STEVEN P. VERNEY, Alaska Native (Tsimshian), is an Associate Professor in the department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is currently a co-Investigator on the newly NIMHD-funded Health Disparities Center of Excellence to UNM, the Transdisciplinary Research, Equity and Engagement Center for Advancing Behavioral Health, and a Senior Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM and is a past fellow in the American Indian Alaska Native Program at the University of Colorado. He strives to increase diversity awareness and training and has developed the department's Diversity Organization (DO!), a student organization to increase diversity awareness and training within the department, and