Minutes: Diversity—10/6/03 - Seattle Pacific University



Minutes: Diversity—10/6/03

The Diversity Committee met from 12:30-1:30 on October 6, 2003. Members present: William Purcell, Kathy Stetz, Wai Lau, Katya Nemtchinova, Joe Snell, Kimberly Segall, Melody Rivera.

Chair Purcell reported to the committee that Bill Rowley, Dean of Education, would be the Administration’s representative on the Committee. Dr. Rowley was out of town during the time of the first meeting.

The committee then reviewed its charge as stated in the Faculty Bylaws:

"Policy-recommending Committees in Areas of Faculty’s Primary Responsibility

Committees in this category are responsible to the Faculty Senate through Faculty Council, except that school curriculum committees report through appropriate Policies and Evaluation Committees and are responsible to their school faculties and the Office of the Provost. (Faculty Bylaws, Article B-II, Section 6, A)"

"Diversity Committee

Membership: Vice President of Academic Affairs or designee, ex officio; 5 faculty members (including the chair), one school dean or associate dean or designee, two staff members, one student. Advisory members as the agenda requires may come from constituent groups across campus, including but not limited to Admissions, Staff Council, Learning Resources and Campus Ministries.

Function and Duties:

1. Recommend and review implementation of policies, standards, and procedures that assist in the recruitment and retention of an ethnically and culturally diverse faculty, staff and student body, including developing resources, programs, and tools.

2. Recommend and review implementation of policies, standards, and procedures that assist faculty in addressing ethnic and cultural issues in the curriculum and classroom.

3. Solicit diversity goals from constituent groups across campus and partner with them to achieve measurable progress towards these goals, providing an annual review of that progress to the faculty.

4. Develop a program of yearly assessment reports to the Faculty Senate through the Faculty Council on the progress toward diversity across campus (Faculty Bylaws, Article B-II, Section 6, A.7)."

As an additional source of direction the committee also discussed the comments and goals outlined in President Eaton's “State of the University Address:”

Let me say a word about diversity. Here is an important piece of information from enrollment: new ethnic minority students are projected at just under 13%, up from 9.6% last year, a very respectable percentage for our kind of institution. This means we are making progress.

We have launched a diversity initiative, and I want you to know we are in this for the long haul. Three years ago I said, if we were going to really be about engaging the culture and changing the world, we had to be at the table of racial reconciliation in our city and beyond. Since that time much has happened:

5. We launched the Ames Initiative. Gary and Barbara Ames stepped up with $1 million for ethnic minority scholarships. We had 105 applications for five new positions. We now have 10 Ames scholars. We have an Ames Advisory Council to support us and give us counsel.

6. Les Steele has taken hold of this charge and is working to get the question of diversity in our academic programs and Student Life programs, to make sure this focus is in the fabric.

7. Les has arranged for Alex Gee to spend one week a quarter giving counsel and wisdom to our efforts. He is part of our team.

8. Joe Snell has had a wonderful impact on our campus and our students, with forums and the Mosaic floor in Emerson.

9. Tali Hairston, in addition to his other duties in Office of Campus Ministries, is now Assistant to the President for Community Relations. We are trying to build trust and relationship in the city. Tali is also in charge of Young Life in the Central Area.

10. After my trip to Jackson, Mississippi, we began a conversation with John Perkins about a possible partnership with the Perkins Institute. He is coming here on November 6-8 to help lead us. I will be sponsoring a dinner for African American pastors. We want to build bridges into our city.

I think we are making progress. We are committed to three things: increasing our ethnic diversity among students and faculty and staff; improving our campus culture; building bridges with the racial and ethnic communities in our own city. We can beat ourselves up for not doing enough, and we can do all of this from the wrong motives of guilt. But let’s stay the course. You will get leadership for this initiative from me, from Les, and from the rest of the Cabinet. It’s all about committing for the long haul. It’s all about building relationships. It’s all about building bridges. We must continue to carry on a conversation about what this means for us. Ultimately, we do this so that all of God’s children might flourish.

As a first task the committee decided to prepare a questionnaire/instrument for soliciting information from Colleges, Schools, Departments and other University groups about their diversity goals, procedures et cetera. It is hoped to have such an instrument prepared and distributed in early Winter Quarter. The committee plans to collected the data and deliver its first report in Spring 04. Committee member will generate questions/topic areas to the President’s Diversity Goals and the Committee’s charge at the next meeting.

The committee also discussed the following ideas sent by Douglas Dowing, Chair of the Faculty, and Kathleen Braden, Dean of Student Affairs

A message from Doug Downing--

Hi Bill,

Here is a suggestion for the diversity committee. Develop a list of disciplines according to when they might be hiring new faculty. Some disciplines are actively looking for next year; some might be looking for the following year; and so on. The list of departments with needs to hire in the future could be based on anticipated retirements (although we can’t formally plan for a retirement until the faculty member has officially announced it, if I understand correctly) and also by looking a which disciplines are relatively understaffed now.

Then we have all disciplines divided up into three categories:

Category A: actively looking right now for a known vacancy for fall 2004

Category B: likely to have a vacancy in the next three or four years, or could really support an additional faculty member within

the next three of four years

Category C: don’t anticipate any possibility of hiring someone in the next few years

After meeting with the president this week, it seems clear that SPU would not be able to hire a faculty member for a category C discipline. Of course we would hire someone for a category A discipline as soon as we find them. The question then becomes if we could get administration approval to hire someone in a category B discipline - once we have found a really good person, regardless of that person’s discipline.

This is only a rough sketch, but I hope the committee can work on a more specific proposal. Then we will have to work with administration to see if this is feasible.

Let me know if you have questions. Thanks for all your work on this. – Doug

A message from Kathleen Braden—(This was a followup to a meeting with William Purcell and OSL Staff in June)

Hi Bill-thanks for opportunity to talk to you yesterday with Scott, Kevin, and Joe about new faculty committee on diversity. You had asked us to email you with things to suggest for the committee, so here are a few ideas we discussed yesterday:

(1) as OSL dean, I want to re-affirm the value of linking co curricular and curricular approaches to student education in this area. Student Programs has obviously done great work in this area already with faculty and are ready to enlarge and regularize the effort. Residence Life is another avenue due to Bridges floor in Emerson. Also want to suggest some initial feelers to Linda Wagner at Center for Learning to see if faculty would like any discussion of special support needs, cultural sensitivity issues around learning approaches etc.

(2) Given the June 2 in-service day discussion about complaint issues, I would like to see a way we can do racial and ethnic sensitivity training akin to what HR did on sexual harassment training on line for faculty. I'd be interested in exploring that with Les, deans, faculty, HR-perhaps new committee might be appropriate place to support that effort

(3) as former faculty chair, I suggest that faculty governance might be a vehicle to affirm the role of new committee via "cross-committee" assignments. Perhaps UPEC, for example, working with Cindy Price and Les, might ask new committee to take on some review function of our curricular offerings; perhaps Faculty Affairs might ask the committee for assistance in hiring strategies (you had some good suggestions form other schools' experiences yesterday) or in sensitivity training.

Those are some initial thoughts. I think the committee should establish itself as soon as it can as a "doing" committee to eliminate any notion that it is merely a forum for political correctness.

Kathleen

The Committee was misscheduled fore a meeting with Alex Gee onFriday, October 17, 12:30-1:30. We were rescheduled for 9:30-10:30 on Friday, October 17.

Next Meeting: Monday, October 20, 12:30-1:30, Marston 252

Submitted by William Purcell

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