Creating a Diversity Council

Abstract:

This chapter discusses how IUPUI reaffirmed its commitment to diversity following a report submitted by a student organization. The resulting mandate to campus units prompted IUPUI University Library to not only create its Diversity Council to oversee all diversity-related library initiatives, but to challenge itself and the library to exceed the campus administration's expectations.

Key words

diversity council

charter

mission statement

strategic plan

university library

IUPUI

Black Student Union

diversity cabinet

Yale University

Georgia State University

Call for diversity as a priority at IUPUI

As discussed in the previous chapter, the work of academic librarians, including those at IUPUI University Library, is often centered on diversity. But on November 2, 2006, all academic units on the IUPUI campus became more aware of diversity issues after the Black Student Union released 'Through Our Eyes: The State of the Black Student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis' (http://diversity.iupui.edu/assets/061102_through_our_eyes.pdf). In this report, the students noted several grievances against the university, including:

 IUPUI officials do not communicate effectively with the Black student population.

 There is not enough black programming on the IUPUI campus, facilitated by the University, as they do other groups. Furthermore, black student organizations do more programming on this campus than any other organization and we are not recognized for this.

 There is a lack of equity and true cultural competence for the Black student population.

 IUPUI does not allot funding as they should to Black Student Organizations.

The students advocated improved communication, acceptance and respect, multi-faceted support for black students, cultural competencies embedded in the curricula, and increased funding for the Black Student Union. The report was also widely disseminated to the local media. In response to 'Through Our Eyes' and intense discussions at two campus town hall meetings that followed in early 2007, the University's administration devised an action plan that called for the appointment of a full-time IUPUI diversity officer, mechanisms to provide equitable funding for all student organizations, and a promise to create a campus Multicultural Center (http://mc.iupui.edu/). Although the university had conducted campus diversity surveys since 1999 and in 2003 formed the Chancellor's Diversity Cabinet (composed of administrators, faculty, staff, and student representatives), the Black Student Union's bold and honest report was a sobering reminder of the work still to do on our campus. In 2008, the Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (ODEI) was created, headed by the new Assistant Chancellor of Diversity.

Additionally, each academic unit was charged with organizing its own diversity committee or cabinet and devising a strategic plan that would help the campus with its IUPUI Campus Diversity Goals, including:

 Recruitment, academic achievement, persistence and graduation of a diverse student body;

 Recruit, retain, advance, recognize, and promote a diverse faculty, staff and administration while creating a campuswide community that celebrates its own diversity as one of its strengths and as a means of shaping IUPUI's identity as a university;

 Make diversity a strategic priority touching all aspects of the campus mission;

 Regularly assess, evaluate, improve, and communicate diversity efforts of IUPUI.

From Vision, Mission and Goals of the University: Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (http://diversity.iupui.edu/vision.html)

The libraries are mentioned specifically in the goals on the website noted above, but only to the extent that it provides books and other resources: 'Maintain and enhance the library collections that reflect the full diversity of the human experience and commentary on it, and resist censorship or restriction of access to scholarly materials' (Curricular and Co-Curricular Transformation, Goal 1.D.). As observed in the previous chapter, libraries already have, of course, been doing this for quite some time.

Development of the IUPUI University Library Diversity Council

In early 2007, University Library formed its Diversity Council, made up of librarians, support staff, and student employees.

We hoped we could make a difference to the campus, our library, and to the profession by somehow going beyond the campus mandate - by finding ways to truly engage the IUPUI students and providing opportunities that other campus units could not. We knew our staff would be our greatest asset in achieving this as many had indicated a passion for diversity issues and were looking for ways to improve student interactions. Librarians often work with international students and can provide insight into the challenges faced by these students, from language barriers to cultural differences. But we knew that finding student employee representation, either undergraduate or graduate students, would be a challenge, given their course loads and work schedules.

All Council members were initially volunteers; later, it was decided that librarians should be elected by our internal professional association, University Library Faculty Organization (ULFO) and staff representatives by the University Library Specialist Group (ULSG). The Chair and Secretary are elected by the Council membership at the first meeting of the year. One of the first tasks for this newly created group was to consider our mission statement, charter, and strategic plan.

Literature searches were performed as a pre-planning step for initial Council meetings and these revealed several helpful sources for developing our strategy, including an American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Academe Online article by Grant Ingle (2005), 'Will Your Campus Diversity Initiative Work?' (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2005/SO/Feat/ingl.htm). Although we were not planning the campus initiative itself, we thought several points were appropriate for our efforts:

 The initiative has an explicit goal or set of goals.

 The initiative is driven by a recurring cycle of assessment.

 [L]eadership is committed to devoting the staff and financial resources necessary to implement recommendations emerging from the change process.

 The terminology surrounding the diversity effort is unambiguous.

 The initiative has unambiguous support from campus leaders but is not dependent on any one of them.

Georgia State University's '2001-2002 Best Practices in Diversity Report' (http://www.gsu.edu/oddep/30812.html) also offered some excellent insights.

We based our documents primarily on the 'Yale University Library Strategic Plan for Diversity 2006-2008'. At the time, it was one of the few US academic libraries with a well- developed diversity initiative that we were able to locate by Internet search. These and other factors shaped our documents and influenced our direction. Current documents may be viewed online - 'IUPUI University Library Strategic Plan for Diversity 2007-2009' (http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/about/diversity/goals) and 'IUPUI University Library Diversity Council Charter' (http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/about/diversity/plan) (see Appendix A).

With a charter and membership in place, we needed to determine our objectives and what actions needed to take place to allow the library to support the campus goals. The Council felt that the next step was to investigate IUPUI's demographics and those of the library's staff, if possible. Being a public university, IUPUI is fortunate that the Office of Information Management and Institutional Research (IMIR) [http://www.imir.iupui.edu/] makes such statistics publicly available on its website. Other libraries may need to play detective by contacting the admissions or enrollment department, or some other office that serves as the clearing house for information gathered about students. If demographic information is not readily available, librarians should consider preparing a survey to gather this important information about the patrons they serve. Unfortunately, the university is unable to compile statistics on all aspects of diversity as defined in the previous chapter, due to a need to protect privacy. For example, we have no clear idea of the size of our populations of students, faculty, and staff with disabilities (physical/mental disabilities or learning disabilities), various gender identities and sexual orientations, or religions. The variety and number of our campus student organizations may be our best indicator of the current state of these diverse populations...