New Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Janine Jones (Taylor ’18, Avery ’23) has implemented critical changes in the school’s hiring policies to create a more diverse faculty.

Jones held a forum on incorporating cultural awareness when hiring new faculty in front of the Faculty Academic Committee on Tuesday.

“When we are hiring our faculty and staff we ensure that we are doing it in a culturally aware fashion,” Jones said. “So that’s not only with respect to the process but also with the candidates, with the people we are bringing in and making sure they are going to be a good match for our school, with respect to where we are going, with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Meetings will be held alongside Director of Human Resources Marisol Ordonez and Associate Head of School Liz Resnick. Jones said that hiring will become a greater focus for the DEI office this semester as hiring for next school year ramps up. She Last year’s climate assessment identified hiring as an area that the school needed to work on, she said.

Implicit bias training is scheduled for later this month, with a goal of educating deans and department heads; Jones plans to meet with deans in January. Conversation with department heads will occur throughout the semester.

“I’m going to be doing case studies with our faculty during their meetings,” Jones said. “Basically, just giving them scenarios and having them talk out how to handle these scenarios. There will obviously be scenarios that are within the DEI realm and things that students have talked about having experiences in classrooms, so we can talk them out as a faculty.”