Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Concordia is located on unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, the custodians of the lands and waters of Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). The Department of Education is located on the former property of the Grey Nuns, a Catholic institution that played a key role in the federal government's system of Residential Schools, which was designed to extinguish the cultures and knowledges of the First Peoples and to stop cultural transmission to future generations. The Department of Education inherits this legacy.

The occupation of this land became the starting point for an over 500-year settler colonial system. The Department of Education at Concordia University affirm that these historical and current settler colonial systems and institutions have directly resulted in specific forms of marginalization that play out within our department and our university at large; these include, but are not limited to, marginalization on the basis of indigeneity, race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, language, religion, age, sexual orientation, family structure, migration status, employment status, and/or socioeconomic status. The oppressive effects of historical and current systems include structures, behaviours and attitudes which are inequitable, exclusionary, biased, discriminatory, and self-sustaining.

We pledge to resist these systems, behaviours, and attitudes, and to work towards transforming our department and our university into more equitable and inclusive spaces. This living document is a record of our continuing work to enact this pledge. We recognize that as a community, we must continue to critically self-reflect on our values and on how to uphold them. We will add to the document as our work continues. We remain committed to ongoing work to strengthen equity, diversity, and inclusion in the everyday lives of our department. Below is a list of specific activities, a list that will continue to grow with time:

One step we have taken is the formation of a departmental committee to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) that meets on a monthly basis. This committee is made up of students, staff, and faculty, with a mandate:

to address social justice issues centered around equity, diversity, and inclusion at all levels in the department via the development of a concrete action plan. In referring to equity, diversity, and inclusion, we are informed by the principles and definitions outlined by the Report of the Concordia Working Group on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

To date, the committee has hosted several guest speakers at Department Council meetings who have spoken about the experiences of Concordia community members who are also members of marginalized groups and how to support equity and inclusion in terms of our teaching, research, and other activities.
Graduate students from the EDI committee developed, administered, and analyzed a series of student surveys about how specific aspects of equity, diversity, and inclusion have affected undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Education. These results have been shared with the Department management team to inform policies, procedures, and the administration of programs. For example, a series of professional development and community building activities was developed to support graduate students within the Department.
Starting in the 2022-2023 academic year, the committee has organized a series of conversations involving full-time, part-time, and reserve course instructors in the Department of Education to discuss inclusive teaching practices. In the 2023-2024 academic year, we began inviting guest facilitators to engage with our faculty on specific topics such as challenging classroom discussions or accessibility issues in our teaching.
The committee is pursuing revisions to course descriptions in order to support learning opportunities related to EDI issues across our undergraduate and graduate programs. This process is ongoing.
With the support of funding from the Department of Education and the Concordia Equity Office, we conducted a needs assessment of full-time Department faculty and staff in the Spring of 2024. The goal was to guide upcoming projects and initiatives by the EDI committee, based on leveraging existing strengths and addressing needs identified by the community. This involved interviews with a graduate student (external to the Department) who was hired to coordinate the project or the option of completing an anonymous survey. Findings were collated in a preliminary report that was discussed in a meeting. Our goal was to identify specific actions that will inform the work of the EDI committee in the 2024-2025 academic year.
The committee created a document (to be hosted on the Departmental website) that provides guidance to students about who to contact if they are facing a challenge, concern, or other issue with their classroom instruction or research supervision in the Department of Education. This document will continue to be revised to reflect additional actions, plans, or mandates which have been adopted by the Department of Education in order to transform our department and our university into equitable and inclusive spaces. We recognize that our commitment to resist this settler colonial system is simply a starting point in the path towards becoming a more equitable community, and we recognize there are practices within our system that may need to be reevaluated in the process. Thus, we invite members of our community to hold the department accountable to these commitments and voice their concerns or feedback in the ways in which our community operates.

Current members of the Department of Education EDI committee (2023-2024):

Holly Recchia (Committee chair)

Tamara Beresford (Staff member)

Sheri Bernier (Staff member)

Jennifer Burton (Full-time faculty member)

Giuliana Cucinelli (Full-time faculty member)

Sofia Genera Monroy (Undergraduate student)

Hariclia Petrakos (Full-time faculty member)

Nathalie Rothschild (Full-time faculty member)

Kathryn Urbaniak (Graduate student)

Members of the Department of Education EDI committee (2022-2023):