Earlier this year, the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs (OVPDEMA) at Indiana University (IU) announced the launch of a university-wide diversity assessment. The university is now calling upon their community to share their thoughts.
“Diversity efforts are taking place across our communities that are not documented or formally recognized; therefore, we are calling upon past and present IU community members to submit all diversity initiatives that have taken place over the past five years to inform the assessment results,” said Dr. Yolanda Treviño, university assessment leader and assistant vice president for strategy, planning and assessment with OVPDEMA.
She said IU alumni are actively engaged in campus and community life through new student recruitment, offering scholarships and sponsoring major events that reach out to future IU students and fellow alumni. The assessment provides all campus and community members an opportunity to describe a diversity effort they have been involved in at an IU campus.
IU community members can submit diversity efforts on the OVPDEMA website by logging on to Indiana.edu/~dema and submitting their stories there.
The assessment includes IU Bloomington, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Southeast, IU South Bend, IU Northwest, and the university’s diversity office.
“Indiana University is a multi-campus, public research institution whose mission is to provide broad access to undergraduate and graduate education for students throughout Indiana, the U.S., and the world, as well as outstanding academic and cultural programs and student services,” said Treviño.
The overall assessment is a comprehensive, external evaluation of Indiana University’s diversity efforts, retention and graduation as well as the overall state and health of the OVPDEMA.
“The assessment will serve as a baseline measurement for IU in diversity achievement and progress which will provide information to further our efforts for strategic planning university-wide,” said Dr. James Wimbush, vice president for OVPDEMA.
This is the first time an assessment of this kind and magnitude has been done by Indiana University.
In addition to diversity and inclusion as well as retention-graduation efforts, the 18-month diversity judgment involves benchmarking of IU Bloomington and IUPUI in comparison to five of its external peers; a diverse faculty and student recruitment projection for IU; and an external assessment of the diversity office.
Outside consultants, Halualani and Associates, were selected to manage this project.
“The first phase of our work is on schedule with diversity mapping efforts for both IU Bloomington and IUPUI to be delivered at the end of the year,” said Dr. Rona Halualani, managing principal and founder of Halualani and Associates. Her organization is said to be a leading research and consulting organization that combines academic rigor with industry experience. To date, Halualani and Associates have mapped colleges/universities of all sizes and types around the country.
Halualani explained that diversity mapping represents a valuable starting point for a campus beginning to form or refine an institution-wide diversity strategy or master plan. This practice can provide a sense of where the institution has been, where it currently is, and how it has practiced diversity and inclusive excellence, in both intentional and unintentional ways.
Halualani and her team have also completed “web-scraping,” the first mode of data collection for campus mapping efforts, and are currently examining over 1,000 IU Bloomington and IUPUI diversity and retention graduation efforts.
Once they receive the necessary information from members of the IU community, they will begin to examine diversity efforts submitted by past and present IU campus members through the online survey, enabling both formal and informal diversity efforts to be recognized.
The first output, “IU Bloomington and IUPUI Diversity Efforts Mappings & Analysis,” will be available at the end of the year. The assessment is scheduled to conclude January 2017. Halualani and Associates will then map all efforts, identify needed actions for change and improvement, and provide each campus with a summary of key findings and recommendations to be shared with the university community.
“Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of Indiana University’s mission to provide broad access to its outstanding educational opportunities for its students and postdocs and career opportunities for faculty and staff,” said Treviño. “We anticipate a comprehensive assessment of what has already been done and what still remains such as gaps, empty zones and neglected areas.”
For more information, visit Indiana.edu/~dema.
