The commitment of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience to creating a community that is diverse, inclusive and equitable permeates throughout our department’s identity as exemplified in our Mission Statement. The CARE Initiative outlines our plans to act on our commitment to build on and maintain an inclusive Departmental culture that values and respects everyone’s distinct identity. Our graduate program is deeply embedded in these efforts as they pertain to our ability to reach, recruit, train and retain a distinguished and diverse cohort of PhD students. We believe that our students benefit from exposure to and interaction with individuals from a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives enabling them to develop a breadth and depth in intellectually diverse thinking. We actively seek to diversify our student representation through outreach and recruitment efforts that are directed toward students that have been traditionally underrepresented in psychology and neuroscience.
Our admissions procedures are providing a more holistic assessment of applicants that values students’ social and cultural backgrounds in addition to their academic accolades. We also recognize the importance of creating an inclusive environment that is supportive, understanding, and respectful to our students. We strive to empower our students by providing them with a voice in evaluating our graduate program and allowing them opportunities to contribute to programmatic decision-making. Finally, we believe that our mission to train the students in our graduate program expands beyond the classroom and research laboratory, and should prepare our students to be considerate citizens in an increasingly diverse society.