Implicit Bias Workshops

Institute Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Faculty Development and Georgia Tech’s ADVANCE Program, offers 90-minute Implicit Bias Workshops designed for faculty.

All faculty who serve on reappointment, promotion, and/or tenure committees and faculty search committees are required to participate in an Implicit Bias Workshop if they have not in the past three years, pursuant to Provost Bras’ memo in October 2016 to academic leaders. Instructional and research faculty are welcome to attend as space permits. If you have participated in an Implicit Bias workshop within the past three years (2016-2019), you are exempt from this requirement until Fall 2020.

The goals of these workshops are to increase awareness of the impact of implicit bias and to facilitate equitable decision-making across myriad processes related to faculty evaluations.

As a participant in the workshop, you will learn the following:

• An introduction to the concept of implicit bias and how these unconscious, automatic mental processes may impact behaviors such as evaluating candidates during faculty search and/or RPT processes.
• Empirical research on vitaes, letters of recommendations, and teaching evaluations to illustrate the impact of implicit bias on decisions.
• Effective practices and strategies for faculty search and RPT committees.

These workshops will be facilitated by Paul Benkeser, senior associate chair and professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering; Harris Dimitropoulos, associate professor, School of Architecture; Robert Kirkman, associate professor, School of Public Policy; Mark Mitchell, associate director, Georgia Tech Research Institute; and/or Michelle Rinehart, associate dean for academic affairs and outreach, College of Design.