Sustainable Inclusive Excellence Update – Enterprise Information Systems

The Department of Information Technology is dedicated to WPI’s Sustainable Inclusive Excellence (SIE) initiatives that parallel with WPI’s “Lead with Purpose” SIE initiative. During the past year, our department has made many strides toward the University's goal.

IT Diversity Initiatives:

• Attended internal and external diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) events and activities to assist in our growth and development in DEI.
• Collaborated with other departments and brought awareness to those with hidden disabilities by providing presentations during World Accessibility Day, LEGOs for Empathy, and World Live!
• Had members travel to talk about sustainability, equity, and inclusion, as well as the steps taken by the IT Department to be a leader in creating a culture of inclusion and belonging.
• Introduced software that helps presenters with the pronunciation of our employees’ and students’ names.
• Worked with other departments to disperse preferred names more broadly to current systems that have the ability to store preferred names in their databases.
• Leveraged WPI’s Hub to promote diversity by highlighting diverse leaders that have changed the world.

At WPI, the IT Department has been and will continue to strive to achieve the institute’s vision for SIE. We look forward to yet another innovative year, as the drive toward diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice is an ongoing process and requires us to identify and address both unintended/intended and visible/invisible barriers arising from bias, discrimination, racism, and organizational structures that support such attitudes and actions.