Yale-NUS strived to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for the whole community of students, faculty and staff. This meant recognising and celebrating differences in ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability status, religion, socioeconomic status and more.
The Dean of Students Office (DOS) and Student Affairs Office (SAO) led the efforts, with support from the College administration, faculty and student body.
Diversity Week was an annual week-long programme of events and activities focused on celebrating the community’s diversity and encouraging conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion.
It sought to provide a safe space for the community to explore new and unfamiliar ideas.
Diversity Week was hosted by the Dean of Students Office in collaboration with various student organisations and identity collectives, as well as external organisations and individual community members.
In later years, Diversity Week became part of the College's Residential Curriculum.
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Each year’s Diversity Week was shaped by a theme. In 2018, this was ‘Connecting to a World of Difference’, highlighting the desire to come together to acknowledge and celebrate diversity.
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The theme of 2019’s Diversity Week was ‘Embodying Community’ reflecting efforts to build a culture of care at the College.
Diversity Week 2020 saw a mix of performances, discussions and opportunities to share diverse cultures through food, art and exhibitions.
The programme for Diversity Week 2021 included art and photo exhibitions, film screenings, performances, workshops and discussions with invited guests.
By 2023, the new NUS College community was sharing the campus with Yale-NUS. They were invited to join Diversity Week and experience the ‘Night Market’ along with various discussion panels and workshops.
2024’s programme focused on themes such as heritage and community, language and vernaculars, faith, disability and pride. Alongside the usual events, this year saw some Yale-NUS alumni returning to take part in the week’s activities.
The Dean of Students Office’s ‘Contributing to a More Inclusive Campus’ booklet offered advice on how to foster an inclusive environment when planning meetings and events, including:
The booklet also included pointers such as not making assumptions about a person’s identity and respecting their personal boundaries.
In later years, the Student Affairs Office published an expanded and updated version with the advice focused on specific events like meeting someone new, facilitating a discussion or organising an event.
There were also guidelines for engaging in dialogue, as well as the use of personal pronouns and mindful language.
Various student organisations also contributed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion at the College.
The student organisation Yale-NUS Storytellers published With Open Eyes: A Zine About Diversity in December 2019. Containing prose, poetry and visual artworks by student contributors, the zine explored themes of diversity, connection and self.
For Ally Week, a number of student organisations came together to arrange a series of events highlighting issues affecting marginalised communities, with the aim of becoming a better ally to these communities.
The College’s Centre for Teaching & Learning provided training for faculty to help them make their teaching and classrooms more diverse, equitable and inclusionary.
More inclusive classrooms allowed students with different identities and experiences to learn from each other in a supportive environment, and aimed to meet the diverse academic, social, emotional and communication needs of all the College’s students.
The book Diversity & Inclusion in Curriculum and Classroom was written by the Centre for Teaching & Learning’s Deputy Director and Lecturer in Social Sciences (Global Affairs) Catherine Sanger.
It contained strategies to help faculty develop inclusive curricula, syllabi and pedagogy, while taking into account the distinctive identities and diverse educational backgrounds of the College’s students. The book introduced new faculty to the diversity of the student body, described how the College’s approach to pedagogy was established and provided practical strategies for enhancing inclusion in the classroom.
The Centre for Teaching & Learning also organised workshops and talks, including bringing in experts from outside the College, to help faculty structure their classes to be more inclusive.
In this 2015 Rector’s Tea, Professor of Social Sciences (Socio-legal Studies; Law and Society) Lynette Chua shared about the history of queer activism in Singapore.
This April 2016 dinner for staff, faculty and students was organised by QMingle, an informal staff organisation dedicated to building a LGBTQI+ community at the College.
The dinner was sponsored by the Dean of Students Office.
For Sexuality and Gender Month 2019, the College Library screened several films about women, and sexuality and gender identities.
To mark 2019’s International Women’s Day, the College organised a series of events to celebrate women and non-binary individuals.
The events included an exhibition of posters printed with phrases in support of women’s rights and gender equality, a piano performance by Fay Lee (Class of 2020) and a keynote speech by Vice Chancellor Nirmala Rao from the Asian University for Women. After the speech, a Q&A session was held with Professor Rao, moderated by Associate Professor of Science (Life Sciences) Khoo Hoon Eng.
In 2019, concerns were raised that the gym facilities in the Fitness Centre were ‘hypermasculine’ and therefore not welcoming to the whole community. Pink Hour was an attempt, for one hour each day, to encourage more women and LGBTQ+ people to use the gym.
At this Rector’s Tea, Brea Baker discussed how she got involved in the organisation of the 2017 Women's March on Washington, part of a worldwide protest held the day after the inauguration of American president Donald Trump. Brea was a Dean’s Fellow (DF) at the College, a role that involved mentoring and advising students while empowering them to develop their own initiatives.
The College offered Student Accessibility Support to give students with physical, cognitive and psychological conditions the best possible chance at academic excellence. Students who need accessibility support in the classroom could be granted learning accommodations, such as:
The campus was also designed to accommodate people with mobility limitations, through accessibility suites, ramps, tactile flooring and accessibility maps.
In 2020, a new course was introduced to teach students Singaporean sign language and help them discover more about Deaf culture.
Organised by the Dean of Students Office in 2016, Hijab Day comprised a series of events and activities exploring the meaning behind the wearing of a hijab.
Ilya Katrinnada (Class of 2018) and Hazirah Helmy (Class of 2019) led sessions where students were taught how to wear the headscarf and—after wearing one for a whole day—asked to reflect on how it felt.
In 2016, the Dean of Students Office worked with NUS Associate Professor Maiya Murphy to arrange a visit to a Soka Buddhist Youth Centre in Singapore to learn more about the religion.
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