DEI Faculty Grant

Office of Culture, Community and Equity (OCCE)/DEI Faculty Grant

The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Faculty Grant has officially entered its fourth year of funding. The grant will be awarded to a Michigan Engineering faculty member interested in leading an activity to foster DEI within the Michigan Engineering departments and divisions. The grant will be awarded to innovative activities that help create an engaging and inclusive environment for our students, faculty and staff. The funds will go towards activities, events and/ or projects that have the potential to enhance diversity, promote equity and foster inclusion at the unit level.

DEI activity topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Improving the climate for undergraduate transfer students
  • Increasing the diversity and climate for co-curriculum programs and activities
  • Making our teaching more inclusive for our increasingly diverse student body
  • Building creative learning spaces to enable inclusive learning environments
  • Building inclusive communities for faculty, staff and students with disabilities
  • Improving graduate student and postdoctoral fellow mentoring
  • Improving faculty and staff relations
  • Improving tenured & tenure-track, research and teaching faculty relations
Funding

Grants up to $15,000 (based on a 50% cost-share from the participating department, i.e. $7,500 from the CoE DEI Faculty Grant program and $7,500 from the department) are available for the AY23/24 to support these activities, events and/ or projects. The funding should be used to cover expenses, including but not limited to the following: 

  • Workshop Fees
  • Speaker Fees / Honorarium or travel fees for speaker
  • Advertising & Publicity
  • Facility Rental
  • Equipment
  • Printing & Copying
  • Registration
  • Food / Refreshment
  • Supplies & Materials
  • Faculty Stipend
Application Requirements

Faculty members applying for the DEI 2023-24 grant must complete and submit the following items to be considered. In addition to the following application requirements, please take note of the important dates listed below.

  • A completed detailed budget estimate (see sample budget template)
  • Completed Application Form
  • Application Deadline: Monday, July 17, 2023
  • Selection: August 31, 2023
  • Activities, events and/ or projects completed by August 31, 2024
Expectations of Awardees

Those awarded a DEI Faculty Grant are expected to: 

  • Execute the awarded activity, event and/ or project that aids in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion within Michigan Engineering’s department and divisions.
  • Work to promote the activities, events and/or projects to the CoE community members it is designed for.
  • Attend status report meetings to provide a brief update about the activity, event and/ or project (fall and spring via Zoom).  
  • Share details of the program with the DEI Director, DEI Faculty Leads, DEI blog, etc. to highlight the activity.
  • Complete the activities, events and/ or projects by August 31, 2024.
  • Share a slide deck outlining the completed activity, including metrics and photos (if applicable) by September 30, 2024 (completed and sent to Michelle French, [email protected]).

DEI Faculty Grant Recipients

2023-2024 Recipients
  • MARS Dialogues: Macroethics – Addressing our Responsibility to Society
    • Departments:  AERO, NERS
    • Principal Investigators:  Aaron Johnson, Aditi Verma 
    • Intended Audience:  Undergraduate and graduate students, staff and faculty from Aero and NERS are the primary audience. Participants will be welcome from all across the College of Engineering and University.
  • BME DEI Book Club
    • Department:  BME
    • Principal Investigators:  Alexandra Piotrowski-Daspit, Aaron Morris
    • Intended Audience:  Faculty, Staff, Graduate Students and Postdocs in the BME Department
  • BME Graduate Application Assistance Program (BME-GAAP)
    • Department:  BME
    • Principal Investigator:  Karin Jensen
    • Intended Audience:  Applicants to any PhD program in Biomedical Engineering from underrepresented backgrounds
  • BME NEST: Network for Engineering Success and Transformation
    • Department:  BME
    • Principal Investigators:  Kerri Boivin, Karen Gates, Jan Stegemann
    • Intended Audience:  Undergraduates from MSIs who have indicated an interest in Biomedical Engineering as a major, either as transfer students or at the graduate level. We have established a very promising relationship with the Atlanta University Center (AUC) and partners in the AUC Dual Degree in Engineering Program (DDEP). 
  • Lisa Pruitt Book Lunch Event
    • Department:  BME
    • Principal Investigators:  Ann Jeffers, Karin Jensen, Andy Putnam
    • Intended Audience:  The audience will be CoE faculty (including tenured and tenure track, teaching and research faculty), as well as CoE leadership, including, but not limited to, deans, department heads, OCCE and others.
  • Initiation, Propagation and Impact – the life cycle of climate and space scientists
    • Department:  CLASP
    • Principal Investigators:  Nishtha Sachdeva, Judit Szente
    • Intended Audience:  Faculty, Postdocs, Graduate Students (including incoming)
  • CSE Grad Student Community Building, Seminar Series and Events
    • Department:  CSE
    • Principal Investigator:  Alanson Sample
    • Intended Audience:  Incoming AY 2023 CSE Ph.D. cohort, with activities designed to engage these
  • Michigan AI DEI Recruitment
    • Department:  CSE
    • Principal Investigator:  Ben Fish
    • Intended Audience:  URM students who are interested in AI
  • Michigan AI Symposium – Rising Stars
    • Department:  CSE
    • Principal Investigators:  Anhong Guo, Stella Yu
    • Intended Audience:  Faculty, students and public interested in AI
  • Celebration of Cultures
    • Department:  IOE
    • Principal Investigators:  Maria Fields, Leia Stirling
    • Intended Audience:  Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and parents/family
  • DEI-FY 101: Driving Equity, Inclusion and Success for Early Undergraduates
    • Department:  ME
    • Principal Investigator:  Angela Violi
    • Intended Audience:  Undergraduate students
  • Increasing women participation in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
    • Department:  NAME
    • Principal Investigator:  Anchal Sareen
    • Intended Audience:  K-12 high-school students
  • Enabling development and participation in academic, professional and outreach activities
    • Department:  Robotics
    • Principal Investigator::  Dimitra Panagou
    • Intended Audience:  Primarily undergraduate and graduate students. Secondarily, staff, students, faculty and the general public interested in Robotics
  • Women in Robotics Professional Development Workshops
    • Department:  Robotics
    • Principal Investigator::  Elena Shrestha, Ram Vasudevan
    • Intended Audience:  Undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty in the Robotics Department
  • Faculty Dialogues: Centering Sociotechnical Engineering in E100
    • Department:  TechComm
    • Principal Investigators:  Kelly Bowker, Kim Lewis, Kelsey McLendon and Katie Snyder
    • Intended Audience:  All faculty who teach Engineering 100
  • Braid: Fostering inclusivity and promoting mentoring through online collaboration and storytelling
    • Department:  UMTRI
    • Principal Investigator:  Tayo Fabusuyi
    • Intended Audience:  CoE students; U-M students with an interest in public interest technology (PIT); students from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) through partnership with New America and through outreach to the student clubs of Tech for Change and members of the PIT-UN.
2022-2023 Recipients
  • Towards the inclusion of staff and faculty with disabilitiesies on North Campus 
    • Departments: MSE, CEE, EECS 
    • Principal Investigators: Emmanuelle Marquis, Ann Jeffers, Becky Peterson 
    • Intended Audience: staff (including postdocs and research scientists), faculty (including lecturers) and graduate students 
  • Supporting a Diverse Student Population in Robotics 
    • Department: Robotics 
    • Principal Investigators: Katie Skinner 
    • Intended Audience: undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, staff and faculty in the Department of Robotics 
  • Aerospace: Integrating DEI into our everyday life in the department 
    • Department: Aerospace Engineering 
    • Principal Investigators: Vasileios Tzoumas 
    • Intended Audience: graduate and senior undergraduate students 
  • BME NEST – Network for Engineering Success and Transformation 
    • Department: Biomedical Engineering 
    • Principal Investigators: Jan Stegemann, Karen Gates, Jeanne Murabito and Kerri Boivin 
    • Intended Audience: undergraduates from MSIs who have indicated an interest in Biomedical Engineering as a Master’s program. We expect to work initially with specific HBCUs with which U-M has existing relationships, specifically Spelman College and Morehouse College. 
  • Best Practice Recommendations for Including CoE Lecturers and Research Faculty (LRF)
    • Departments: UMTRI, MSE, ChemEng and CLaSP 
    • Principal Investigators: Kathy Klinich, Kathy Sevener, Laura Hirshfield and Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti c.
    • Intended Audience: department chairs, tenured/tenure-track faculty, research faculty, lecturers and Michigan Engineering administration 
  • The Sankofa Project: Cultivating Socially Conscious Engineers 
    • Department: Mechanical Engineering 
    • Principal Investigators: James Holly, Jr. and Solomon Adera 
    • Intended Audience: mechanical engineering students in their first or second year of study 
  • BME U of M Application Assistance Program 
    • Department: BME 
    • Principal Investigators: David Nordsletten; Rachel Patterson 
    • Intended Audience: Underrepresented applicants to the BME PhD program 
  • Accessibility at the ZEUS Facility 
    • Departments: NERS/EECS/ZEUS Facility 
    • Principal Investigators: Carolyn Kuranz 
    • Intended Audience: Michigan Engineering faculty and students and prospective graduate students 
  • AI Symposium – Rising Stars 
    • Department: CSE 
    • Principal Investigators: Jenna Wiens 
    • Intended Audience: faculty, students and public interested in AI
  • Collaborative Partnership with Low-income Detroit Schools to Promote Interest in STEM
    • Department: IOE 
    • Principal Investigators: Salar Fattahi and Tiffany Wu 
    • Intended Audience: Junior and senior high school students at University Prep Academy (UPA), one of Detroit’s oldest and largest charter school systems, serving close to 5,000 students in grades K-12, a majority of whom are underrepresented minority students. 
  • Seeing the unseen – Visualizing turbulence of the atmosphere 
    • Department: CLaSP 
    • Principal Investigators: Cheng Li 
    • Intended Audience: K12 students, undergraduates and graduates
2021-2022 Recipients
  • Origins of my unique strengths: Narratives of our Transfer Students
    • Departments: Engineering Advising Center
    • Principal Investigators: Pauline Khan and Shawn Salata
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate Transfer Students
  • Fostering mentorship through ChE student and alumni connection
    • Department: Chemical Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Laura Hirshfield, Nora Sennett, Sunitha Nagrath
    • Intended Audience: Chemical Engineering Undergraduate, Graduate Students and Alumni
  • Collaborative Research Visit Of Undergraduate Students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities
    • Departments: Chemical Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Nicholas A. Kotov and Joerg Lahann
    • Intended Audience: Sophomores, Juniors and non-graduating seniors
  • Improving Transfer Students Integration with Programming Assistance
    • Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Teresse Olson, Lissa MacVean and Ann Jeffers
    • Intended Audience: Transfer students in CEE
  • Engagement and Mentoring to build a robust transfer program
    • Department: Climate and Space Sciences Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Gretchen Keppel- Aleks, Frank Marsik and Aaron Ridley
    • Intended Audience: CLASP Undergraduate and Graduate
  • CSE First Year Grad Student Community Building, Seminar Series and Events
    • Department: Computer Science and Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Alanson Sample and David Fouhey
    • Intended Audience: Incoming AY 2021 CSE PhD Cohorts, the AY 2022\0 CSE PhD Cohort and CSE PhD students from earlier cohorts in the peer mentoring program
  • Broadening CS Culture by integrating ethics and Justice in Introductory CS
    • Department: Computer Science and Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: H.V. Jagadish
    • Intended Audience: Students in EECS 183
  • ECE DEI Guest Seminar Series
    • Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Al-Thaddeus Avestruz and Fred L. Terry Jr.
    • Intended Audience: Michigan Engineering Students, Staff and Faculty
  • “Macromolecules for All”- Workshop
    • Department: Macromolecular Science and Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Abdon Pena-Francesch
    • Intended Audience: Michigan Engineering Students, Staff and Faculty
  • Seminar Series fostering connections inside and outside NAME Student Body
    • Department: Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Yulin Pan
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and Graduate students
  • Advocates for Diversity in Engineering and Wilson Student Team Project Center Accessible Equipment Grant
    • Department: Wilson Student Team Project Center
    • Principal Investigators: Christopher Gordon
    • Intended Audience: Students, Faculty and Staff of the Wilson Student Team Project Center
  • Robot Museum Docent with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)
    • Department: Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Maani Ghaffari
    • Intended Audience: URM undergraduate and graduate students in Michigan Engineering
  • Supporting a Diverse Student Population in NERS
    • Department: Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences
    • Principal Investigators: Carolyn C Kuranz, John Foster and Ryan McBride
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and graduate students in the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Department
  • Supporting mental health in our chemical engineering community
    • Department: Chemical Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Laura Hirshfield, Nora Sennett and Sunitha Nagrath
    • Intended Audience: Chemical Engineering Undergraduate and Graduate Students
2020-2021 Recipients
  • A Virtual Mentoring Workshop Series for IOE and EER Undergraduate and Graduate
    Students
    • Departments: The Industrial and Operations Engineering Department and the Engineering Education Research Program
    • Principal Investigators: Joi-Lynn Mondisa and Catherine Boblitt
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and graduate students in the Industrial and
      Operations Engineering Department and the Engineering Education Research Program
  • Undergraduate Engineering Collaborative Growth Series
    • Departments: Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Joseph Valle, Corey Bowen, Jeff Sakamoto, Ken Powell and Joi-Lynn Mondisa
    • Intended Audience: URM undergraduate students in Michigan Engineering
  • A.E.R.O. Mentorship Program
    • Department: Aerospace Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Kimberly Johnson carrying on Luis Bernal’s vision for the program
    • Intended Audience: URM/Female/Transfer undergraduate students in the Aerospace
      Engineering Department
  • Intensive Summer Program for Increasing Diversity in Engineering
    • Department: Mechanical Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Ellen Arruda, Edgar Meyhofer, Don Siegel, Pramod Reddy and Vikram Gavini
    • Intended Audience: URM graduate students in the Mechanical Engineering Department
  • Creating Systematic Change within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Discipline around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Jason McCormick, Neda Masoud and Nancy Love
    • Intended Audience: Students, faculty, postdoctoral fellows and staff in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
  • How to do Grad School Podcast
    • Department: Robotics Institute
    • Principal Investigators: Ram Vasudevan and Nosakhare (Nosa) Edoimioya
    • Intended Audience: Graduate students in Michigan Engineering
  • NERS Graduate Student Recruiting at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Women’s Colleges
    • Department: Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences
    • Principal Investigators: Carolyn C Kuranz, John Foster and Ryan McBride
    • Intended Audience: URM and women students in STEM
  • Making Material Connections – MSE Student/Alumni Mentoring program
    • Department: Materials Science and Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Kathleen Sevener and Geeta Mehta
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and graduate students in the Materials Science and Engineering Department
  • Winter 2021 Undergraduate Robotics Institute Makeathon Challenge
    • Department: Robotics Program
    • Principal Investigators: Robert Gregg and Chris Nesler
    • Intended Audience: URM undergraduate and graduate students in Michigan Engineering
  • ECE Undergraduate Communal Space
    • Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Pei-Cheng Ku and Mingyan Liu
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and graduate students in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
  • Supporting a Diverse Student Population in NERS
    • Department: Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences
    • Principal Investigators: Carolyn C Kuranz, John Foster and Ryan McBride
    • Intended Audience: Undergraduate and graduate students in the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Department
  • Robot Museum Docent with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)
    • Department: Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
    • Principal Investigators: Maani Ghaffari
    • Intended Audience: URM undergraduate and graduate students in Michigan Engineering

If you have questions, comments or concerns about the DEI Grant please contact:

Program Contact

Sara A. Pozzi, Ph. D.

University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor

Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and Professor of Physics

Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

[email protected]

    Michelle French

    Program Logistics

    Michelle French

    Program Coordinator, Office of Culture, Community and Equity (OCCE)

    [email protected]