Graduate Department Statement of Values on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
The Graduate Department of Psychology acknowledges that our department operates on the ancestral land of the Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this land is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island. We respect Indigenous people and their ongoing relationships with this land, and we support the Truth and Reconciliation Committee of Canada’s Call to Action. The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation shared the history of the treaty surrounding the general area of modern-day Toronto (Treaty 13) on their website: http://mncfn.ca/torontopurchase/
The Graduate Department of Psychology recognizes that racism and discrimination in the field of psychology, academia, and Canada has created systemic barriers for marginalized people to enter and thrive in academia. We seek to dismantle these barriers by actively reflecting on how our systems of operating may perpetuate barriers to entry or advancement in our field. The Graduate Department seeks to identify, collectively discuss, and then amend or replace any of our processes that contributes to these barriers.
We hold equity, diversity, inclusion, (EDI) and Indigeneity as core values. We seek to provide an inclusive and supportive graduate program where people and their science can thrive. We value diverse perspectives and different approaches to psychological science. We further commit to valuing and celebrating the identities of our community members including but not limited to those based on age, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender expressions, gender identity, indigeneity, neurodiversity, race, religion or creed, sexual orientation, social class, or socioeconomic status and intersecting identities.
As one of the leading graduate programs in psychology in the world, the Graduate Department understands it has a responsibility to cultivate a community in which our graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staff are able to research, learn, teach, and work with their greatest creativity, dedication, and focus. In order to do that, every person has the right to do their work free from harassment and discrimination, particularly equity-seeking groups such as those based on race or ethnicity, indigeneity, gender identity, gender expression, religion, sexual orientation, identity, socioeconomic status or social class, neurodiversity, or disability and intersecting identities. All members of our department have the right to equitable treatment and a healthy, welcoming, supportive, and safe working environment.
Our work is ongoing, but we commit to protecting the dignity, equity, and safety of our community members. Our goal is to dismantle practices that uphold any form of discrimination or oppression, including but not limited to ableism, ageism, homophobia, misogyny, racism, religious persecution, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia by (a) regularly reviewing our policies and (b) educating our graduate community on the origins of systems of oppression, their impact on present-day academia, speech and behaviours that support or promote them, and how to combat bias.
In service of our commitments and goals, the Graduate Department leadership regularly attends EDI workshops that focus on program-level EDI and Indigeneity issues, as well as EDI-focused mentorship training. The Graduate Department provides an annual EDI report to the Graduate Committee and the Graduate Chair annually reports on EDI activities to the Dean of Arts & Sciences. The Graduate Department is also facilitating EDI workshops for faculty mentors. Our most active EDI work, however, occurs through our student-led Tri-Campus Psychology EDI Group.
The Tri-Campus Psychology EDI Group
The Graduate Department of Psychology provides the PhD Degree Program for the Psychology Departments at the University of Toronto Mississauga, University of Toronto Scarborough, and the University of Toronto St. George, in addition to affiliated Research Scientists at local research hospitals (e.g., Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital). Each campus of the tri-campus Psychology Department (i.e., Mississauga, Scarborough, St. George) has its own EDI Committee.
The Tri-Campus Psychology EDI group is a student-led EDI Group whose membership includes students, postdocs, and faculty from across all three campuses and affiliated research institutions. The large group is self-organized into a number of "initiatives," where community members who care about the same issue work towards a specific outcome. One faculty representative from each of the campus EDI Committees attends regular meetings of the Tri-Campus EDI Committee. Through this structure, we hope to allow for a dynamic, responsive, and collaborative approach to EDI in our large department community.
Our EDI efforts centre the support of Black and Indigenous psychological scientists in our department and the field, informed in part by the recommendations of the University of Toronto Anti-Black Racism Task Force and those of the Steering Committee for University of Toronto Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. However, members of the Tri-Campus Psychology EDI have further identified that we would like to prioritize Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC), members of the transgender community, sexual minorities, people who grew up in a household with low income, first-generation university students, and people living with disability in our EDI initiatives. These groups are of personal relevance to members of our community and/or have strong allies in our community.
This group is compiling existing resources and developing new resources for an instructor-facing toolkit with recommendations for EDI best practices to be used in the classroom. Included in this toolkit is a template for an EDI-focused syllabus with example language and evidence in support of the recommendations.
This group aims to dismantle barriers to students, faculty, and staff for safely and effectively reporting incidents of harassment and/or discrimination and to increase the accessibility of supports currently existing at UofT. The group has worked collaboratively with people across the three campuses to develop a new document, “Pathways to Help”, which provides organized descriptions and contact information for tri-campus UofT resources supporting equity-seeking identities, conflict resolution, community safety, mental health, international students, and those seeking accessibility support.
The Summer Psychology Research Initiative (SPRINT) is a high-school outreach program that brings together BIPOC high school students from the Greater Toronto Area to get a 2-week series of introductory lectures to different research areas of psychology and receive guided mentorship through the development of a research proposal. At the end of the two weeks, SPRINT participants present their research proposal to the group and important people in their lives that they invited. SPRINT is entirely student-created and student-led. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate students from all three campuses of the Psychology Department contribute to the program through creating and delivering guest lectures, helping administer the program, and providing direct research mentorship.
The Application Fee Waiver Program, instituted in 2021, was born out of the “diversify graduate admissions” initiative. This group was a collaborative effort between graduate students and faculty members who researched application fee waiver programs at other universities and within UofT. The group wrote a proposal for the Application Fee Waiver Program that was adopted by the Graduate Department of Psychology. The application fee waiver covers the $125 CAD application fee that is paid to the School of Graduate Studies for 100 applicants to our PhD program. The goal of the application fee waiver is to reduce financial barriers of entry for our applicants, prioritizing equity-seeking groups whom we encourage to apply to our graduate program in the distribution of the waivers.
The Canada Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) is an 8-week research training internship program. The ultimate goal of the Canada SROP is to diversify faculty by providing undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds equitable access to graduate school preparation, planning, and admission. The primary component of the SROP is a small research project in the social sciences that the student researchers conduct over the course of 8 weeks. The remainder of the SROP is spent on other aspects of graduate admissions preparation and professional development. At the end of the programme, students present their work at a virtual conference. Students are supported with a living wage for the 8 weeks of the program and also receive a fee waiver for the graduate application to the school of graduate studies.
This group has two primary aims. First, the group works directly with undergraduates through the Psychology Undergraduate Research Club (PURC). To this end, PURC has offered regular meetings for over two years to learn more about research, present their own research, and gain skills for research (e.g., statistical skills, RStudio tutorials) to create greater access to research for students facing barriers getting lab experience. Recently, PURC has also begun hosting intensive writing workshops in which graduate mentors help undergraduates draft application materials for graduate school and other research opportunities. Second, the group works to assess department climate and understand the demographics of students who have access to research positions. To this end, the group is developing questionnaires to assess department demographics and hiring policies, as well as using this information to develop a toolkit of best practices to improve undergraduate experience applying for and working in lab positions.