Launched in fall 2020, the College of Design’s Design Justice Initiative was founded to create space, policies, and practices within the college that support the inclusion and retention of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and other historically underinvested communities. A year after its founding, the initiative has launched a number of events and programs to help forward its work.

Assistant Professors Terresa Moses (University of Minnesota) and Lisa Mercer (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) first met at the University of North Texas as graduate students. Three years later, the two reunited to create the Racism Untaught toolkit—a resource to help design educators bring social impact projects and discussions of race, culture, and identity to their classrooms.