Message from Chancellor Marye Anne Fox
on Strengthening of Diversity Structure and Visibility

February 3, 2009

I’m pleased to provide an update about our recent actions to ensure that our strongest advocates for diversity and inclusion are positioned to advance our diversity goals. It’s one aspect of UC San Diego’s ongoing efforts to embody our Principles of Community through identifiable organizational structures.  

The Chancellor’s Diversity Office now includes the UC San Diego Campus Community Centers:  the Women’s Center, the Cross-Cultural Center, and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center. In 2002, then Chancellor Robert Dynes placed the Campus Community Centers within the Chancellor’s Office.  Today, the Campus Community Centers are recognized as both campus and community resources that model diversity and social justice. They have been involved in both local and national dialogues to describe their unique model of collaboration and their staff serves on campus advisory committees that inform decisions that affect students, staff and faculty.  

The Chancellor’s Diversity Office now comprises Associate Chancellor / Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley, Assistant Chancellor for Diversity Glynda Davis, Diversity Office Coordinator Carol Putnam, and the Campus Community Centers. The office will lead the campus diversity strategic planning initiatives, build new institutional diversity infrastructures, interface with institutional accountability systems, and manage the diversity initiatives that are sponsored by the 11 Staff Associations and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committees.

The three Campus Community Center Directors — Emelyn dela Pena of the Women’s Center, Edwina Welch of the Cross-Cultural Center, and Shaun Travers of the LGBT Resource Center — serve as Diversity Officers.  Diversity Officers, as defined by the American Council of Education, play a key role as integrators, collaborators, and coordinators of campus partnerships for institutional diversity efforts. The Centers have a long history of serving in these capacities and have the unique ability to bring together historically disenfranchised communities and then link them to the larger university community and to affinity groups in the San Diego region.

Each of these centers is an extraordinary institutional asset; each has enhanced the campus by building community and demonstrating excellence through diversity. In repositioning these centers within the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, we raise their visibility, emphasize their value and institutionalize their collaborative work within our organization.  The new structure of the Diversity Office also expands the capacity of the university to facilitate student, staff and faculty recruitment and retention efforts.

Diversity is an institutional resource and the campus is increasing institutional structures to support diversity efforts. These tangible structures include the appointment of Jeanne Ferrante as Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity, establishment of faculty equity advisors, and the reorganization of the Chancellor’s Diversity Office.  By utilizing the combined skills and experience of the Directors of the Campus Community Centers, their understanding of organizational change, their ability to build trust and establish relationships with groups across our campus, the Chancellor’s Diversity Office will provide guidance and direction in designing and implementing innovative solutions that meet the challenges that we face and that enhance diversity and excellence at UC San Diego.

This reorganization brings to mind the following citation about leadership and change:
 
“Leaders who are committed to creating more inclusive campus environments are committed to institutionalizing change. They do not see diversity as an experiment, like an innovative pedagogy that, once tried out, they may not want to maintain. They are not wondering whether the project of promoting greater inclusiveness will meet organizational goals and whether the concept itself needs to be evaluated. Instead, leaders are engaging in the process of moving a diversity agenda forward to institutionalize a new way of doing work” (Kezar, 2007).

As always, I appreciate your interest in our diversity activities and your ongoing support for UC San Diego.

                                                                                    Marye Anne Fox
                                                                                    Chancellor