The Council for Equity & Community

The Council for Equity & Community (CEC) is an independent advisory board of faculty, staff and students committed to promoting community and belonging at Lehigh University. I run their Instagram account—handling overall strategy, content planning, coordination with campus partners, copy writing and design.

Joy First

My stewardship of the CEC’s account began in 2021, when massive gaps in equity were blatantly visible in the country and everything felt particularly heavy. I wanted to this space to be one of joy—that celebrated the wins and the folks responsible for them. This thought set the tone for this space.

Why Instagram?

One of the CEC’s main focus areas is identifying and amplifying the great work being done by individuals and groups at the university to foster community and belonging at Lehigh. I revived their dormant Instagram account to act on this, because there was a clear opportunity to engage the desired audience, the cost in dollars was zero and my comfort on this platform meant that the cost in time would scale well—as the assets generated could be used by various campus partners.

Creating a Record

While I use gallery-posts to celebrate work, I use stories to talk about upcoming programming for the Lehigh community. High-impact Instagram stories that contain useful information even after the specific event(s) they’re promoting have concluded are kept alive using the platform’s ‘highlights’—so interested parties are able to refer back to them at any time.

Representation

A colleague told me about the seemingly unintentional bias she had witnessed in higher education—how students from some backgrounds are treated like they can’t succeed in the hard sciences, and others are treated like they don’t belong in universities at all. We talked about how unconscious bias runs deep, and how representation can help combat it. This account actively seeks to represent without tokenising—by thoughtfully partnering with those whose stories are being told and choosing words and images with intention.

Community Strong

I enjoy being in the orbit of colleagues who bring a wide range of perspectives to the table. This naturally leads to opportunities to showcase the lens(es) through which they see things: how they approach developing policies that support women in STEM, their thoughts on creating scholarship opportunities for first-gen students, what they choose to focus on when making images around campus, …

Inclusivity in Action

Prior my involvement, this space had been used to repost graphics created by various groups at the university. These weren’t always well thought-out, or even intended for use on social media. Since receiving the keys to the account, I’ve worked to make this an accessible space—using basic design principles to make layouts easy to read and also leveraging in-platform alt text capabilities.