The Diversity Liaison Project provides a hands-on approach to offering more opportunities for campus leaders to actively engage with matters of diversity, equity and inclusion; and implement best practices in the classroom and beyond. The goal of the project is to help create an educational environment at UW–Madison that is conducive to everyone’s best learning and professional advancement.

Matthews is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology whose research focuses on understanding the factors that influence the construction of mathematical knowledge. His general interests are motivated by a fundamental question facing educators at all levels: how can we present information so that learners understand content on more than just a superficial level? Current projects include investigating children’s developing knowledge of equivalence and exploring the cognitive processes underlying numerical representation and estimation.

Led by Patrick Sims, deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion, and Michael Bernard-Donals, vice provost for faculty and staff, the project includes workshops designed and delivered by Diversity Liaisons to help participants:

• acquire and enhance inclusive communication skills and cross-cultural competencies,
• increase their awareness of issues that can detract from students’ success and impede their access to learning environments,
• and use relevant pedagogies that foster a more welcoming campus climate.

The project meets the goal set forth in the university’s Diversity Framework, which states that campus leaders “provide models of inclusive behavior, exemplify rhetoric in practice, and demonstrate their sincerity in the belief that inclusive diversity is our path to excellence.” The project also takes into account the 2016 faculty senate (PDF version) and academic staff resolutions that commit these groups to participating in ongoing professional development experiences related to fostering a greater sense of cultural awareness and inclusion.

Diversity Liaisons meet monthly with the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion and vice provost for faculty and staff, and are provided with funding to enable them to plan and organize workshops for sharing best practices with other faculty and instructional academic staff.

In addition to Matthews, the other members of the second cohort of Diversity Liasons are: B. Venkat Mani, a professor of German, and director of the UW–Madison Center for South Asia; Erika Marin-Spiotta, an associate professor of geography with research interests in carbon and nutrient cycling in soils and strategies for broadening participation in science; and Ahna Skop, a professor in the Department of Genetics and an affiliate member in Life Sciences Communication and the Arts Institute.

Learn more about all of this year’s cohort in this university news post.