Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee

The Equity, Diversity, and inclusion Committee

The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee seeks to provide education and resources that support a climate of openness and inclusion. The committee’s role is to promote, recognize, and act as a liaison on issues of diversity, equity, and human rights within the Biology Department. At Queen's, all individuals should have equal rights and opportunities, in an environment of mutual respect and dignity, so that all can fully contribute. Discrimination and harassment* are not acceptable.

Current committee members: Brian Cumming (chair), Darlene Davis (operations committee liason), Sarah Yakimowski (undergraduate committee liason), Fran Bonier (graduate committee liason), Sam Green, Maria, and Gomez Quijano (graduate representative).

*Discrimination is an action against an individual or group that limits opportunities. Harassment is a course of vexatious comments or conduct that is known to be, or should be known to be, unwelcome.

EDII CHAMPION AWARD -  Nominations Due April 11, 2022

This award recognizes individuals or teams who have made outstanding contributions toward advancing equity, diversity, inclusion, and indigeneity in the department.

Consider nominating an individual, team or self-nominate.

Application link

Past Awardees  

2021 - Regan Cross, Hana Thomspon, Riley Gridzak, Samantha Gene, Kristin Hayward, Monica Garvie, Nell Libera, and Harshavardhan Thyagarajan received the award for on-going efforts to increase inclusion and reduce barriers in the Biology Department.

DEpartmental Guidelines related to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Queen's University has developed a new document (found here) to help faculty, staff, and students navigate university policies concerning EDI, and to provide guidelines for reporting or submitting complaints regarding harassment, discrimination, exclusion, and other similar behaviour. This document outlines steps that should be taken, and includes definitions and training opportunities.

The Accessibility Hub

The Accessibility Hub at Queen's (http://www.queensu.ca/accessibility/home) promotes this vision by bringing together, in a central online resource, resources that will promote inclusion and improve access for the campus community. This site also provides links to campus services in one place that help support the broader concept of accessibility.

Human Rights

The Human Rights website (http://www.queensu.ca/humanrights/) provides policies and resources for promoting human rights at Queen's, including Advisory Services, Training and Publications, and Policies. Current policies and procedures on harassment and discrimination, complaints resolution, sexual violence prevention and response, gender-neutral washrooms, and more can be found under the Human Rights Office’s Advisory Service page (http://www.queensu.ca/humanrights/advisory-service)

Equity Office

The Equity Office at Queen’s (http://www.queensu.ca/equity/home) provides resources and training for all issues relating to employment and educational equity.

I've spent more time than many will believe [making microscopic observations], but I've done them with joy, and I've taken no notice those who have said why take so much trouble and what good is it?

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

It's a parts list... If I gave you the parts list for the Boeing 777 and it had 100,000 parts, I don't think you could screw it together and you certainly wouldn't understand why it flew

Eric Lander

What is true for E. coli is also true for the elephant

Jacques Monod

The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism

Richard Dawkins

Shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life?

Erasmus Darwin

Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it's impossible to determine the line of demarcation

Aristotle

Cells let us walk, talk, think, make love, and realize the bath water is cold

Lorraine Lee Cudmore

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history

Charles Darwin

It is my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing to the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view of our place on the biological continuum

J. Craig Venter

Imagine a house coming together spontaneously from all the information contained in the bricks: that is how animal bodies are made

Neil Shubin

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct

Charles Darwin

The stuff of life turned out to be not a quivering, glowing, wondrous gel but a contraption of tiny jigs, springs, hinges, rods, sheets, magnets, zippers, and trapdoors, assembled by a data tape whose information is copied, downloaded and scanned

Steven Pinker

We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest

Rosalind Franklin

We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget

Mary Roach

The systems approach to biology will be the dominant theme in medicine

Leroy Hood

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment"

Isabella Rossellini

Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality

Thomas Cech

Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century

- Freeman Dyson

Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third

- Thomas Huxley