In 2024, UC Berkeley received the SEA Change Bronze Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
UC Berkeley and four other UC campuses are among the first ten institutions of higher education in the country to receive this major institutional award.
About SEA Change
The STEMM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change program focuses on creating transformative and sustainable change at the systemic level to eliminate barriers to participation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) fields, and increase diversity.
In 2022, the University of California has become the nation’s first university system to join the program.
In order to be awarded the Bronze Award, members of SEA Change first conduct a rigorous institutional data collection and self-assessment process to identify barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion and their root causes. Then, the institution commits to a 5-year action plan with specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals to address these challenges.
"SEA Change seeks to inspire, guide, and support voluntary transformation of colleges and universities so that the environment for research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) is excellent, equitable, diverse, and inclusive."
UC Berkeley SEA Change Initiative
The UC Berkeley SEA Change Initiative was guided by several strategic decisions:
- Broader than STEMM. While careful attention is paid to STEMM disciplines, the scope of the initiative will include all academic fields, with the goal of achieving transformation across the entire institution.
- Sustainable structural change. The initiative is focused on sustainable structural changes, rather than one-off programs.
- Synergistic but not duplicative. Many initiatives aimed at institutional transformation toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are already underway on campus. This initiative will focus primarily on new areas and building upon existing efforts.
- Faculty focus for institution-wide impact. The action plan is oriented toward actions involving faculty, with impact on students (for example, through faculty teaching pedagogy) and the campus broadly (for example, through addressing barriers to faculty leadership diversity).
- A new approach to demographic data. UC Berkeley used an intentional, novel approach to race/ethnicity data compilation, better recognizing the diversity of our academic community.
Institutional Self-Assessment
UC Berkeley conducted a two-year, comprehensive institutional self-assessment involving extensive data collection and analysis, and interviews with dozens of subject-matter experts and leaders from across the campus.
The self-assessment process uncovered over fifty areas of identified opportunity.
Action Plan
After several rounds of consultation with academic and administrative campus leadership, the full list of areas of identified opportunity was narrowed to eleven action items that were determined to be the most likely to:
- Have significant impact
- Show success or major progress in the five-year action plan implementation period
- Be feasible given financial and staffing resources
The potential actions were classified into four broad themes (shown in the graphic below).
The SEA Change action plan will be coordinated out of the Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare in the Vice Provost for the Faculty division, with the Associate Vice Provost serving as the campus program lead.
