Diana Arya and Miya Barnett
Over the last decade, UC Santa Barbara has worked diligently to ameliorate the well-known national “leaky pipeline” that has always impacted diversity in the graduate and postdoctoral populations. As one step, UCSB Graduate Division has required each department to identify a graduate diversity officer to take the lead on outreach, recruitment, and the support of graduate students from under-served populations within each discipline.
“Since 2012, the percentage of under-represented scholars applying to UCSB’s graduate programs has been increasing; however, significant improvement really began in 2018. The number of URM applications for fall 2021 is a new high (1100+ applications),” says Carlos M. Nash, Director of Graduate Diversity Programs. “I believe diversity officers and the work they have accomplished with their departments and the Graduate Division had a role in this trend. Now with the collaboration and support of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, especially Vice-Chancellor Belinda Robnett, diversity officers will be better supported in helping departments achieve their goals.”
In July 2020, the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology appointed Assistant Professor Miya Barnett and the Department of Education appointed Associate Professor Diana Arya as graduate diversity officers for two-year terms.
“As a long-time educator and someone who has experienced both great privilege and harsh discrimination in my own educational journey, I was particularly excited about UCSB's decision to establish a central office for supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) that comes with its own Vice Chancellor,” Arya says about her appointment. “It is wonderful to witness so many of us—students, staff members, researchers and faculty members—expressing interest in understanding the longstanding, systemic inequities in higher education and working together to foster safe and brave spaces in all facets of university work life.”
Arya’s and Barnett’s work as diversity officers takes many forms, from overseeing equitable fellowship and admissions processes to supporting faculty recruitment efforts in order to ensure diverse application pools and evenhanded review of applicants. Barnett also leads a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force in CCSP, which, she says, “is seeking to follow through on our department’s commitments to increase anti-racist practices within recruitment and retention of students, our pedagogy, and our clinical services. The graduate students took the lead on developing trackable goals in these areas, and I help coordinate efforts to make sure we are making progress on them.” Both Arya and Barnett, of course, meet regularly with the rest of the campus’s diversity officers and Vice Chancellor Robnett to help chart UCSB’s DEI course.
“I believe that progress comes fastest when we are willing and able to confront uncomfortable truths, including how inequities are baked into our academic institutions and personal worldviews,” Arya says about the large, necessary tasks in front of the two officers. “I am excited and honored to be working with my colleagues to accomplish our shared goal of fostering and sustaining a diverse community.” Barnett adds, “I want to help build transparency around our DEI efforts and continue to support the work that my colleagues do to enhance equity and social justice within research, teaching, and applied clinical practice.”