Access and Cultural Innovation
The Access and Cultural Innovation (ACI) team provides resources to support an inclusive workplace culture at CIRES
Access and Cultural Innovation
The Access and Cultural Innovation (ACI) team provides resources to support an inclusive workplace culture at CIRES
The Access and Cultural Innovation Team works to advance the following areas:
- Inclusive workplace culture: Fostering an inclusive, respectful culture that recognizes and embraces the cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds of our employees.
- Effective recruitment: Building capacity in partnership with CIRES HR to successfully recruit and hire a scientific workforce with increased representation from groups that have been historically excluded from environmental science fields.
- Authentic partnerships: Creating authentic partnerships with those who are most impacted by our work and with organizations that serve marginalized groups in environmental sciences.
At CIRES, we work to foster an inclusive, respectful culture that recognizes and embraces the cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds of our employees.
Our goals include:
- Enabling and encouraging inclusive supervision and mentoring
- Building responsive feedback mechanisms
- Offering responsive programming that supports the development of inclusive work environments
- Supporting employees in documenting their ACI work annually
- Annual reporting on the workplace culture and retention data
At CIRES, we are building capacity in partnership with CIRES HR to successfully recruit and hire a scientific workforce with increased representation from groups that have been historically excluded from environmental science fields.
Our goals include:
- Increased use of inclusive hiring strategies
- Broadened recruiting efforts and strategic partnerships with minority-serving institutions (MSIs)
- Engaged partnership with CU/NOAA affinity groups and developing CIRES employee resource groups
- Monitoring the outcomes of our recruiting, hiring, and retention efforts
At CIRES, we strive to create authentic partnerships with those who are most impacted by our work.
Our goals include:
- Improved awareness regarding cultural differences and effective relationship building with external communities
- Education and engagement efforts that are culturally sensitive and broad-reaching
- Collaborations with local communities that use our research to build environmental justice policy
- Regular trainings for science communicators on inclusive language and digital accessibility
Please see information below on our recent CIRES seminar series focused on Leadership in Tribal Engagement Learning, designed by our CIRES Tribal advisor James Rattling Leaf.
CIRES employees and their NOAA colleagues can contact James Rattling Leaf (jamesrattlingleaf@colorado.edu) to discuss these events and/or their tribal engagement work.
Neurodiversity recognizes the natural variations in brain structure, chemistry, and function that shape our unique human experiences. There is no “correct” or “incorrect” type of brain, and therefore no right or wrong way to express creativity and process work. It is important to be aware of the uniqueness of people, no matter how they identify, and that there might be additional challenges to those who identify somewhere along the neurodivergent spectrum. These include but are not limited to differences in communication, managing deadlines, sense of exclusion, organization, and sensory sensitivities.
At CIRES, we strive to provide a neuro-inclusive workplace environment, seeing the value in the unique ways that our employees work best.
Please join our upcoming session on January 31 to explore a newly developed CIRES guide for "Neurodiversity in the Workplace".
Resources
GitHub “Awesome Neurodiversity”: Collection of resources, events and people from the Autistic community and wider neurodiversity movement
Parallel Minds: The Ultimate Neurodiversity Resource Bank
Microsoft: InclusiveDesign For Cognition Guidebook
TED Talks: What autistic people can teach you about communication, Failing at Normal: An ADHD Success Story
NOAA Global Systems Laboratory: Inclusive Design Trainings
As part of our commitment to be a workplace where every employee is valued and included, all CIRES employees were asked to complete the Institutes Culture Survey in October 2023. The Institutes Culture Survey is designed to gather data about employee experiences in the academic and workplace environments at CIRES. You can read more about this survey on this CIRES News blog post.
CIRES employees can view unit-specific data (NOAA, NSIDC, CU campus units) on the Inside CIRES page.