Staff and faculty gathered Tuesday morning in the Mike and Josie Harper Center for the fourth in a series of strategic planning campus forums. This time, the focus was on diversity and inclusion at Creighton.
Goal stewards Michele Bogard, PhD, associate vice provost for student engagement, and Christopher Whitt, PhD, vice provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, led the discussion.
The Diversity and Inclusion goal included in the University’s strategic plan – now in its implementation phase – strives in large part to “make ours a more inclusive community … and foster a necessary evolution of our culture.”
The goal stewards walked through updates that show steady progress on those intertwined conceptual fronts, although they emphasized that effecting that kind of change takes time and a deliberate, thoughtful and collaborative approach.
To that point, Whitt said we don’t want to go down the same path as some other universities, whose diversity efforts are led with an edict to add minority students simply to “get the numbers,” and to do so by any means necessary.
“But if we haven’t really taken the time to look at our existing community,” he said, “people may come, but will they stay?”
The formal examination of our existing campus community took a sizable step forward with the recent campuswide climate survey issued to students. Bogard said that while the results are still being mined, early indications are that Creighton students are more likely than their peers elsewhere to feel safe and that faculty and administrators are concerned about their success.
That positive news is somewhat offset by results that indicate fewer of our students feel that they are part of the campus culture, compared with peer institutions. Additionally, survey results showed that African-American students here are more likely to feel they needed to hide some part of their identity than their counterparts elsewhere.
The survey also revealed that Creighton had higher reporting rates of “moments that felt against our community values,” Bogard said. But a contributing factor to that is, simply, our students’ propensity to report.
“It’s wonderful for them to feel comfortable to move forward and report these instances,” she said.
Still, there is much work to do to further enhance the cultural climate of Creighton’s campus, which sets the table for successfully recruiting and retaining not just students, but also faculty and staff members.
Bogard and Whitt have kicked off a number of work groups to do just that.
One work group – Diversifying our University Community – is charged with considering the ways in which Creighton either works toward building a welcoming and inclusive community, or might perpetuate barriers to inclusivity.
“Inclusion is the key before we can put a lot of emphasis on diversity,” Whitt said.
Another work group is focused on considering the benefits of establishing an “inclusive excellence” grant program, like the Creighton Global Initiative, in hopes it might encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and effect lasting progress.
“CGI grants have been phenomenally successful,” Bogard said. “We’re looking to model efforts off of that.”
Yet another work group is charged with examining a cohort-based leadership development experience that focuses on inclusive excellence. Elements of such a program could mirror aspects of the Creighton Colleagues Program and other such initiatives, striving to develop “critical masses” of leaders to help advance inclusion and, ultimately, diversity across campus.
A common theme of the forum was collaboration. Whitt acknowledged there are numerous faculty and staff members involved in these early diversity and inclusion efforts, but said there’s always room for more voices.
“If you’re not one of the folks included in one of the work groups,” he said, “don’t feel like we don’t want to hear from you.”
He said an all-hands-on-deck approach is what’s needed.
“When we talk about strengthening our culture, and making it even stronger than it already is, we all need to be a part of that conversation.”
See the complete schedule of fall campus forums, along with links to forum replays and other resources, at the Events and Forums page of the strategic planning website, and remember to RSVP to future forums to ensure ample seating is available.
