Diversity and Inclusion

The Voiland College or Engineering and Architecture is a recipient of the Bronze Award for the inaugural ASEE Diversity Recognition Program.

The ASEE Diversity Recognition Program (ADRP) was created to publicly recognize those engineering and engineering technology colleges that make significant, measurable progress in increasing the diversity, inclusion, and degree attainment outcomes of their programs.

Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Goals

Goal 1: Create and sustain a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community of scholars and students.

Goal 2: Cultivate a system-wide culture of organizational integrity, effectiveness, and openness that facilitates pursuit of the college’s academic aspirations.

Goal 3: Steward and diversify resources invested by students, the public, and private stakeholders in a responsible way to ensure economic viability of the institution.

Sub-goals

A. Recruit, retain, and advance a diverse mix of faculty, staff, and students, including women and those from underrepresented groups. Tactics:

• Assure diversity and inclusion efforts are visibly and consistently supported at the highest levels of leadership.
• Improve mentoring of assistant and associate professors and students.
• Continue successful programs from Advance aimed at the hiring and advancement of underrepresented faculty.
• Develop and implement social media tools to improve outreach to underrepresented groups.
• Assess and reward data-informed efforts by colleges and areas to improve recruitment outreach to underrepresented groups.
• Develop and implement a recruiting plan for faculty and graduate students.

B. Maintain respectful, inclusive, and non-biased behavior in all university environments. Tactics:

• Maintain and strengthen units, programs, and spaces that promote community building, intercultural exchange, and a diversity of voices.
• Recognize contributions to an inclusive and respectful work environment in employee performance evaluations.
• Perform exit interviews for each departing faculty member and departing students to better understand the issues

C. Increase employee productivity and satisfaction. Tactics:

• Improve functionality of information technology systems for administrative processes, student services, and research.
• Recognize productivity in employee performance evaluations.
• Communicate openly and with appropriate timeliness on issues of relevance to students, faculty, staff, and external constituencies.
• Reduce the administrative burden on high-performing faculty and staff.
• Regularly review current work environments and processes for improvement.
• Use data/information gathered from the employee engagement survey to improve work environment.
• Provide resources for professional development.

D. Strengthen administrative accountability, innovation, creativity, openness, transparency, and collaboration to advance the college’s mission. Tactics:

• Undertake regular evaluation of academic units, programs, centers, and institutes to ensure resource alignment is consistent with university goals and productivity.
• Conduct evaluation and implement improvement of administrative processes to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
• Remove administrative barriers that prevent entrepreneurial innovation.
• Improve administrative and academic analytics capabilities to improve decision-making.
• Improve day-to-day communication from college administration.

Goal for the Next Five Years: 24 by 24

Our goal for the next five years is to continue to provide, adapt, and expand programming that supports the success of all individuals in our community. Specifically, we will focus on programs that actively recruit, retain, and promote to success. Our numeric metrics for success, stated below, are bold but we believe them to be attainable by building upon the foundation that has been laid over the course of the past decade.

1. Increase the percentage of women in the undergraduate population to 24%.
2. Increase the percentage of women in the tenure-track faculty ranks to 24%.
3. Increase the percentage of URM students in the undergraduate population to 24%.