Preferred Pronouns on Brightspace
As part of Vanderbilt’s ongoing efforts to create a more inclusive and equitable environment for learning, Brightspace now provides students, faculty, and staff the option to indicate their preferred pronouns in their user profiles. Brightspace user profiles are visible to anyone who shares a course with a particular user, including students, instructors, teaching assistants, librarians, and Brightspace administrators.
To add preferred pronouns to your Brightspace profile, follow these steps.
- Log into Brightspace.
- Click on your name in the upper right portion of your homepage.
- Click “Profile.”
- Complete the box labeled “Preferred Pronouns.”
- Click the “Save and Close” button at the bottom of the page.
To view the preferred pronouns of another Brightspace user, click on the user icon next to their name wherever that icon appears, including the classlist and discussions.
Students and others who choose to indicate their preferred pronouns on Brightspace should know that those pronouns may become widely known and used in the Vanderbilt community, and may be used by members of the Vanderbilt community in communications external to the university. However, usage of a student’s pronoun by other members of the Vanderbilt community is not compulsory.
Faculty and staff who want to learn more about pronoun usage and other gender identity and LGBTQI topics are encouraged to take advantage of the variety of campus resources available including the Center for Teaching’s Teaching Beyond the Gender Binary guide and the Office of LGBTQI Life’s PRIDE training workshop. Faculty and staff are also encouraged to refer students to the English Language Center’s (ELC) pronoun guide.
Additionally, students who wish to change their displayed first name in Brightspace can do so by changing their preferred name through the Office of the University Registrar. Brightspace automatically uses preferred names, as recorded by the Registrar, for student first names.
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