The Coalition of Identity-Based Organizations (CIBO)

Drexel University

Since September 2022

• Wrote an extensive letter to Drexel University's administration regarding the findings of my self-led research on the full history of Drexel’s university-wide DEI initiatives and solutions to prevent the devastating consequences the current restructure plans will have on students
• Organizing 150+ student leaders from all 30+ identity-based student organizations to form CIBO, a student advocacy network
• Designed a petition signed by CIBO representatives to build official channels for student advocacy and support within the university and sent to administration on December 8th
• Serving as the bridge to aid student leaders in effectively communicating and achieveing their needs with Drexe's administration

Read More...

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council Coordinator

Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics

Since July 2022

I'm currently working remotely as a coordinator for the CCI DEI Council I used to be a member of. I'm really excited to work here during my gap year and have the chance to continue the activism work I've done at Drexel in a formal position. In addition to planning events and initiatives, I have been working to create formal processes to streamline tasks that were originally handled manually by the council chair. This allows the council to work more effectively and provide more proactive programming.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council Member

Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics

October 2020 - June 2022

In October 2020, I became one of three undergraduate students on the inaugural CCI Diversity Equity and Inclusion Council In this role I:

• Meet twice monthly with the council to discuss events, initiatives, and college wide communications
• Meet at least once monthly with Council Chair outside of council meetings to enact additional initiatives
• Organized an event with student organizations oSTEM, QPOC, and QSU for National Pride Month.
  • Set up a table for the day in the CCI 10th floor lobby with informational flyers on gender affirming professional wear.
  • Created a website for students to access the information if they could not attend the event.
  • Raffled off three books about building a more affirming closet.
  • Many LGBTQ+ students use college as a chance to express themselves authentically for the first time. This incredibly formative experience can bring many unexpected challenges that other students already learned much earlier in life such as wearing ties and applying make up. This is also a challenge many first-generation college students face. The flyers at the event aimed to provide students with this assumed-to-be-common knowledge.
• Lead the initiative to include sanitary trash receptacles in the stalls of the men's restroom. These were installed in March 2022.
  • Blogpost about the initiative
• Lead the initiative to include staff and faculty pronouns on the College Directory
  • Planning started in Summer of 2020
  • Data collection started October 2021 on International Pronouns Day
  • Educational materials I created were also released both internally to all faculty and staff, and externally to the public Video [On-Site One-Pager] [PDF One-Pager]
  • The directory was updated in mid November 2021
  • Blogpost about the initiative
• Organized and hosted a LGBTQ+ trivia event (Queerzzo) during the month of June to celebrate National LGBTQ+ Pride Month [Playable Kahoot] [PDF Notes]

LGBTQ+ Activism

Drexel University

September 2017 - June 2022

This work started the moment I arrived at Drexel in the fall of my freshmen year. My teaching assistant for my introductory computer science course learned my legal name. He used it to refer to me instead "Charlie", my actual name, because he found it funny how uncomfortable I was. After much hesitation, I reported the incident to the professor. That winter, I was hired as a teaching assistant. As a result of the incident, all teaching assistants were required to attend a workshop on respecting marginalized groups, specifically talking about the impact teaching assistants have on freshmen. This training had no information about the LGBTQ+ community in STEM. These events mark the start of my activism career at Drexel. I've included a timeline of major events along with resources, photos, and articles where applicable. It's a sort of scrapbook of my career and it makes me happy to read back on.

• September 2018 : Unofficially founded oSTEM at Drexel University under the Center for the Advancement of STEM Learning and Teaching Excellence (CASTLE) until getting officially recognized as a self governed student organization in Fall 2019.
• October 11th, 2018 : Featured by CCI for Coming Out Day
• November 2018 : Attended the 2018 President's Award Ceremony alongside CASTLE to accept the Award for Diversity & Inclusive Community with them. [Photo]
• May 2019 : Met with CCI Administration regarding the exclusivity of the Grace Hopper Celebration communications. Only students assigned female at birth were invited to attend the conference free of cost. This included transgender men and nonbinary students while also excluding transgender women from this opportunity. The issue was resolved. Now communication is sent to all students, regardless of gender. Female identifying students are encouraged to attend for their own support. Non-female identifying students are encouraged to attend to listen and learn in order to better support their peers.
• May 2019 : Served as a panelist on the Student Panel for the American Society of Civil Engineers' Diversity and Inclusion Conference where I spoke on my experiences as a marginalized member of the Drexel community.
• October 2019 : Collaborated with the Society of Women Engineers in their annual Lives and Lessons of the Underrepresented in STEM Conference on behalf of oSTEM. I helped organize the event and hosted an activity about identity. Photos: [1] [2] [3]
• February 2020 : Publicly voiced the discrimination I face as an LGBTQ+ student to the Dean of CCI at a Donuts with the Dean event. The concerns addressed include the inaccessibility and safety of restrooms on campus, consistent dismissal of my identity by students, faculty, and staff, and the way the Dean ostracized me in the restroom. Previously the gender-neutral restrooms had been closed for many months due to plumbing issues. Within a week after the event, the bathroom was available for use again. College Wide Email from 2/12/2020
• October 2020 : Collaborated with the Women in Computing Society (WiCS) student organization to host two events.
  • The first was a basic transgender allyship workshop [Slides].
  • The second, I was a panelist in an event about the importance of sharing uncensored stories about being an LGBTQ+ individual
• November 2020 : Joined the inaugural CCI Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.
• November 19th, 2020: ecorded a statement for Student Center for Diversity and Inclusion (SCDI) virtual Transgender Day of Remembrance Services.
• December 2020: Received the Alexander Van Rensselear Service Award for my LGBTQ+ activism work at Drexel University
• May 2021 : Invited to be a panelist for the Office of Equality and Diversity's (OED) event titled Honoring Pride Month: A Frank Conversation About Gender and Sexuality.
  • DrexelNOW Article
  • More info...
• May 2021 : Served as a panelist for the Student Center for Diversity and Inclusion on their Queer Professionalism panel on the challenges the LGBTQ+ community faces in the workplace.
• October 2021 : After a year of coordinating, pronouns were added to all CCI directories on International Pronouns Day. CCI was the first of all fifteen colleges to add pronouns to their faculty/professional staff directories. As of July 2022, they still are. More info...
• November 6th, 2021 : Served as a panelist for the Society of Women Engineer's online Lives and Lessons conference on the Diversity in Academia panel
• November, 19th 2021 : Spoke at Drexel University's Transgender Day of Remembrance Services.
• February 2022 : Drexel Athletics invited the student organizations oSTEM, Queer People of Color (QPOC), and Queer Student Union (QSU), to collaborate for their "Pride Night" basketball game. I created an [educational flyer] regarding trans participation in sports. We also suggested that Drexel Athletics take on LGBTQ+ inclusive initiatives in addition to hosting celebratory pride events with rainbow merchandise such as analyzing the safety of their locker rooms and hiring local queens for future events.
• March 2022 : After a year and a half of coordination, emails, and failed deliveries, menstrual waste sanitary bins were installed in the men's restrooms at CCI More Info...
• April 2022 : Addressed admitted students at Drexel's Diversity Luncheon hosted by Drexel Admissions
• May 2022 : Was invited by the Provost's Office to interview candidates for the inaugural Vice Provost of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Dr. Leslie Ashburn-Nardo was hired and announced to faculty and professional staff on June 28th.
• June 2022 : Received the [Department of Computer Science Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Leadership]
• June 1st, 2022 : Gender Affirming Professional Wear Event with the DEI Council, oSTEM, QPOC, and QSU.
• June 9th, 2022 : I graduated and painted my ["Self Made Man" cap] :).

Building Authentic Diversity - Philly Codefest Workshop

March 17th, 2022 @ Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics

Philly Codefest is Drexel's annual hackathon. This year the event is taking a hybrid format and will be hosted April 4th through April 9th. I don't think I'll have time to compete this year, but I might. It may be fun to go back after my team won in 2018.

Leading up to the hackathon, many student organizations and sponsors were invited to host workshops. I hosted a workshop on behalf of oSTEM about building authentic diversity, not just sporting a rainbow logo in June.

Slides, recording, and breakdown in progress. It's finals week.

QWER Hacks @ UCLA 2022

January 22nd, 2022 @ UCLA

QWER Hacks @ UCLA is Major League Hacking's (MLH) first LGBTQIA+ hackathon. This years theme was Embracing Identity Through Self Empowerment and had four tracks: Community & Connection, Health & Wellness, Learning & Growth, and Art & Expression.

While the event lasted from January 21st through the 23rd, I hosted my workshop on Saturday, the 22nd. This was the first workshop I've ever hosted outside of Drexel and it was pretty exciting to put together. My workshop was titled Accidental Activism in Academia and was focused around my journey in starting my activism work and how to do it intentionally.

The slides, a workshop recording, and more information can be found here.

oSTEM at Drexel University - Student Advisor

February 2021 - June 2022

During my time as oSTEM's Founding President, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the organization folded. One of my dreams when becoming a council member for the CCI DEI Council in October 2020 was to rebuild oSTEM. However, I knew it wasn't realistic. The recognition process takes too long and I wouldn't have the bandwidth to act as president when we would have achieved recognition in my senior year. When the DEI Council was announced to the college, a student reached out to me about what they could do to get involved with LGBTQ+ DEI work at Drexel. I shared a few resources with them. Then, in February of 2021, a second unrelated student from a different class approached me asking about oSTEM and what events we were hosting. I told them that sadly, oSTEM had folded and we were not hosting events. The student asked what we'd need to do to rebuild oSTEM. After explaining the process, we set out to find a new executive board. I reached out to the student from the previous term. Within a few hours, the two of them had formed a new executive board to revive oSTEM.

Given I do not have the time to serve as president, but still want to be active in the organization, I've been acting as a student advisor to the group. Now that I've led the group through the recognition process, I've been working to connect the group to the resources I have available in addition to hosting an event here and there.

Contact:

• DragonLink
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Office: Room 411 of the Rush Building
• National Organization

oSTEM at Drexel University - Founding President

September 2018 - May 2020

I founded oSTEM at Drexel University after facing transphobia from my teaching assistant my freshman year and being unhappy with how the situation was addressed. It opened my eyes to the lack of representation of the LGBTQ+ community in STEM. From this, I wanted to start a student organization that mimicked the goals and success of the Women in Computing Society (WiCS) student organization. From my research, I learned about the Out in STEM National Organization.

Starting in the Winter of 2018 I spent about six months building our founding executive board. Due to Drexel's timeline for student organizations, we were unable to become a recognized self governed student organization until Fall of 2019. We spent our first year operating out of the Center for the Advancement of STEM Learning and Teaching Excellence (CASTLE), utilizing their resources to host three events without recognition.

oSTEM at Drexel was operational as a recognized student organization for approximately six months before the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine hit. The entire executive board was faced with personal hardship. We were forced to step back from the organization. oSTEM folded and lost recognition.