Diversity and Social Justice
Approved SPC 4/30/04
Approved Faculty Senate 5/4/04
Download the Diversity and Social
Justice Goals and KPIs (PDF)
The University will strive to create and maintain a welcoming environment for students, faculty, staff, and administration from all walks of life. This includes maintaining a rich environment that models respect for difference and providing a supportive and nurturing climate for all university students, faculty, staff and administrators of color.
Goal A. The University will increase the diversity profile of students, faculty, staff, and administration throughout the university, especially those who are disproportionately underrepresented at the current time (American Indian, African American, Latino, Jewish, and people with disabilities).
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
KPI A1: The University will increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates for students in protected classes (students of color, women, GLBT, students with disabilities, etc.) by ensuring an adequate level of resources for recruitment and retention as well as maintaining quality academic and social support services for ensuring student success.
Definition/Strategies/Action Plan: Most of the demographic data needed is readily available from the ISRS and/or Affirmative Action Office reports. It merely needs to be summarized for the past 5 years. The SCSU Fact Book prepared by the former IR Office would be a place to start. The two data elements that might be more difficult to obtain include the numbers of students by disabilities and/or percent of students who are first generation college students. The latter is now being gathered but not inputted into the ISRS. The former is available from the Disabilities Office. Also some data elements involve integrity problems, such as time to graduation from the date students are admitted to their major. Many students do not formally apply to be admitted into their major s until shortly before they graduate.
An essential assumption underlying KPI A1 is that resource allocation can tell us a lot about what we as an institution value. Therefore, monitoring financial support of our recruitment and retention efforts is fundamental to our efforts to achieve diversity and social justice. Most important are percent of institutional aid provided to students of color, resources allocated to student of color admissions, and resources allocated to protected class academic and social support units. We also include in monitoring of financial resources information about and access to acquisition of scholarships and loans because data show that students of color in higher socio-economic classes have significantly higher retention rates than students in lower socio-economic ranks. A ll of this data can be obtained fairly easily but would need to be provided over time so that trends would be discernable.
Finally, assessing services that contribute to student retention would require that we develop new data collection instruments and a data system to store this information over time. The units providing academic and social support services should identify what aspects of their services should be assessed and then develop data collection systems to gather appropriate qualitative and quantitative data . Included in the student support services evaluated should be those providing academic support (including tutors). The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning should play a prominent role in evaluating academic support units. Assessment of student learning might be appropriate in some cases .
| Data | Responsible Parties | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Demographic profiles of students
|
Institutional Studies Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee of Enrollment Management Multicultural Student Services Center for International Studies Student Disability Services Departments/Major programs |
Annual; 5-year trends |
Quantitative and qualitative assessment of academic and social support services
|
Student Life and Development Academic Affairs Dean of Undergraduate Studies Student Government Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Student Support Units (such as Multicultural Student Services, GLBTA Services, Women's Center, Student Disability |
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
KPI A2: The University will increase the recruitment and retention of faculty, staff, and administrators who are members of protected classes (people of color, women, GLBT, and people with disabilities, etc.) by ensuring proportional increases in the services, materials, and benefits for hiring, retention, and promotion; by decreasing disparities in salaries, benefits/support, and promotion; and by decreasing the proportion of turnover of faculty, administrators, and staff in protected classes in any given planning period.
Definition/Strategies/Action Plan: Much of this data is obtainable from the ISRS or Human Resources. Most important are promotion rates and average starting salaries for new employees relative to the CUPA or AAUP salary surveys. In addition, monitoring how we are doing in decreasing turnover as well as tracking people's reasons for leaving can provide compelling information that can enable us to address systemic problems affecting members of protected classes in our institution.
| Data | Responsible Parties | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Average starting salaries for new employees by age, gender, and ethnicity Percent of new hires who are members of a protected class Faculty of color faculty positions as a percent of the overall faculty Mean salary by bargaining unit for women and minorities compared to majority employees Educational training of faculty; administrative staff—by discipline Percent of faculty of color who are tenured Faculty promotion rates by gender and ethnicity Percent of vacancies filled by promotion by bargaining unit |
Institutional Studies Human Resources Affirmative Action Bargaining Units Departments and Colleges CODE CODAS Faculty & Staff of Color Caucus |
Annual; 5-year trends |
Employee turnover by race, gender, etc.
|
Institutional Studies East Asian Faculty and Staff Exit Interviews by bargaining unit |
Goal B. The University will examine and revise, where appropriate, the institutional policies and practices that disenfranchise and marginalize students, faculty, staff, and administrators.
Impact: Immediate: Low
Long-term: High
Effort: High
KPI B1: To improve the campus cultural climate, the Institution will develop strategies to change the structures, policies, procedures, and practices that impede the attainment of respect and equality on campus. In order to eliminate barriers, implementation of recommendations for change will include establishing equitable management of financial and other resources for this purpose.
Definition/Strategies/Action Plan: Research on institutional history will be conducted through archival research and interviews, plus the recent campus climate studies will be compared and analyzed in order to highlight the primary barriers to creating a campus with a welcoming climate for all. The CARE Leadership Team holds primary responsibility for making recommendations for change based on careful analysis and assessment of institutional and cultural racism and related problem areas.
The Institution should select some "key initiatives" to track over time and ask the Budget Office to report the percent of budget allocated to these activities for 3 to 5 years.
| Data | Responsible Parties | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Campus climate scan survey results since 2000 Historical institutional research by CARE Team Policy analysis and assessment report results Development and review of periodically administered climate studies and surveys Cost analysis and budget |
CARE Leadership Team Academic Affairs Bargaining Units Affirmative Action Officer Advisory Council for Diversity and Social Justice (when constituted) GLBTA CODAS / Jewish Faculty Association Student Government International Student Admissions & Services Faculty & Staff of Color Caucus East Asian Faculty & Staff Association |
To be determined by responsible parties |
Impact: High
Effort: High
KPI B2: The Institution will improve the campus cultural climate by providing meaningful diversity education for the entire campus as well as support for curricula that include diverse perspectives.
Definition/Strategies/Action Plan: The goal of diversity education is to assure equality and respect for students, faculty, staff, and administrators regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, national origins, and political beliefs. Improvement in curricular diversity means that departments and programs will assess curriculum to ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives.
Diversity education and training will not be limited to legal issues surrounding discrimination, but will address the institutional, systemic foundations and practices of oppression. One key strategy is to commission a Diversity Education Taskforce to design a Diversity Education Plan for SCSU, assist with implementation, and provide continuing assessment of the Plan and its learning and behavioral outcomes. Strong encouragement for participation in such diversity education by all campus members is essential to its success.
Departments and programs should be responsible for establishing diversity goals for their curricula as well as appropriate methods of assessing student learning. Departments and programs will also need to manage ongoing programmatic assessment over time to ensure that curriculum is current and effective in its incorporation of diversity. Equitable management includes maintaining small enough classes for racial issues courses to allow for discussion as well as institutionalized support for the Racial Issues Colloquium.
| Data | Responsible Parties | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Reports and recommendations on campus cultural climate Periodic campus climate surveys Assessment instruments designed by Diversity Education Taskforce Assessment instrument designed by the Racial Issues Colloquium Assessment of Racial Issues course Assessment of Diversity classes Assessment of General Education Program Assessment of Majors and Minors NSSE (questions 1.e., 1. u., 1.v, 7.e., 7.f., and 11.l.) Questions in the Annual Student Survey (Steve Frank's survey) |
Diversity Education Taskforce CARE committee CODAS committee GLBTA Women’s Center Disabilities Services International Studies General Education Committee Human Resources Institutional Studies President’s Office Academic Affairs College Deans Departments (major/minor programs) Departments/ programs offering General Education courses General Education Assessment Committee Dean of Undergraduate Studies Budget Office |
To be determined by responsible parties |
Academic Distinction | Service
Community
University Community Relations | Technology | Diversity
and Social Justice
