CEE DEI Committee

The U-M Civil and Environmental Engineering Department (CEE) is dedicated to cultivating leaders in the field and leaders in society. CEE is a community, a department that welcomes and embraces diversity, and an environment that prioritizes belonging and inclusion. Equity and social justice are imperative for liberation for all, and we in CEE believe change starts from within.

The CEE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee recognizes the need to advocate for equity and justice in our society. The committee will work to create a community (students, postdocs, staff, and faculty) that is unified in addressing this need through active self-reflection, awareness, education, and opportunities. The CEE DEI Committee knows that this work is ongoing, and we are committed to being active participants in that work, devoted to leading in the advancement of greater equity for diverse identities in the discipline of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in society at large.

Historically, the CEE DEI Committee has created a roadmap toward ensuring equity within the department, its curriculum, and its programming. It is this roadmap that has been a guide to informing the projects, events, implementations, and initiatives that the Committee has put into practice for the further empowerment of the department, with accountability, transparency, and evaluation and assessment being foundational in these processes. The CEE DEI Committee’s ultimate goal is a culture and climate of tolerance, acceptance, respect, and accessibility that spans to our students, postdocs, staff, and faculty.

In Civil and Environmental Engineering, we are more than a department. We are a community, and we are dedicated to showing up for each other.

The CEE DEI committee logo.

Do you have DEI ideas or feedback you would like to share with the DEI Committee?

CEE: Early Career Researcher Seminar Series

Explore DEI 2.0

DEI Initiatives

Graduate Student Peer Mentoring

The CEE Graduate Student Peer Mentoring program connects fellow graduate students together to navigate through academics, professional development, and personal development. The relationships between mentors and mentees are the core of the program, and are scaffolded by programming and events hosted by the CEE DEI Coordinator and DEI Committee. There are four events per academic year, including a kick-off, a career panel featuring academic and non-academic trajectories, a well-being and work/life balance-focused event, and a year-end celebration.

CEE+DEI Education

CEE recognizes the historical role our disciplines have played in manifesting social biases in the built environment. We feel that it is essential to educate our students in the historical intersections of CEE and questions of equity, as well as in people-first engineering solutions. To this end, we are transforming our undergraduate programs at the University of Michigan, and generating tools to advance CEE education globally. 

The U-M CEE Curriculum

In collaboration with the Center for Socially Engaged Design (C-SED), the CEE DEI Committee is generating case studies that illustrate the equity-related implications of specific civil or environmental engineering projects. Three CEE Ph.D. students have been working under the guidance of Dr. Sara Hoffman, C-SED’s DEI Curriculum Development Manager, to research case studies and generate classroom materials, including pre-reading assignments, class facilitation plans, active learning activities, and student reflection prompts. Case studies will be integrated into a transportation course (civil), a water treatment and reuse course (environmental), and an air quality course (environmental). To date, the transportation case study is complete and has debuted in an ENGIN 100 section.

Advancing CEE Education beyond U-M

Faculty in civil and environmental engineering programs are motivated to integrate equity into their teaching. In response, the CEE DEI Committee has created a public-facing database of examples of CEE projects or policies that show unintended consequences, disparate stakeholder outcomes, or inequities in the planning or implementation. Known as the DEItabase, it provides a starting point for faculty in CEE disciplines at UM and beyond who would like to broach these topics in their classrooms. Cases are tagged by subject area to enable efficient searching for specific course topics. Importantly, others can contribute and grow the resource for the community. These endeavors are poised to drive meaningful change in CEE education, making a lasting impact not only at the University of Michigan but also within the broader engineering community.

Norms and Values

The CEE community is committed to fostering open and respectful dialogue, and we believe that to achieve this, it is necessary to coalesce around shared values and norms of behavior. Both the College of Engineering and the University of Michigan have values statements that are well-aligned with CEE values. The challenge the DEI Committee is undertaking is linking those values to specific behaviors that exemplify how the values should manifest in the execution of CEE’s academic mission. A statement of norms will be collaboratively developed to reflect how our community currently exhibits our values, as well as aspirational behaviors that our community members wish to further embrace and make the norm.

Supporting Student Groups

The CEE DEI Committee values the contributions of identity- and interest-based student organizations that work toward equity and inclusion on campus. In alignment with this value, we have committed to support and partner with these organizations. We have liaisons among our committee members to NSBE, SHPE, MANRRS, SWE, oSTEM, and GoSTEM. Our liaisons work with the org leadership to determine how to assist them in their mission; we are careful to follow their lead and avoid issuing instructions.

Resources for parents

A CEE graduate student parent reached out to the CEE DEI Committee for help finding community and resources for parents on campus. The CEE DEI Coordinator assembled a resources page to streamline the search for support with childcare, medical care, and financial support for our student parents. In addition, we are creating a listserv open to all CEE parents (staff, faculty, students, postdocs) as an informal space to share information about parenting in Ann Arbor.

Celebrations of Heritage and Identity-based Observances (HIBOs)

In alignment with our commitment to open dialogue, the CEE DEI Coordinator, in collaboration with the DEI Committee, has instituted thoughtful communication about and celebrations of heritage and identity-based observances such as Black History Month, Pride Month, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, etc. These range from department communications to events open to the whole engineering community. Careful consideration goes into each celebration to ensure that it is inclusive of members within and outside of the heritage or identity, it increases attendees’ cultural competency, and it is respectful of the celebrations history and origins.

Volunteer as a Contributing Member

If you want to be a contributing member of the DEI Committee, please email Lissa MacVean ([email protected]), Jordan Marshall ([email protected]), and/or Ann Jeffers ([email protected]). Anyone in CEE is welcome. Contributing members can attend meetings, design and help with committee projects, plan and host events, etc. There is no minimum time commitment. We’d welcome your voice and your energy.

  • Building and Valuing DEI Skills
  • Enabling an Honest and Transparent Dialogue
  • Creating a More Just Future by Transforming our Curriculum
  • Developing a Healthy and Safe Environment for Peer Mentoring/Sponsorship and Advocacy
  • Fostering a Strong, Connected and Successful Community of Scholars and Graduates
  • Recruiting a Diverse Community

Contributing Members

The committee also relies on several members of the CEE community who volunteer their time to assist with specific subcommittees:

  • Hollie Adejumo
  • Kari Bigelow
  • Kate Harrison
  • Renisha Karki
  • Dianna Kitt
  • Dan Li
  • Laura Lucia Constain Montoya
  • Aminata Ndiaye
  • Rachel O’Brien
  • Joseph Ryan
  • Hang Song
  • Delaney Snead
  • Yifan Xu
  • Hongrui Yu

Committee members

Below are the appointed members of the DEI Committee. Appointed members have voting rights on the committee and take on leadership roles.

Portrait of Michelle Ammerman

Michelle Ammerman

Assistant Research Scientist

[email protected]

Avery Fields

Student

Image of Amy Fong

Amy Fong

Student

Mary Fouani

Student

Portrait of F. Estéfan Garcia

Estéfan Garcia

Arthur F. Thurnau Associate Professor

Joshua Jack Portrait

Joshua Jack

Assistant Professor

[email protected]


Image of Jordan Marshall

Jordan Marshall

DEI Program Coordinator

[email protected]

cee logo

Aminata Ndiaye

Student

Portrait of Guoyang Qin

Guoyang Qin

Alumni


Hunter Richards

Student

Portrait of Aleksandra Szczuka

Alex Szczuka

Assistant Professor

Yifan Xu

Student