Laura Alford

Being your best DEI self: Think of a time when you were at your best at advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. What happened? Who was there? Why did you feel at your best?

Engr 101 was remote-only this semester, and we created an online interactive “textbook” with videos and interactive exercises to do instead of regular lectures. We were planning to include a chapter on “Applying Computing to Society” with the idea of highlighting how data analysis and simulation can help us see patterns of bias. But the semester was so hard with Covid-19, and I was so tired, that I didn’t think I could do it justice. But two of our GSIs, Sangam Munsiff and Joe Bertha, were confident that we could do it and do it well. So, that gave me new life. Sangam and Joe, along with one of our IAs, Amalia Siavelis, put together a draft of content based on our past lectures about computing in society. I took it from there and REALLY emphasized inequities in our systems and how computing can reveal those inequities. I’m really proud of that chapter and how we didn’t shy away from “hard” topics. I even added a “further reading” section at the end and linked to things like “redlining” in housing. Thank you NPR’s Code Switch for teaching me about these kinds of things! I feel like this was me at my best because I felt like I actively shared how engineering knowledge and skills can advance DEI.