Diversity Statement

The Department of Genome Sciences is committed to providing a diverse community of scholars that is encouraging and welcoming to all students. This is reflected in efforts to recruit and retain a diverse faculty and support a diverse student body.

The Department of Genome Sciences recognizes the importance of role models among the faculty in recruiting and retaining a diverse student population as well as enriching the intellectual life and quality of its programs. To this end, enhancing gender balance and diversity within the faculty is a high priority of all faculty searches and part-time appointments.

Within the student body, specific strategies for recruiting women and underrepresented minority students include:

• Including qualitative as well as quantitative indicators of achievement and potential in admissions applications.
  
  
• At the undergraduate level, our labs participate in programs such as the UW Genomic Outreach for Minorities Program, which provide internships for minority students and encourage these students to pursue future courses of study in basic sciences, in addition to promoting our programs through advisors and faculty representation at local school and University-sponsored career awareness events and outreach programs.
  
  
• Departmental representatives attend national conferences by organizations such as SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science), ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students) and AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society).
  
  
• At the graduate level, promoting our programs to targeted schools with large minority populations; taking advantage of the NIH Minority Support programs; adhere to the goals for minority and woman appointments to the two training grants directed within Genome Sciences and helping to secure funding for minority students through targeted departmental scholarships and the Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program.
  

For more information about diversity resources available at the University of Washington, please visit the Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program website.