New Dean’s Awards celebrate equity, diversity and inclusion champions in the Faculty of IT

The inaugural Dean’s Awards for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion recognise professional and academic staff who have contributed significantly to a fairer, more accessible world.

The inaugural Dean’s Awards for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion recognise professional and academic staff who have contributed significantly to a fairer, more accessible world.

New in 2021, the awards focus on impact across Education, Environment and Culture, Research and Community.

For Dean of the Faculty of IT, Professor Ann Nicholson, this new category is a welcome and necessary addition.

‘We have Dean’s Awards that recognise excellence by graduate researchers, academics, supervisors, professional staff – but equity, diversity and inclusion also play a pivotal role in our success as a collective. These new awards shine a well-deserved spotlight on the amazing work our colleagues are doing in these important areas.’

From research projects and community partnerships to staff development programs, recipients were recognised for a variety of meaningful contributions that foster inclusion and reflect the Faculty’s mission ‘IT for Social Good’.

The awards were established by the Dean and the Faculty’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee – who convened a selection panel chaired by the Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Associate Professor Yolande Strengers.

‘It’s energising to see the projects and initiatives our colleagues are leading to support equity, diversity and inclusion in the faculty, curriculum and community. The winners are doing incredible work to support children with disabilities, improve gender and cultural diversity, and provide mental health support for our staff and students. They’re also conducting research to support cultural and linguistically diverse communities, and algorithmic fairness in machine learning models.’

This year three individuals and two teams received a Dean’s Awards for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion:

Environment and Culture

Dr Kirsten Ellis and Ms Hashini Senaratne

Engaging with disability organisations in the community to make electronic-making and STEM engagement activities more accessible to underrepresented people with physical and intellectual disabilities.

During 2020 National Science Week, Kirsten and Hashini created ‘maker kits’ that were distributed to people with disabilities so they could participate.

Each activity was specifically designed to its target user, with every kit containing all required materials and an online tutorial. They were distributed through organisations supporting people living with a disability in their homes and residential care facilities.

The kits ranged from premade TapeBlocks that offered an accessible circuit making activity using foam blocks and conductive tape to light-up boxes which provided a simple solution to illuminating laser cuts.

Kirsten and Hashini are also working on creating an accessible electronic toolkit called TronicBoards that can be used to design custom devices that solve users’ own real-world problems.

Their work strongly reflects our faculty’s mission ‘IT for Social Good’, engaging with the broader community to foster inclusion and support for underrepresented, disadvantaged and marginalised groups. It also helps to create a more vibrant, inclusive and collaborative culture.

Dr Amin Sakzad

Amin is well-known as an active supporter of equity, diversity and inclusion practices in the Faculty of IT and Monash more widely. He is one of our five mental health first aiders, having undergone three extensive workshops to undertake this important position.

Not only has he used his skills to help a number of people address their mental health challenges, but Amin also is proactively improving his ability to support others as well as the working culture and environment in the faculty.

Amin has also played a significant role in improving access to, and awareness of, programming contests. He ensures promotions are more inclusive, organises prizes specifically for underrepresented groups and heavily consults with diverse cohorts during planning.

In 2021, he co-led the FHIR Starters Digital Health Competition which saw a very diverse contestant pool (200+ enrolments with around 75 women and four who did not specify their gender). It was also open to students around the world and healthcare employees.

As an academic, Amin's awareness and personal rules also guide the selection of tutors for his units, FIT9137 and FIT3168/FIT5223. Firmly believing in equity, his teaching team must have at least 50% women tutors. This practice requires Amin to constantly introduce new tutors and train them accordingly, rather than simply relying on fixed-experienced tutors.

Education

Phillip Abramson

Aware of equity, diversity and inclusion issues within the teaching environment, Phil approached the Respectful Communities team with ideas on how we can build understanding and challenge biases to enable sessional staff to support their peers and our students.

Together they developed a prototype program designed to drive cultural change. It has run at least three times with 50 staff in each intake, and has garnered interest from other faculties.

Two sessions have been for new staff and one for senior and experienced staff such as Head Tutors and Lecturers, with more planned.

Phil credits the success and impact of the program to the environment within his team, Flexible Learning and EXperience (FLEX). They’re given the autonomy to work on issues within a sphere of influence.

A good combination of idealistic and realistic, Phil is constantly looking for ways to make our workplace more inclusive – adopting a collegial, pragmatic and sustainable approach.

Research

Dr Guanliang Chen

Guanliang's research applies state-of-the-art language technologies to leverage textual data collected in various educational settings and construct a more fair and inclusive learning environment.

Early in his PhD, Guanliang began investigating how computational technologies can help disadvantaged students access education. One notable example was his proposal to connect online education and online work at scale, enabling learners to apply the knowledge and skills they gained from massive open online courses (MOOCs) to earn money while studying.

He pointed out that MOOCs were limited in serving disadvantaged students, such as those from developing countries without a post-secondary degree. These learners often suffered from poor financial conditions and the need to earn an income limited the amount of time they could invest in their studies.

In a recent study published in the premier conference AI in Education, Guanliang also argued it was critical to investigate the algorithmic fairness of Machine Learning models in building automatic classifiers for educational forum posts. This was due to the important role of discussion forums in modern online learning management systems and the wide adoption of computational techniques to help instructors distinguish between educational forum posts.

Community

Delvin Varghese, Joshua Seguin, Meriem Tebourbi, Tom Bartindale and Professor Patrick Olivier

'Social media playbook’ was a project that aimed to work with Victorian organisations to digitally engage young people and personnel in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities.

The initiative worked with five Victorian organisations:

  1. Migrante (Filipino community)
  2. Australian Karen Organisation [AKO] (Karen ethnic group from Myanmar)
  3. Center for Multicultural Youth (engaged with the Maori-Pasifika community)
  4. YLab (supporting migrant youth associates from Vietnamese and Sudanese backgrounds)
  5. Huddle (working with schools in the western Melbourne to help youth from marginalised backgrounds).

Many of these groups face challenges around inclusion in mainstream research and institutional support.

To address this, the team engaged community members within key stages of this project. They adopted a more flexible Research through Design approach, enabling them to reduce invasive practices such as post-deployment interviews with young people (difficult due to low levels of engagement with mainstream institutional services) and instead rely on the strong partnerships with cultural insiders (members of collaborator organisations who also hail from CALD communities).