Presidential Commissions

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President's Responses to Commission Recommendations

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Date: August 14, 2007

To: Campus Community

From: Daniel Mark Fogel, President and John M. Hughes, Provost and Senior Vice President

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at UVM: Toward Academic Excellence in an Inclusive, Welcoming, and Safe Campus Community

I.	Preamble
II.	Assessing the Campus Climate
III.	Enhancing Campus Safety
IV.	Joint Recommendations of the Presidential Commissions
V.	Response to the Recommendations of Individual Commissions
	A. Response to the Commission on the Status of Women B. Response to the Commission on Racial Diversity C. Response to the Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Equity D. Response to the Commission on Inclusion and Diversity

I. Preamble

We are writing to report on the status of our work to ensure that UVM is a community that supports diversity in an atmosphere that strives to be maximally inclusive, welcoming, and safe, and also to share with the University community our responses to important recommendations submitted to the President over the course of the past twelve months by the President’s Commissions on Racial Diversity (PCRD), on the Status of Women (PCSW), on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equity (PCLGBTE), and on Diversity and Inclusion (PCDI). We hold, with these Commissions and with the Board of Trustees, that diversity and inclusion are inseparable from academic excellence.

Five sections follow. In Section II, we briefly discuss the Campus Climate Survey and our commitment to attending to its broad implications through renewed efforts to support diversity at UVM and through additional surveys that will, we hope, provide increasingly reliable and useful data to inform the work that lies ahead. Section III concerns campus safety, summarizing measures taken last spring in collaboration with the presidential commissions to enhance public safety, including the recent visit to campus of consultants on safety and the convening of an anti-violence summit. Section IV responds to joint recommendations of the presidential Commissions, and Section V responds to recommendations that have come forward from each of the Commissions individually (in the order of their founding: PCSW, PCRD, PCLGBTE, and PCDI).

We are writing to report on the status of our work to ensure that UVM is a community that supports diversity in an atmosphere that strives to be maximally inclusive, welcoming, and safe, and also to share with the University community our responses to important recommendations submitted to the President over the course of the past twelve months by the President’s Commissions on Racial Diversity (PCRD), on the Status of Women (PCSW), on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equity (PCLGBTE), and on Diversity and Inclusion (PCDI). We hold, with these Commissions and with the Board of Trustees, that diversity and inclusion are inseparable from academic excellence.

Five sections follow. In Section II, we briefly discuss the Campus Climate Survey and our commitment to attending to its broad implications through renewed efforts to support diversity at UVM and through additional surveys that will, we hope, provide increasingly reliable and useful data to inform the work that lies ahead. Section III concerns campus safety, summarizing measures taken last spring in collaboration with the presidential commissions to enhance public safety, including the recent visit to campus of consultants on safety and the convening of an anti-violence summit. Section IV responds to joint recommendations of the presidential Commissions, and Section V responds to recommendations that have come forward from each of the Commissions individually (in the order of their founding: PCSW, PCRD, PCLGBTE, and PCDI).

II. Assessing the Campus Climate

The 2005-06 Campus Climate Survey provided information about the ways in which UVM is experienced differently by groups within the community, including women, persons of color, and lesbians, gays, and transgendered individuals, with the data suggesting that all of these groups experience a campus climate that is often chillier than the climate experienced by others. Although the steering
committee for the survey noted that the survey findings, because of the limited numbers of respondents in some categories (e.g., students), cannot be generalized to UVM’s total population (see the executive summary of the Campus Climate Survey at http://www.uvm.edu/~aaeo/campusclimatesurvey/), we believe that the broad implication that women, people of color, LGBT individuals, and members of various underrepresented groups—including persons with disabilities, new Americans, and individuals who have felt singled out on the basis of their religious beliefs or backgrounds—have higher levels of concern than other members of the community about a variety of issues ranging from equity to campus safety must be entertained as credible and significant. Those concerns therefore merit our attention and renewal of commitment to an inclusive, welcoming, and safe campus for all community members. In addition, we believe that UVM would benefit from periodic and continuing surveys of the climate on campus, an issue of paramount importance to all members of our community. We hereby commit the University to this kind of follow-up, to be completed no later than the end of the '10 fiscal year, and we charge the Interim Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs and the Executive Director of Equity and Diversity to work together, in consultation with the presidential commissions and with us, to ensure that this mandate is carried out.

III. Enhancing Campus Safety

A campus that provides a safe and secure environment in which to learn and work is a sine qua non for every member of the community. Relationship violence, primarily directed against women, calls for a commitment to zero-tolerance. Similarly, incidents of bias in our community are unacceptable. Accordingly, the administration worked closely last year with the presidential commissions, with the PCSW in the lead, to issue a University policy on relationship violence and to promulgate a revised policy incorporating new protocols for reporting and investigating bias incidents. The President signed the new policies for immediate implementation in May and June of 2006 and at the same time issued a President’s Anti-Violence Initiative in order to increase campus vigilance and awareness of the many policies and procedures in place designed to promote and protect the security and well-being of all members of the campus community. Please see the UVM policy web site (http://www.policies.uvm.edu) for the complete text of all new, revised, and continuing policies on campus safety and the website of the Office of the President for the President’s Anti-Violence Initiative (http://www.uvm.edu/president/?Page=antiviolence_initiative.html).

In October 2006, the campus and the nation were shocked and appalled by the abduction and murder of UVM senior Michelle Gardner-Quinn. This heart-rending and tragic loss, and the recent tragedy on the campus of Virginia Tech, has compelled us to renew our dedication to the safety of all members of the community, not limited to, but certainly including, those who are the targets of violence because of their gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression. Toward this end, this spring we convened an anti-violence summit and brought to UVM external consultants on campus safety. Through these and other means, we commit to intensified attention and enhanced coordination of our efforts to provide a safe environment for all members of the campus community.

IV. Joint Recommendations of the Presidential Commissions

In addition to recommendations from the individual commissions, we have before us several joint recommendations. We respond first below to those joint recommendations.

• In order to make more widely visible the efforts of the University to support and enhance diversity, a recommendation calls for widespread use of the phrase “UVM Diversity & Inclusion: A Commitment to Change.” After discussion with the commissions, we accept this recommendation, amended to “UVM Diversity & Inclusion: A Commitment to Excellence.”
  
• The commissions recommend that the University create a centrally-managed diversity website that would be highly visible, broadly informative, and connective, as a portal to all institutional resources, programs, and initiatives that support UVM’s diversity efforts. We commit to the creation of the recommended diversity web portal, with responsibility for its oversight vested in the Interim Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs within the Office of the Provost. A link to the diversity portal will also appear on the UVM home page. We charge the Interim Associate Provost to begin immediately a process of planning and consultation aimed at the earliest possible implementation of the portal.
  
• The commissions recommend provision of administrative support for their work, including the maintenance of commission recommendations. We commit to providing such support in the form of a dedicated staff position in the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity.

V. Response to the Recommendations of the Individual Commissions

A. Response to the Commission on the Status of Women

The PCSW’s Task Force on Work and Family Issues has developed substantive and detailed recommendations for greatly increased availability of child care on campus. It is clear from an extensive community survey administered by the Task Force that there is a need for more spaces than are available through the UVM Child Care Center, and also for greater flexibility (short-term drop-ins, for example) than options currently provided. The most pressing area of need is for infant care. Although we believe that the existing UVM Child Care Center should expand in cooperation with the Trinity Child Care Center, we also accept the recommendations of the PCSW Task Force. Accordingly, while we expect the existing Child Care Center to sustain its current program and quality, to expand its capacity, and to relocate in due course to the Trinity Campus, we have directed the Vice President for Finance and Administration to develop, in consultation with the PCSW, the broad community, and the early childhood programs in the College of Education and Social Services, a request for proposals for third-party operation of expanded, flexible infant and toddler care on or adjacent to the campus, to issue that RFP to both local and national providers, and to report to us on the outcome of the RFP process.

B. Response to the Commission on Racial Diversity

• The Commission was concerned last spring about Dr. Willi Coleman’s leaving the post of Interim Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs and about issues of continuity and emphasis with respect to Dr. Coleman’s work. In response, and with the full support of the President, the Provost moved quickly in the initial weeks of his work at UVM to appoint Dr. Wanda Heading-Grant to the post that Dr. Coleman had vacated as Interim Associate Provost for Multicultural Affairs (thus elevating the position from Vice Provost to Associate Provost in recognition of its importance). Dr. Heading-Grant is extending and deepening Dr. Coleman’s legacy in many areas, including collaborative work with the Diversity Curriculum Review Committee, a subcommittee of the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Curricular Affairs as we implement the important new six-credit diversity requirement. The Provost anticipates initiating a search for a permanent Associate Provost early in the fall term.
  
• Concerned about the number of units on campus with low or no representation of persons of color among faculty and staff, the Commission calls for a formal system of accountability, regular dissemination of diversity data by unit, continued support for the role of the Affirmative Action Office in the recruitment process, a renewed and formalized exit interview process (including exploration of electronic versions of exit surveys), appointment of a recruitment/retention officer, provision by central administration of supplemental funds for hiring of diverse colleagues, and pursuit of multi-institutional strategies for fostering the recruitment of dual career couples. We affirm that diversity is a key strategic goal of the University for which all members of the community must be accountable, with special emphasis on ensuring that search processes produce to the greatest extent possible highly diverse pools of candidates and that the workplace in every unit on campus is supportive of the recruitment and retention of diverse colleagues.

  We support regular reporting of the composition of faculty and staff using federally recognized classifications designed to describe the diversity of populations; we believe that the data in such reports is best aggregated at sufficiently high levels of organization to rule out any implication that there is a consequential process of score-keeping for particularly academic departments and administrative and support units. Therefore, in response to the recommendation of the PCRD, we are asking the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity and the Office of Institutional Studies jointly to undertake a review of the frequency and format of reports on the make-up of the faculty and staff in order to explore possible refinements and improvements with the foregoing considerations in mind, and we further ask that they jointly bring the findings of that review, once completed, to us as well as to the presidential diversity commissions for discussion. This review should include a recommendation on a regular mechanism for assessing and reporting on faculty retention and promotion by various characteristics, including race, ethnicity, and gender.

  We commend the Commission for its strong affirmation of the role of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity in faculty and staff recruitment processes. Our support for that role is unwavering and will continue.

  We share the Commission’s view that exit interviews can provide valuable information to assist us in fostering a workplace climate that supports all UVM employees. We hereby reaffirm the importance of sustaining and improving the current system of electronic faculty exit interviews (for which responsibility lies in the Office of the Provost), and we charge Human Resource Services with the extension of a parallel process to staff. The Offices of the Provost and of Human Resource Services will be responsible for ensuring implementation of prompt and effective responses to any systemic issues disclosed through the exit interview processes and for reporting to the President and to the presidential diversity commissions on any such issues and any measures taken or recom-mended in response to them.

  We do not support the recommendation to appoint a recruitment/retention officer, first because we believe the functions of such an officer are already vested in the Executive Director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, and second—and more importantly—because we believe that recruitment and retention are widely distributed responsibilities that should not be solely vested in a single individual. Institutionalization of the commitment and capacity to recruit and retain ALANA staff and faculty is critical to the University’s continued success. The Provost, Vice Presidents, and Deans, as well as the Offices of Affirmative Action and of Human Resource Services, have been charged with this responsibility. Experience has demonstrated that deans, department chairs, department members, and hiring managers must develop requisite skills and commitment to the recruitment and retention of diverse staff and faculty. Pulling the responsibility away from the community and charging one individual position will not enable diversity and inclusion to become part of UVM’s fabric and would in our view in all likelihood be counter-productive. Accountability belongs to all involved in the process. The Offices of Affirmative Action and of Human Resource Services and the Office of the Provost will serve as mentors and monitors of our diversity recruitment and retention effort. Our support and commitment for this important strategy have been demonstrated through oversight and strict adherence to the intent of affirmative recruiting. The Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity and the Provost’s Office have been requiring departments to restart searches that have not successfully developed diverse pools of candidates. In addition, we have assisted in the retention of staff and faculty of color and will continue to make both a priority.

  In insisting that candidate pools be as diverse as possible in the recruitment of faculty and staff into both existing and new positions, and in having created scores of new tenure-track faculty lines through UVM’s Strategic Financial Plan (well over half of which remain to be filled), the University has provided ample resources for building an increasingly diverse workforce. Although we therefore do not accept the recommendation that we identify supplemental general fund dollars to assist specifically with the hiring of ALANA and other underrepresented candidates, the Provost has made it clear to the deans that the majority of the new faculty lines still to be filled—more than forty positions—will be held centrally for proposals that address strategic institutional agendas, including enhanced research productivity, instructional excellence, diversity, and transdisciplinary learning and discovery. Those new faculty lines—as well as existing ones that fall vacant—represent enormous resources for pursuing the University’s strategic goals, including diversity. Similarly, the University’s pursuit of an invest-and-grow strategy also entails growth in the numbers of staff (faculty increased from fall 2002 to 2006 by 90—from 1,204 to 1,294—whereas staff increased by 216—from 2,134 to 2,350), and it is our expectation that staff recruitment, too, will continue to enhance the University’s pursuit of strategic goals, including diversity, as has been the case in many units (witness, notably, for example, Student and Campus Life). Thus, we whole-heartedly join the Commission in our unswerving commitment to do all we can, in partnership with colleagues throughout the institution, to continue to shape UVM’s growth in faculty and staff strategically.

  In accord with the recommendation that the University explore creation of a coalition of Vermont institutions of higher education and other large employers to support the recruitment of dual-career couples, UVM has joined such a consortium as a founding member (see http://www.uvm.edu/~dfes/newsletter/?Page=herc.html&SM=novmenu.html). Although the consortium includes institutions throughout New England, we hereby undertake actively to recruit additional Vermont institutions as participants.

• The Commission has recommended that the University engage diver-sity consultants. We support this recommendation, and we hereby charge the Offices of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity and of Human Resource Services to develop a proposal for a series of Provost’s Seminars led by leading diversity consultants and to continue their work with community partners in the development of a diversity curriculum for staff.
  
• With respect to the recruitment of a diverse student body to the University, the PCRD has called for vigilance in the deployment of new algorithms for assessing the academic credentials of applicants to ensure that our student recruitment and admissions practices effectively support the goal of a diverse student body. We concur, and will so charge the new Vice President for Enrollment Management.
  
• Also with respect to student recruitment, the PCRD recommends assignment of a position in Development and Alumni Relations to ALANA-specific responsibilities, including development of an ALANA alumni network to support the recruitment of diverse students, including those invited to join the Honors College. We believe that this is a recommendation worthy of favorable consideration by the new Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, and we will convey it to the newly recruited Vice President.
  
• The Commission made additional recommendations designed to promote diversity in the Honors College, ranging from the provision of additional financial aid tied to College enrollment to the continued building and expansion of relationships with diverse high schools, the inclusion of diversity in the Honors College mission statement, and ongoing dialogue between the Honors College and the PCRD. We will continue to give priority to the identification of resources, including philanthropic funds, to support UVM’s Urban Partnership program with diverse high schools in the hope of expanding the program to new school partners to the benefit of all of the undergraduate colleges and schools, including the Honors College. We are also asking the Honors College Council, its administration, and its students to continue to be attentive to the close link we have affirmed in this document between diversity and academic excellence and, in so doing, we commend the recommendations of the PCRD to their attention. We note that of 133 Honors College enrollment deposits received to date from the class of 2011, 22 (16.5%) are from ALANA students, a remarkable and promising advance with respect to the diversity of Honors College enrollment.
  
• The PCRD further recommends consideration of expanding the regional recruitment model for ALANA recruitment from the New York-New Jersey region to other geomarkets. We concur that such an extension should be actively considered by the new Vice President for Enrollment Management, and we will pass on this recommendation to him with our endorsement.
  
• The PCRD recommends that the University consult leading civil rights counsel in order to develop what it believes would be more proactive diversity recruitment strategies and initiatives and further suggests that University Counsel has taken a defensive approach. We believe that this recommendation represents a misunderstanding of the University’s approach to student recruitment. We now draw on leading civil rights counsel for our approaches to recruitment, admissions, and hiring issues. We acknowledge a gap in perception on this issue, and we believe it should be initially addressed through direct dialogue between the Vice President for Legal Affairs and the PCRD.
  
• Finally, with respect to the new six-credit diversity requirement, the PCRD has made a recommendation on what it terms appropriate pedagogy and small class sizes and has urged the administration to assess the need for new faculty lines for delivery of the requirement. We believe that the first recommendation, on pedagogy and class size, has been carefully and conscientiously formulated, and we concur that small class sizes will be appropriate for many, and perhaps most, sections of classes that meet the criteria for satisfying the new requirement. That said, there may also be classes that satisfy the requirement and that are taught in relatively large lecture formats; accordingly, we refer the recommendation for consideration by the Diversity Curriculum Review Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate’s Curricular Affairs Committee. As to the provision of new faculty lines, the comment made earlier in this memo—that there will be, within the scope of the current ten-year Strategic Financial Plan, no new lines beyond those already represented in the plan—applies, with the same emphasis on filling those lines with attention to the strategic agenda of the University, including, importantly, faculty diversity.

C. Response to the Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Equity

The Commission has called on the President and Provost to advocate for development of LGBT courses and curricula beyond the College of Arts & Sciences. We concur, and the Provost commits to doing so both through the Council of Deans and in one-on-one engagements with the deans of the colleges and schools.

The Commission also expressed concerns about the presence and salience of diversity in the Campus Facilities Master Plan. These concerns were represented in the master planning process by Commission chair Annie Stevens and were addressed in the version of the Master Plan approved by the Board of Trustees last year. We pledge continuing, effective attention to diversity issues not only with respect to campus master planning but also at subsidiary levels of facilities design and space allocation, including facilities that support the needs of transgendered members of the community. We have asked Vice President Gower to charge the Office of Capital Planning and Development with primary responsibility for carrying out this charge.

The Commission has recommended that the American Red Cross not be permitted to conduct its blood drives in the Dudley H. Davis Center. We note with appreciation that the Red Cross has recently joined other organizations and scientific authorities in petitioning the federal government to change FDA protocols that categorically exclude gay men from contributing blood. We share the view of those petitioners (and of the Commission) that the protocols should be changed. Unfortunately, the administration in Washington has to date done no more than take the matter under advisement for further study. We expect blood drives on our campus to continue to be conducted solely in the Waterman Building and the Patrick Gymnasium.

D. Response to the Commission on Inclusion and Diversity

While this important Commission made no new recommendations in the past year (other than through its concurrence in the joint recommendations discussed above), we have continued to work on developing a response to an earlier recommendation on the provision of English language training for employees who are new Americans. A full proposal has been developed by Human Resource Services (HR), and I have asked HR to bring that proposal to the Commission for discussion. It provides for University support and facilitation for employee participation in a wide range of available English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learning experiences as well as expansion of existing UVM programs and referrals to community-based programs.

For the past year, the PCSW has been co-chaired by LuAnn Rolley, Director of the Women’s Center, and by Robyn Warhol, Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Center; the PCRD has been chaired by Clare Ginger, Associate Professor in the Rubenstein School and chair of the Natural Resource Planning Program; the PCLGBTE has been chaired by Annie Stevens, Assistant Vice President for Student and Campus Life; and the PCDI has been chaired by David Nestor, Dean of Students and Associate Vice President for Student and Campus Life. We, and the entire campus, are most grateful to these individuals for leadership of UVM’s important diversity commissions and to all of the commissioners for their ongoing work in pursuit of academic excellence and diversity at the University of Vermont. For the complete membership and additional information about each of these presidential commissions, please follow the left-hand sidebar links at http://www.uvm.edu/president/?Page=commissions/presidentialcommissions.html&SM=submenu5.html

With respect to the initiatives, measures, and positions outlined in this memo, we welcome responses and suggestions from the entire campus community.

Last modified October 06 2007 03:41 PM