Our Vision & Mission for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Vision

The School of the Environment (SOE) creates a community of scholars that respects, embodies and embraces diversity in backgrounds, experiences, cultures, identities, and ways of knowing as we work towards a shared goal of building a more sustainable and just society. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to the mission of our School. These principles contribute to our mission to advance our understanding of our planet as well as the species and communities that inhabit it, and to find solutions to the environmental challenges we face.

Mission and Objectives

The WSU School of the Environment has made progress in growing the diversity of our community, yet we acknowledge that concerted efforts are needed to expand our diversity to reflect the communities we live in, work with, and serve. We work towards this goal by embracing the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our research, teaching, mentoring, and outreach.

Our students, staff, and faculty conduct research on a wide range of earth and environmental science problems that shape our understanding of the human-environmental system. Our research engages underserved and historically marginalized communities in the United States and around the world, including through partnerships with Indigenous communities, on whose lands we reside.

Our curriculum and teaching practices provide our students an interdisciplinary education on local and global earth and environmental science challenges by introducing diverse ways of knowing, developing broad and varied skill sets and experiences, highlighting the work of scholars from a range of backgrounds, and creating an inclusive learning environment.

We also work towards enhancing diversity within the SOE community through equitable recruitment and hiring processes that include educating ourselves on the biases and barriers faced by Black/African American and Indigenous peoples, people of color, low-income and first-generation students, people with differing abilities, diverse sexual and gender identities, and other underrepresented individuals in the sciences.