New leader strengthens campus commitment to tackling systemic inequalities
By Janine Weisman
Five capital letters spell D-R-E-A-M on a windowsill in Princess Metuge’s office in the Ocean Science and Exploration Center. The initiative she is leading does not have to stay one.
As the new assistant dean of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI), Metuge is the point person for building a culture that promotes these four core values and makes the Narragansett Bay Campus a welcoming place for all. She will have lots of help in making this dream a reality, thanks to a committee of over two dozen faculty, staff, post docs, and students as well as representatives from Ocean Engineering, Coastal Institute, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Envronmental Protection Agency and the Narragansett Indian Tribal Council.
“This is a challenging role and it’s new to the university, so there’s a lot of work to be done,” said Metuge, who joined GSO last April.
“I will always say that I cannot, in any way shape or form, do it on my own. It will take the GSO community working together to see where we can start from and where we can take it.”
Crossing an ocean
Metuge grew up in Liberia on the west coast of Africa as the oldest of five children. She immigrated to the United States in 1999 as an international student at a time when Liberia was engulfed in a civil war. She earned a bachelor’s degree in management from Rhode Island College in 2005 and an MBA from Regis University in Denver in 2009. Her experience as an immigrant in America, she said, taught her what it’s like to operate in a space where you always feel like you have to prove yourself. It has also shaped her career supporting and empowering multicultural and nontraditional students in higher education.
No stranger to URI, Metuge comes to GSO from the Providence campus, where she was the coordinator for experiential education liaison and course instructor at the College of Education and Professional Studies. She focused on professional development and training initiatives to help students identify their professional strengths and launch careers.
One particular girlhood memory makes Metuge laugh: She wanted to grow up to become a fashion model. She now recognizes that she ultimately became another kind of model, a mentor and coach helping underrepresented groups grow their professional careers.
“The work that I have done over my professional life has put me in a role where I have to be a person who leads by example,” she said. “The things I say and do impact the people we come into contact with.”
Laying the groundwork
The university supports the Black Lives Matter movement and has acknowledged that systemic racism throughout the country can perpetuate racial and economic injustice. GSO is one of four colleges that have formed a JEDI committee and appointed assistant deans to examine how to address racial bias, promote social justice and grow as a community.
There is no manual for how to advance diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace and higher education or how to address the thorny issues involved with increasing the numbers of BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of color] students and faculty. Degree-seeking graduate students across URI are overwhelmingly white, although the university saw a 53% increase in Hispanic/Latino graduate students between 2020 and 2021, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
But Metuge and the JEDI committee know that their work requires a commitment to ensuring that everyone can have a voice, something that takes time and a willingness to listen. First convened in the spring of 2021, the JEDI committee spent a year gathering input and consensus building to draft definitions for justice, diversity, equity and inclusion and map out goals and objectives.
Metuge and the JEDI committee know that their work requires a commitment to ensuring that everyone can have a voice, something that takes time and a willingness to listen.
The committee established three main priorities: improving the campus climate so all voices are valued and heard; enhancing outreach efforts; and aligning recruitment, retention and promotion policies for staff and faculty to reflect JEDI goals.
“What we wanted was a committee that reflects everyone, and as a result it’s very large,” said Matt Ramirez, a post-doc fellow who served as the committee’s co-chair last spring and summer.
“This committee came together because of people like me who are all very interested in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, but the reality is most of us had little background in these topics. It started as a bunch of well-intentioned people trying to make good and make our communities stronger.”
The committee’s first chair, Associate Professor of Oceanography Colleen Mouw, who also serves as associate dean for diversity and academic affairs in the Graduate School, helped increase the committee’s collective understanding of DEI issues in its first year, Ramirez said. He is optimistic the committee will continue to grow with fresh insight and guidance from Metuge.
“Having Princess and her leadership, knowledge, and experience has been a huge catalyst for bringing us forward with these strategic initiatives now,” Ramirez added.
“Subcommittees have the freedom to meet as often as their schedules will allow,” Metuge said. “Remember these are all very busy, professional people who, because of their interest and love for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, have put in this time. So that’s why it’s so admirable for me to see them do this work.”
One subcommittee put together a schedule of professional development seminars being offered this fall. Workshops will include a session on coastal access led by a member of the Narragansett Tribe and another on microaggressions—everyday verbal and nonverbal behaviors, whether intentional or not—that can be offensive to marginalized groups of people.
Another subcommittee is looking to encourage faculty to design a more inclusive curriculum that takes into account other contributors to their field from different demographics and geographical areas.
“So a student from India or from Asia, Africa or other parts of the globe, when they’re sitting in the classroom listening to that lecture, they can hear or understand that someone that looked like them, or came from where they were also from, had some part to play in some of these discoveries that they’re learning about,” Metuge said.
Audience pays attention
Sarah Gaines, coastal resources manager at the Coastal Resources Center, volunteered right away when the Dean’s Office put the call out for members to join the JEDI committee two years ago.
“To me it’s just incredibly important that we do a better job of being a welcoming, inclusive community and being thoughtful about how we treat each other and how we do our work,” said Gaines, who was the committee’s co-chair last year along with Ramirez.
Gaines said she was impressed by Metuge’s poise and grace while taking questions from visiting undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds during a professional development workshop on the campus last June.
“Just to watch how they responded to Princess was really wonderful,” Gaines said. “They were trying to get an idea of what it would be like to go to graduate school. And they were excited. And they had all kinds of questions. Some of them were personal questions, like how do you respond to microaggressions. People were really excited that she was here working for the School of Oceanography.”