The University of Rhode Island Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Symposium held a presentation and town hall this week for students and faculty to ask questions pertaining to the University’s new diversity initiatives and goals.
The event began with a presentation from Mary Grace Almandrez, associate vice president and chief diversity officer, about herself, the current state of diversity at URI, new initiatives and the goals of the Office of Community, Equity and Diversity (CED).
Almandrez was hired as the interim chief diversity officer at URI in 2019 and recently became the permanent chief diversity officer. Since then, she said that she has worked to create and implement a campus-wide diversity plan. This started with a “listening tour” in 2019 to hear what students and faculty want to see at the University in terms of diversity initiatives.
Since then, many new programs have been created by CED. Among these initiatives are creating a university diversity council, improving the bias resource team, training DEI officers, creating Diversity Dialogues and developing a campus climate survey.
“It’s been over 10 years that folks have been asking to do a university-wide campus climate assessment,” Almandrez said. “We’re actually going to be launching a campus climate survey to go live March 2. It will be open for four weeks, we have a bunch of great incentives for folks to take the survey. We’re hoping to get a great response rate. We’re aiming for 30 percent, and the reason why is because we want to make sure that the data is statistically significant to make decisions on programs and shifts in priorities within departments or colleges. We also want to make sure, because this is our baseline that we’re getting good information.”
According to Almandrez, many faculty members have been calling for an assessment like this to run for many years in an effort to gain understanding of baseline information on diversity at URI. This assessment will shape the DEI plan going forward.
CED is currently working towards four overarching goals: recruiting more Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and Latinx faculty and retaining them; providing opportunities for professional development among existing faculty; creating a better diversity curriculum for students; and challenging the organizational culture of URI to make BIPOC feel more accepted and welcomed.
Almandrez discussed her background and how it has shaped her in her position as the chief diversity officer. She described herself as a “1.5 generation” immigrant from the Philippines, a student activist and a scholar. She said that as a scholar she has relied upon pedagogy, Critical Race Theory and other theories of diversity to determine the CED’s actions. She then talked about the challenges that she faces as the CDO.
“I’m both an activist, as well as an agent of the University,” Almandrez said. “I sit on the senior leadership team. I report directly to the president. I’m an advocate, as well as an administrator, and I’m an insider, as well as an outsider. For instance, on the senior leadership team, I work with a great group of colleagues, but I am the only person of color. I’m navigating these spaces, these liminal spaces that are in between both professionally and personally.”
After the presentation, Joanna Ravello, director of community and organizational development, opened the call to questions from attendees.
During the town hall, Christopher Hunter, an associate professor of engineering at URI, asked whether there will be a push to fill the director of recruitment and retention of diverse faculty positions in CED with faculty of color.
Almandrez responded saying that there were three factors that the department is taking while looking for a candidate to fill this position. First, she said, is the timing of hiring a candidate, as they may not be able to find the ideal candidate at this time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, the University has allocated more resources to diversity coordinators, so the job description has changed since the process began. Lastly, while the position has only focused on faculty in the past, the new position will include the hiring and retention of diverse staff as well.
Another question was posed by an anonymous attendee. They asked how CED plans to get faculty to embedded what they learn about diversity into their work, rather than viewing completing workshops as checking an item off of a list.
“What we’re trying to do here is to build institutional capacity to fundamentally change this university,” Almandrez responded. “And I’m talking about change, not just in this composition, but it has to be embedded in the fabric of our institution. We don’t want our faculty, staff and students to continue to labor and be exhausted and be disappointed. The students deserve a better University and I think that we have the pathway to do it. We’re going to ask people to do things differently, to think about teaching differently.”