The Institute - September 2019 - 8

Diversity Committee's First Step:
Measuring Diversity in the IEEE
CHAIR OF NEW IEEE COMMITTEE EXPLAINS INCLUSION STRATEGY

What is the new ad hoc committee's charter?
The committee has been organized into three subcommittees. The first subcommittee has been tasked with developing and implementing mechanisms to improve diversity and
inclusion across all of IEEE. That diversity encompasses age,
gender, geography, race, ethnicity, and work sector.
The second subcommittee is focusing on member and
professional ethics and is looking to streamline and merge
TI-8

SEP 2019

THE INSTITUTE

all of IEEE organizational units' various ethics and conduct
codes into one. Plans call for the subcommittee to develop
training and outreach programs to raise awareness among
members and volunteers about IEEE's Code of Ethics and
Code of Conduct and their responsibility to uphold it, report
violations, and prevent retaliation. In addition, the subcommittee is developing professional ethics advice and
support policies.
The third subcommittee is designing a method for expanding
IEEE's existing ethics processes around reporting, mediation, adjudication, appeal, and sanctions. The processes
are to incorporate best practices for timeliness, tracking,
transparency, and confidential reporting of violations. The
subcommittee will also consider implementing an IEEE
ombudsperson and creating a whistleblower program for
member support around ethics and conduct.

Explain the definition of diversity
and inclusion as they apply to IEEE.
Diversity is interesting to talk about in a global organization
like IEEE. It encompasses gender and geography but also work
sectors, such as academia, industry, and research labs. It also
includes ethnicity and race, which in terms of underrepre-

ISTOCKPHOTO

HE IEEE BOARD oF DIRECTORS in February
approved an ad hoc committee on diversity, inclusion, and professional ethics. The Institute interviewed IEEE Fellow Andrea Goldsmith, chair of the
committee, about what the group will be working on, what
led to its formation, and what diversity and inclusion mean
in a global organization.
Goldsmith, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford,
has been involved in diversity and inclusion efforts for the
two IEEE societies she belongs to: Communications and
Information Theory. She is the founding chair of the IEEE
Technical Activities Board's committee on diversity and
inclusion-which came out of a TAB ad hoc committee on
women and underrepresented groups.

https://wsl.stanford.edu/~andrea/ http://www.comsoc.org/ https://www.itsoc.org/ https://ieeeorg-stg.ieee.org/communities/technical-activities/technical-activities-board-committees.html

The Institute - September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Institute - September 2019