Senior Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs - Diversity Initiatives

Diversity is a defining feature of the State of California, and is a source of innovative ideas, creative accomplishments, and a variety of values and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and life experiences.   The University of California strives to reflect this diversity in its students, faculty and staff.  Achieving such diversity is a high institutional priority, and is integral to UC San Diego’s achievement of academic excellence.

Diversity has an educational, social, economic, political and ethical value for our university.   It enriches the ability of UC San Diego to accomplish its academic mission by broadening and deepening the educational experience through interactions of students and faculty from multiple backgrounds and perspectives.  Diversification offers social participation and mutual understanding to all Californians regardless of their heritage, orientation or situation.  It provides equality of access and opportunity so that every segment of society can contribute to and benefit from our economic future.  It enlightens and empowers constituencies of all types to engage in our democracy in an increasingly multicultural state, where voters and political leaders are likely to be more supportive of an inclusive, representative, and heterogeneous university.  Finally, embracing faculty, students, and staff from all social sectors constitutes a moral obligation in a nation with a long history of unequal treatment of disadvantaged groups.  For all these reasons and more, UC San Diego must continue and strengthen its commitment to diversity.

Through the campus Principles of Community, we strive to create a climate of respect, fairness, cooperation and professionalism and to promote innovation and leadership by utilizing the talents and abilities of all.  In creating an environment of equity for all, a particular effort is made to remove any barriers which hinder equal opportunity in employment, particularly for those groups who historically have often experienced discrimination in the area of employment.   

Academic Affairs values diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential ingredients of academic excellence in higher education.  To this end, the following initiatives have been implemented.

Efforts to Recruit and Retain a Diverse Faculty:

Best Practices for Faculty Recruitment:The director of the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity (OADEO) assists faculty search committees in utilizing the best-practice recruitment strategies to develop large, well qualified, and diverse applicant pools in faculty recruitments.  The director also helps to clarify the University’s responsibilities for compliance with Federal and State regulations.  The director works in close collaboration with the new Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity (http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/offices/adeo/bestpractices/default.htm).

Appointment of Associate Vice Chancellor, Faculty Equity:  The Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Equity (AVC-FE) position was initiated in July 2008, reporting to the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Paul Drake. Jeanne Ferrante, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, serves as the first AVC-FE.   Her overall goal is to change practices and culture that are barriers to faculty equity at UCSD, with a focus this year on recruiting.  She works closely with Associate Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer Sandra Daley and the Faculty Equity Advisors http://facultyequity.ucsd.edu/.

Appointment of Faculty Equity Advisors:  First appointed in 2008-2009, UCSD’s Faculty Equity Advisors are respected senior faculty members from each division/school who provide advice and information about practices that advance faculty diversity and excellence.  Faculty Equity Advisors work closely with their Dean/VC, department chairs, faculty, and search committees to foster proactive search activities, promote best practices, and review departmental recruit forms.  In the future, they will help develop opportunities for faculty advancement and enhanced campus climate  (http://facultyequity.ucsd.edu/advisors.asp).

NSF PAID “Leading Through Diversity: Through a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for Adaptation, Implementation and Dissemination (PAID) program, UCSD is partnering with UCI, UCLA, UCR, and UCSB to provide a leadership program for department chairs, deans, and senior administrators.  Funded from January 2007 to January 2010, the program includes joint retreats, symposia and workshops (http://paid.uci.edu/).

Faculty Mentoring Programs:Implemented in 1999, the departmental mentoring program requires that all new tenure-track faculty be assigned senior faculty mentors; newly recruited tenured faculty are given the option of having a mentor (http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/faculty/programs/fmp/default.htm).

A second, optional mentoring program provides junior female faculty with the opportunity to be paired with a senior female faculty member external to her home department.

A third program creates a pool of women faculty to serve as mentors to women who are being recruited for UCSD faculty positions.  This provides an opportunity for candidates to meet with female faculty during recruitment visits in order to discuss UCSD’s academic and social climate and opportunities for women and their families on- and off-campus, and to feel welcome at UCSD. 

Diversity Curriculum Initiatives:  An important part of our effort to recruit a diverse faculty has been to broaden the curriculum with content related to diversity and to allocate faculty FTE specifically for interdisciplinary recruitments in these areas: African-American Studies Minor (AASM) (http://af-amstudies.ucsd.edu/);  African Studies Program (http://infopath-1.ucsd.edu/catalog/curric/AFRI.html);
California Cultures in Comparative Perspective (CCCP) Initiative (http://infopath-1.ucsd.edu/catalog/curric/CCCP.html);  Chicano/a and Latino/a Arts & Humanities (CLAH) (Minorhttp://minors.ucsd.edu/clah/) ; Diaspora and Indigenous Studies; and the International Migration Studies Minor (http://infopath.ucsd.edu/catalog/curric/IMSM.html).  

The Faculty Career Development Program (FCDP) supports the research or creative activities of junior faculty in order to enhance their progress toward the Associate Professor level. The program also recognizes and rewards individuals who have promoted diversity and equal opportunity (http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/offices/adeo/fcdp/).

Diversity Matching Funds: A recommendation of the Diversity Task force was to provide incentives to address workforce pipeline challenges of increasing the future pool of prospective historically underrepresented faculty.  In response to this recommendation, the SVCAA has established a matching fund to support creative initiatives from the General Campus Divisions, in which Deans may request matching funds to support initiatives which they feel could positively impact faculty diversity, especially the recruitment of new faculty.

Efforts to Recruit and Retain a Diverse Academic Affairs Staff:

Academic Affairs staff diversity initiatives emphasize a collaborative relationship between the SVCAA, divisions and operating units.  There is a focus on awareness, outreach, education and training, providing information to help prospective and current employees make informed decisions about a career at UCSD. Academic Affairs is committed to the assurance of fairness and nondiscrimination by encouraging departments to closely monitor the staff selection process for recruitments and promotions, focusing its recruitment efforts on areas with underutilization.  The Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor provides leadership and guidance in support of these efforts.

Community Outreach – Increased staffing in this area has allowed for a greater presence at community outreach events and job fairs throughout San Diego.  Academic Affairs strives to attain a balance between attendance at general interest job fairs as well as those that target a particular ethnic or community group.  The HR Analyst is also active in the campus HR Outreach Council and is trained to provide such HR recruitment program as “How to Get Hired at UCSD,” both on campus in and in the community.

Employee Career Development Programs: Academic Affairs continually strives to create and endorse training and development opportunities for staff in order to promote a culture of tolerance, understanding and equal opportunity (http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/staffhr/training/default.htm).

Current Programs include:

• Business Officer Academy (BOA) - an innovative staff enrichment program that provides training, guidance and support to staff members who aspire to become business officers.  The BOA is a two-year program centered on case study, small group discussions and personal interactions that allow participants to gain an understanding and appreciation of the role of the business officer at UCSD. This program is open to staff campus-wide.

• ABA Mentorship Program pairs seasoned UCSD managers from central administration and academic departments and units with newer business officers seeking to enhance their management skills and understanding of the UCSD organizational culture and to assist them in developing a network of resources on campus to facilitate their daily work.

• Academic Affairs Student Apprenticeship Program is a program designed to offer substantive, practical work-learning experiences to undergraduate and graduate students at UCSD and other local universities in the areas of business and program administration, fiscal management, human resources, information technology, academic research, and student affairs.  UCSD AASAP strives to assist the University in its staff outreach and recruitment, training and development, and succession planning goals.

Contributions to the Recruitment of a Diverse Student Body/K-12: Enabling HURM Students to Achieve Success in Higher Education:

The Preuss School UCSD: The Preuss School provides a rigorous college preparatory education for motivated low-income students who will become the first in their families to graduate from college and serves as a model school to study and develop best practices in the preparation of low-income, urban students for college admission. Preuss was recently ranked sixth in the nation by Newsweek magazine among high schools regarded as the “best high schools in America”, and 8th best high school by U.S. News and World Report (http://preuss.ucsd.edu/).

Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE), Gompers Charter Middle School (GCMS), and Lincoln High School:CREATE’s mission is to increase the number of underserved, low-income youths who are eligible for admittance to college. Using The Preuss School as the model, CREATE has extensive partnership agreements with Gompers Charter Middle School and Lincoln High School.  CREATE and campus partners have collaborated to provide information to students, teachers, and parents throughout the district, especially at GCMS and Lincoln, regarding University application procedures and financial aid assistance.  They also arrange visits to UCSD and other campuses so that parents and students learn first-hand about the college experience (http://create.ucsd.edu/).

Diversity Outreach Collaboration and Diversity Coordinator Program: The UCSD Diversity Outreach Collaboration is comprised of faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students who work with partner institutions to identify and recruit highly selectable applicants, providing personalized contact with diverse students with high potential for graduate study.  Each department has one faculty member designated as Diversity Coordinator, whose responsibilities include active recruiting of prospective minority students.  Diversity Coordinators serve as advisors on diversity issues to graduate departments, program chairs, and graduate admission committee chairs (http://ogsrweb2.ucsd.edu/divcoord/).

Graduate Student Retention and Career Development: The Office of Graduate Studies has worked with academic departments to develop best practices for student retention, including an improved graduate student orientation session and an ongoing series of workshops providing career development skills. OGS has also applied for and received a grant from the Council of Graduate Schools to examine factors which may lead some students to drop out of doctoral studies programs.