2021Q3 Reports: Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Chairs

Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Chairs

Alexis Palmer, Avirup Sil, Martha Yifiru Tachbelie, Alvin Grissom, Minlie Huang

1. We created five different sub-committees (listed below) to address ACL D&I related activities. In the interest of transparency and institutional memory, we prepared a shared google document, which articulates a mission statement, tasks the sub-committee is responsible for, useful links, and detailed guidelines per task. In designing the tasks, we discussed with ACL 2020 D&I chairs for their suggestions and lessons, and then made our own version. We will hand over the documents for future conferences; we hope that this resource will facilitate future D&I committees' planning activities.

2. For communication and teamwork, we set up:

• An ACL-IJCNLP 2021 D&I slack channel, facilitating keeping records of interactions.
• A google folder to share all the documents, with each sub-committee having its own folder
• An ACL 2021 D&I chairs google groups email handle: <acl2021_div_incl@googlegroups.com>

3. Starting from the six lead chairs suggested and invited by the general chair, we created five sub-committees and recruited sub chairs for each sub-committee. We held our kick off meeting on January 2021 and made some important decisions:

1) first of all, we decided to merge the childcare and accessibility sub-committees considering the ACL 2021 may be virtual just as last year;

2) we asked Martha Yifiru Tachbelie and Alexis Palmer to jointly lead the financial access committee considering that there are intensive jobs to handle and coordinate;

3) we let lead chairs to organize their own sub-committee that they can work with.

After the kick-off meeting, sub chairs were suggested and invited by lead chairs respectively, resulting in committee of 6 lead chairs and 9 sub chairs. The entire committee is recognized on the conference website: https://2021.aclweb.org/organization/committee/.

The full list can be seen as follows:

Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Chairs:

• Minlie Huang, Leader of Sub-Committee of Childcare ++ Accessibility.
• Yang Feng,Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, China
• Vivian Chen, National Taiwan University, China
• Avirup Sil, IBM, USA, Leader of Sub-Committee of Academic Inclusion
• Sara Rosenthal, IBM Research AI, USA
• Kayathi Chandu, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Lifu Huang, Virginia Tech, USA
• Martha Yifiru Tachbelie, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, Leader of Sub-Committee of Financial Access
• Alexis Palmer, University of Colorado Boulder, Leader of Sub-Committee of Financial Access
• Ignatius Eziani, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
• Manuel Mager, University of Stuttgart, Germany
• Nafise Moosavi, TU Darmstadt, Germany
• Alvin Grissom II, Haverford College, Leader of Sub-Committee of Socio-cultural Inclusion
• Xanda Scofield, Harvey Mudd College, USA
• Pedro Rodriguez, University of Maryland, College Park, USA

4. As an initial activity and starting point of this committee, Minlie Huang and Martha Tachbelie scheduled a meeting with the chairs of ACL 2020 D&I committee, Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm and Vinodkumar Prabhakaran. During the meeting, Cecilia and Vinodkumar kindly shared with us their experiences and lessons last year and gave good suggestions to this year’s activities. Afterwards, the key points in this meeting were summarized by Minlie Huang and then shared to all lead chairs (and all other sub chairs).

5. Lead chairs were then asked to discuss with sub-chairs to draft a work plan in February. A work plan should include the specific tasks to be done in each subcommittee, the budget (if any), the rough time table, and the number of volunteers required. We prepared five questions that may be answered in making the work plan. By the end of March, all lead chairs have submitted their plans.

6. Subcommittees

a. Sociocultural Inclusion committee

The sociocultural inclusion subcommittee, in coordination with Priscilla Rasumussen, constructed and sent out a D&I survey to gauge the concerns of the ACL-IJCNLP community on D&I related topics. This subcommittee also sent out calls for affinity groups to hold online events and scheduled these.

b. Financial Access committee

In late spring, the financial access subcommittee met to determine what kinds of support should be made available through D&I conference attendance subsidies, and in what amounts. The categories offered in the end were: ACL-IJCNLP registration fee waiver, ACL membership waiver, support for caregiving expenses, support for internet bandwidth fees, and support for other equipment (headsets, etc.). We prepared a plan and preliminary budget.

In early summer, in coordination with Priscilla Rasmussen, we created an application form and worked to spread it widely. We processed the applications, discussed criteria for selection, and then selected awardees for D&I subsidies. Throughout this process, we also fielded questions from applicants and awardees and communicated with Priscilla re: possible modes of funding and details of the award process. Finally, we created a form for student awardees to submit proof of their student status. Our current activities include monitoring the proof of student status submissions, figuring out how to reimburse expenses to awardees in various locations, and collecting information about the applicants and awardees (this information will be included in the next report). The summer has been a more intense work phase, and we have been meeting on a weekly basis.

c. Assessibility committee

We checked the registration page and the survey page from the assessibility perspective. We also surveyed the online Childcare service and decided to deliver the service via the Childcare subsidies from the financial access committee. We discussed and planned the video captioning service, which will provide high-quality subtitles for the keynote talks.

d. Academic Inclusion Committee

1) Birds of a Feather meetings: we’re scheduling BOFA meetings by getting an excel sheet from Priscilla and matching faculty or seniors industry researchers to be chairs. We’ll have 2 sessions for verticals e.g. IE, Summarization, QA, MT, etc. split across the 2 time zones. Coming up shortly. We’re reaching out to the future chairs today.

2) WE’re in touch with Underline (already have access) to get spaces for the BOFA meetings and mentoring sessions.

3) We’ve confirmed 200 zoom sessions for mentoring sessions. We’re currently working hard to match mentors + mentees. We’ve received info from Priscilla.