 2024 Diversity Forum. You can register online [https://www.diversity.pitt.edu/events/diversity-forum-2024].

Lisa Strother Upsher [https://www.healthdiversity.pitt.edu/people/ant-5] is director of health sciences diversity, equity, and inclusion. She came to the University of Pittsburgh after leading DEI efforts at the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, where she was instrumental in having CORE declared a site of the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program, promoting positive health behaviors through public education by focusing on diseases and behaviors that lead to the need for transplantation in minoritized communities. Bee Schindler [https://www.healthdiversity.pitt.edu/people/ant-4] is assistant director of health sciences diversity, equity, and inclusion and program manager for the Health Sciences Social Justice Fellowship. A proud, recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh's Doctor of Education program, they specialized. Their interest in knowledge translation — studying whose knowledge is valued, and why — has lent to deep connection to opportunities to engage with systematically oppressed individuals and communities, and utilizing insight to carve pathways for justice and action.