Find out more about the new coordinator’s prospects and projects for the Committees, fundamental instruments for an increasingly inclusive school
Bruna Arruda de Oliveira is a professor of the Insper Engineering Programs since 2018. When she joined our school, she started to make a difference as an engineering ambassador, visiting other institutions to promote our programs. It was one of the significant steps in the search for expanding student diversity at our Undergraduate Programs. Since then, she has been involved in other activities at our school. Examples are creating the Coletivo Estudantil Raposas Negras (Black Foxes Student Collective, in a free translation) together with the students and the intense work at the Diversity Committee. In early 2021, we had great news: Bruna was promoted to Teaching Fellow Professor. Also, she took over the coordination of our Diversity and Accessibility Committees.
Insper’s Diversity Committee was born in 2018. It resulted from the People Management Project, created to understand a series of our associates’ demands. The initiative has become a fundamental instrument to boost actions that make our environment more inclusive and diverse. The Accessibility Committee, in its turn, was created in 2016. It is currently the main responsible for elaborating, approving, and monitoring the accessibility actions at Insper.
With many plans and ideas to continue working on fundamental issues for our school’s future, Bruna tells our website a little bit about her expectations and projects. “I see this opportunity with great honor and joy. I always say that being a Black woman, professor, and engineer in a country like Brazil, with all our historical context, is to break all barriers and stigma. It is almost a political role in the fight against racism, in an attempt to deconstruct stereotyped views. And now coordinating two committees of excellence will be a great challenge, but my desire for change and social inclusion has guided me every day”.
Bruna emphasizes that Insper is an influential school with significant national and international impact. For her, heading the committees and being in a place that seeks diversity make it safer to fight and pursue her goals in this area. “I expect to invest in concrete actions with multiple perspectives and keep on building opportunities through education. I wish the transformation to continue with the commitment to repair historical injustices, promoting more and more inclusion, accessibility, and diversity.”
The new coordinator also points out that valuing diversity is an ethical imperative for Insper. Moreover, in this sense, the Accessibility and Diversity Committees are important to enable and support actions to promote diversity, accessibility, and inclusion. “The Committees aim to transform the school into an increasingly welcoming, inclusive environment that respects differences. There is no denying that the world has changed, and so has the academic universe. So, these commissions became instrumental as consistent steps in the search for a more just and egalitarian society. It is necessary to amplify such powerful voices that until then were little heard, making room for a co-creation process that effectively promotes this much-needed change”.
Learn more about Prof. Bruna Arruda:
Member and mentor of the Raposas Negras Student Collective (Insper). Participant of the Compassion Project – Mission Haiti. Participant of the Black Women in Science and Engineering (BWISE) and Black Women in STEAM groups. B.E., Chemical Engineering with Honors – Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Specialist, Environmental Management – State University of Maringá (UEM). M.S.E., Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Sciences – State University of Maringá (UEM). Ph.D. Student, Engineering Education – State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), School of Chemical Engineering.
