History

Founding Members of CoReCS

The Faculty of Computer Science (FCS) has been working towards creating a bias-free and respectful environment in our community for several years. Denis Riordan, Alex Brodsky and Susan Holmes, in collaboration with several faculty and staff members of FCS, organized several initiatives including but not limited to workshops, seminars and events with the central objective of promoting respectful behaviour both inside the classroom and in the community at large.

Building on the strong foundation laid by Denis, Alex and Susan, and on the success of their initiatives, FCS began to push forward on creating a formal committee to promote these objectives. As a result, an ad-hoc committee named Culture of Respect at the Faculty of Computer Science (CoReCS) was established in January 2015. This committee comprised of the following volunteers, a group that consisted of faculty, staff and students of FCS:

• Bonnie MacKay, FCS Professor
• Brittany Kelly, FCS Student
• Denis Riordan, FCS Professor
• Derek Reilly, FCS Professor
• Kirstie Hawkey, FCS Professor
• Margie Publicover, Faculty Navigator
• Nur Zincir-Heywood, FCS Professor
• Raghav V. Sampangi, FCS Post-Doc
• Sage Franch, FCS Student
• Susan Holmes, Continuing Education Faculty Member

The ad-hoc CoReCS committee met biweekly to draft terms of reference for the committee and to brainstorm on future initiatives. In our initial initiatives, CoReCS was supported by Allison Kincade (Marketing, Communications & Alumni Officer at FCS), Kim Brooks (faculty member of the Faculty of Law), and Michael Shepherd (professor at FCS).

CoReCS was formally recognized as a standing committee at FCS in May 2015, under the deanship of Michael Shepherd.