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2005
Faculty and Staff CONVOCATION |
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OUR AGENDA: Diversity In the successes I have reported are foundations upon which we will build even brighter futures. It is found in your dedication to ever more creative ways to connect learning to life and campus to community. It is found in the philanthropic support - critically important in its own right for the margin of excellence it provides our campus - but, also, as an important barometer of the strong and tangible public support for Green Bay's University of Wisconsin. So, what is in that future? Certainly, we will strive to ever more effectively connect learning to life. As I begin to bring my remarks to conclusion, though, I will stress two features: a more diverse UWGB and a larger UWGB. Diversity Let's start with what I think, challenging as it is, to be a very exciting subject: a more diverse UWGB. First the case which is fully stated in the Web and written versions of this morning's remarks. Here, in the interests of time, I will boil the case down to a sentence or two: It is simply the right, academically essential, and self-interested thing to do. Right for obvious reasons; academically essential because it provides all our students with an environment necessary for truly higher education; and in our self-interest to assure our institution and, indeed, our nation continue to prosper in a globally competitive, knowledge-based, and flattened world. This is how I explained it in Educating the Chancellor, the report back to you after spending my first few months meeting with and listening to all of you. 1. Learning is a process, not a result. It is a social process. Much of what our students learn is determined by the social process in which they learn. 2. By providing our students - every one of them, whatever their background - with meaningful opportunities to work closely with, learn from, and problem solve with student peers (and faculty and staff) of diverse backgrounds, we are preparing our students to be effective and productive citizens in a world increasingly enriched by diversity. 3. If we do not provide such opportunities, our students do not get a truly higher education. These important academic reasons for embracing diversity are recognized on campus. There are also pragmatic reasons. First is the simple fact that the surrounding communities are increasingly diverse and, if we concentrate on meeting the needs of our region without reflecting its diversity, we will see our campus wither - in enrollments and in community support. Additionally, our society's wealth (economic, cultural, political, social) has steadily improved because each generation has invested in the education of the generation to follow. Sometimes it has been a struggle. But that is how progress has been made. If we do not continue that pattern - and there are very real possibilities that the generation to come will be the first to enter adulthood academically less well prepared than the preceding generation - then our society and our country will find its position rapidly eroding as we enter an increasingly global and increasingly competitive "knowledge age." That was said almost four years ago and I think the case is even more clear today. Today's Green Bay Public Schools are enriched by a student body, 33 percent of which are students of color. Taking our direction from the leadership of the communities of color that we seek to serve, we have made significant progress. • First, they told us that the most important thing we could do would be to help raise the aspirations of their youth. We responded with the award-winning Phuture Phoenix Program. • Then, the Chancellor's Community Diversity Council - all people of color - advised that we must first concentrate on retention, it making no sense to add more and more people to a badly leaking bucket. In what I think is really a stunning result, you halved the gap in the rates of retention for minority and majority students. • More recently, this same Council told us that diversifying our faculty and staff would be the single most important step we could take toward greater success in attracting and retaining students of color. Last year, I stood up here and challenged you to respond, saying there was no more important key to a successful future UWGB than for us to diversify our faculty and staff today. |
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Share
with me, please, the pride we should feel in what, last year alone, you
achieved. Thirty percent of our new faculty hires with people of color;
that is up from ten percent the preceding year and is a percentage that,
over the last decade, has all too often stood at zero. For this progress
and from my heart - for diversity is the agenda about which I care most
passionately - I applaud you. There is much more progress I could report: the great work of our Campus Diversity Council, last year's major update of Plan 2008 Update, .... But, let's look ahead. We have more to do. Areas across campus have been developing all sorts of innovations: in student services, in exciting curricular proposals, and in special academic programming. This morning, I will highlight three initiatives from among many. First, this University will be participating, as one of a select number of UW campuses, in piloting, in Wisconsin, application of an innovative Diversity Initiative. Coming out of the University of Southern California with a record of real successes, the approach involves all of campus in what we academics are best at: analyzing, understanding, and innovating to achieve significant institutional change. Whatever your current responsibility, you likely will have an opportunity to become involved. Second, we will be offering opportunities to learn conversational Spanish at the University's expense and on University time. Participation is voluntary but it is my hope and expectation that many of you, particularly those of you in "front line" offices, will see this as a great opportunity for furthering your professional development. The Academic Staff and Classified Staff Professional Development committees are enthusiastic about providing leadership for this effort. And, whether or not you participate, I trust you recognize this simple existence of this initiative as a statement of our commitment to a future we look forward to ever more effectively serving. Third, Cabinet has drafted and will seek the wise counsel of appropriate governance groups on a Faculty Diversity Initiative. There are two basic pieces. First, programs will have the option of more broadly defining professorial positions - in particular, taking into consideration anticipated as well as current openings. Where candidates emerge in searches who meet the diversity objectives of the campus and where funding would be necessary to make two hires where only one current (and one anticipated) opening is available, the requisite "bridge funding" will be provided centrally. This is only "step 1" of the kinds of fully articulated faculty diversity initiatives routinely found on campuses around the country, but it is an important first step. It will not be our last. Each of these initiatives cost: in dollars and in your valuable time. And, I know some of the thinking. How can we be spending money at the same time we are cutting budgets? The general answer is simple: Whatever the budgets, we never stop allocating resources to their most important uses. And, in this particular instance, let there be no ambiguity: Funding these undertakings is a tangible statement of the importance this University attaches to diversifying our faculty, staff, and students. Finally, an observation. We routinely survey our students on their experiences here, using a nationally normed instrument. We have the ability to pool these student reports with actual academic records. Several months ago, I asked our Institutional Research Guru, Ms. Debbie Furlong, to find, among the hundreds of experiences about which our students report, the particular experiences that best differentiate between those minority students who are succeeding here and those who chose to leave. One measure stood out as paramount for minority students: the quality of the relationship these students reported that they had with faculty. Students of color who felt faculty were available, caring, and helpful stayed; those who did not feel that way left. From this and when you look at all the data, it is not much of an exaggeration to conclude that responsibilities for successfully diversifying our campus pervade every office and almost all we do. You understand this principle, and that is why we have successes to celebrate this morning. If we keep that principle in mind, we will have more and more successes to celebrate in the convocations to come. |
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OF PAGE Office of the Chancellor, David A Cofrin Library, Suite 810, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 Phone: 920-465-2207 E-mail: shepardb@uwgb.edu Comments to: Chancellor's Web Manager Revised: 03/02/2006 |