Advancing Diversity/Achieving Excellence
Action Plan (November 1996)
Each university is a community. Our vision of the ideal university
community is one that is purposeful, just, open, honest, disciplined,
and caring. It is a community where intellectual life is central,
where the dignity of all individuals is affirmed, where equality
of opportunity is vigorously pursued, where freedom of expression
is uncompromisingly protected and civility is powerfully affirmed,
where individuals accept their obligations to the group and the
common good, and where the well-being of each member is supported
and service to others is encouraged. 1
The fifteen principal campuses of the Committee on Institutional
Cooperation (CIC) are undertaking a comprehensive set of collaborative
activities designed to assist each campus in achieving this vision.
The activities and programs we describe here will build upon existing
cooperative efforts. Although the various constituent parts of
what we are already engaged in and of what we propose here are
separable, and can be implemented independently, they are all
pieces of the whole, strengthening and interacting with one another
across campus and across campuses in a way that we believe will
bring about genuine institutional change.
Goals and Objectives. The long-term goals of the CIC Diversity
Initiative are to advance and achieve equity and excellence on
each campus. Our objectives over the next five years are to:
improve the academic and professional climate for all students,
faculty, and staff;
broaden and strengthen the curriculum to more fully reflect different
perspectives, contributions, and points of view;
increase the number of underrepresented minority students who
earn bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in all
fields and to increase the number who pursue faculty careers;
increase the number of women who earn bachelor’s, master’s,
and doctoral degrees in fields where they are underrepresented
and to increase the number who pursue faculty careers;
adopt or adapt Best Practices at CIC institutions;
enhance the coordination, articulation, and communication among
programs and activities; and
create a functional infrastructure that promotes and values diversity.
Existing Cooperative Programs. The CIC has an extensive set of
programs to enhance diversity already in existence. During the
last twenty years, the CIC has raised over $22.1 million from
external sources to support cooperative programs designed to increase
the number of underrepresented minorities and women who are enrolled
in, graduate from, and are employed by CIC institutions. The graduate
deans’ Panel on Increased Access of Minorities to Graduate
Study (1977), the Women’s Advocacy Network (1987), the Alliance
for Success (1990), the Women in Science and Engineering Panel
(1992), and the Senior Diversity Officers (1995) lead these consortial
efforts to diversify our campuses. Programs and target populations
include:
Pre-College Program Inventory*-- high school minority students
Summer Research Opportunities Program -- sophomore and junior
minority students
Academic Year Faculty Apprenticeship* -- minority students enrolled
in Alliance institutions
Graduate Education Conference* -- undergraduate minority students
in the midwest
Name Exchange -- junior minority students enrolled in CIC and
Alliance institutions
Cooperative Recruitment -- undergraduate minority students across
the country
Student Leadership Conferences -- undergraduate and graduate women
in SEM fields
Student Travel Grants -- undergraduate and graduate women in SEM
fields
FreeApp -- undergraduate minority students across the country
Predoctoral Fellowships -- minority graduate students in the social
sciences*, humanities*, and physical sciences and engineering
Fellowship Conference -- minority graduate students
Cyber Mentor -- undergraduate, graduate, and faculty women in
SEM fields
Small Research Grants in the Humanities* -- minority graduate
students
Dissertation-Year Fellowships in the Humanities* -- minority graduate
students
Directory of Minority PhD and MFA Candidates and Degree Recipients
Directory of WISE PhD Candidates and Recipients and Postdoctoral
Appointees
Academic Leadership Program -- women and minority faculty and
academic professionals
* The Inventory was published in 1992; the Graduate Education
Conference was dropped in 1991; external funding for the Faculty
Apprenticeship ended in 1994; and external funding for the Predoctoral
Fellowships, the Small Research Grants, and the Dissertation Year
Fellowships ended in 1996.
III. Proposed Programs and Activities.
Program Integration and Articulation. The rich array of diversity
programs at the institutional as well as consortial level strongly
suggests that the most important first step should be maximizing
their effectiveness. Therefore, the CIC Diversity Initiative should
look first to the development of strategies and mechanisms that
facilitate and improve articulation among diversity programs both
within campuses and across the CIC. Three activities should be
given top priority.
CIC Diversity Web. Develop CIC World Wide Web (WWW) resources
-- home pages and links to relevant sites. This system would provide
electronic access to the following types of information: undergraduate
research opportunities; graduate degree programs offered, admissions
requirements, financial aid opportunities; academic and professional
positions; news groups; the CIC Minority and WISE directories;
and inventories of diversity initiatives and mentoring programs.
Best Practices Conferences. The CIC should hold a series of Best
Practices conferences to assist faculty and staff in identifying,
adapting, and institutionalizing the best practices at CIC universities
(and elsewhere) for recruiting, retaining, and advancing underrepresented
minorities and women; to expand and strengthen content and pedagogy
of undergraduate and graduate curricula; and to create a campus
environment that fosters the development of the ideal campus community.
The CIC will co-sponsor the first conference, which will be held
at Penn State in Fall, 1997.
The CIC Advantage. Better market or package the benefits of being
enrolled in or employed by any CIC institution. Identify current
cooperative programs (e.g., traveling scholars, Foreign Language
Enhancement Program scholarships, Academic Leadership Program,
access to the Virtual Electronic Library, etc.) and propose new
ones (e.g., guarantee financial support to former SROP participants
admitted to any graduate school).
Focussed Programs. In addition to the coordination and enhancement
of existing programs, we must continually examine our needs and
seek new programs that will benefit all our universities. Consortial
programs that we believe deserve serious consideration at this
point include:
Graduate Student Forums. The purpose of the Graduate Student
Forum would be to reinforce and re-energize minority graduate
students commitment to completion of the PhD and to their pursuit
of academic careers. One of several factors shown to negatively
impact a timely completion of the doctorate and pursuit of a career
in academe is the absence of widespread peer support. Mechanisms
which provide regular and directed attention to the needs and
special circumstances of minority students help to fill a void
which could otherwise work against a student s prospects for success.
Students will present papers and posters. Workshops will be given
on selecting an adviser, writing proposals, competing for financial
support and grants, interviewing skills, and obtaining post-doctoral,
faculty, and other research positions. We know from the CIC Fellows’
experience that a community of scholars does develop and that
they look forward to these annual meetings to re-energize. Timely
support from peers is critical to persistence and being part of
that community makes all the difference in the world, according
to our Fellows.
CIC Cyber Mentor. Develop a structured electronic mentoring system
for minority undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral students,
and faculty, who do not have access to a mentor in their own departments
or colleges.
New CIC Groups or Panels. Many of our on-campus diversity efforts
are centered in and draw great strength from academic units and
centers that have a focus on a particular underrepresented group.
The CIC will form several new CIC groups: Asian American Studies,
Chicano Studies, and American Indian Studies. The directors of
the African American Studies and Women’s Studies programs
already meet together. While such groups can be established readily,
there may also be value in bringing all of these groups together
to discuss issues of mutual concern and potential cooperative
projects. Other new CIC groups will include directors of disability
services and coordinators of lesbian, bisexual, and gay programs.
Assessment.
We should never assume that because a program exists and has
a worthy purpose it should continue to exist. We should evaluate
all of our programs regularly. The CIC should implement a comprehensive,
integrated evaluation and monitoring system that will enable the
CIC to assess the quality of the individual program components
for internal refinement and external application, and to assess
the impact of all activities on achieving our objectives. This
task will be accomplished by building on current evaluation and
monitoring activities and by developing a truly integrated evaluation
plan, one that examines and accounts for the series of programs
and their relationships to one another. The evaluation plan should
include the following measures:
enrollments by field, gender, and race/ethnicity;
degrees conferred by field, gender, race/ethnicity;
follow-up of individual participants’ education and employment;
faculty employment by field, gender, and race/ethnicity
quality and outcomes of individual program components;
impact of the series of program components and their relationships;
structural and/or organization change within institutions and
the CIC;
quality of the academic and professional environment;
student performance and achievement
V. Organizational Structure.
CIC Senior Diversity Officers. The CIC Senior Diversity Officers
will be responsible for providing overall leadership and coordination
of the Diversity Initiative, including recommending policy, facilitating
communication among other relevant CIC groups, setting priorities,
and fostering new initiatives. The group is currently chaired
by Lester Monts, Vice Provost for Academic and Multicultural Affairs
at the University of Michigan.
CIC Members. The chief academic officers of the member institutions
provide overall governance for the CIC, exercising ultimate control
over its program directions. Their most crucial functions, however,
are to provide leadership to their respective faculties and staffs
and to ensure that appropriate infrastructures and support mechanisms
are put in place on their own campuses to achieve and sustain
broad involvement and support of CIC Diversity Initiative programs
and the commitment of resources where required.
CIC Staff. It is not clear at this point what staff resources
might be required to carry out a CIC Diversity Initiative. Staff
are of course already present in the CIC office, and the graduate
deans are considering a proposal for creating additional staff
positions to support their programs. In accordance with our principles
of coordination and articulation, we believe all the concerned
groups can work together to provide the necessary staff support.
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1 Ernest Boyer. Campus Life: In Search of Community, (1991) and
A Vision of an Equitable University, the Penn State Commission
for Women, 1993-94
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Diversity People
Diversity Programs & Projects
CIC Home Page
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11/28/01
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