DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSIVITY
Nashwa Bolling
Associate Director, Budget, Research and Analysis
Michael Johnson
Director of Student Outreach and Support
Judy Kiyama
Associate Professor, Morgridge College of Education
Laura Maresca
Vice Chancellor, Human Resources and Inclusive Community
Debra Mixon Mitchell
Director of Diversity Recruiting
Nancy Wadsworth
Associate Professor, Political Science
ODI Faculty Fellows Program:
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Faculty Fellows Pilot Program will advance the work of Inclusive Excellence; creating and further embedding a capacity building resource within and alongside academic departments at the University of Denver. The ODI Faculty Fellows are tasked, broadly speaking, with the goal of engaging and fostering engagement in each unit’s diversity and inclusion efforts as well as serve as a resource and platform for innovation and transformation at a local level, with support (both in terms of funding and training) from the University at large.
As a unit based role, your ODI Faculty Fellow, will work within the department toward realizing DU’s vision of becoming a “diverse and inclusive community … known regionally and nationally as a best-practice environment for all who work and learn” (IMPACT 2025, p. v). The five areas of focus for this cohort of the ODI faculty fellows includes providing vital support for:
- Underrepresented faculty
- The infusion of inclusive curriculum and pedagogy
- Unit level strategic planning toward Inclusive Excellence
- Participation in faculty search processes
- Diversity and inclusion communication and advocacy efforts within their unit and beyond.
Faculty and Staff Hiring Guidelines
We have focused on expanding and improving procedures for faculty and staff searches to promote increased compositional diversity. A faculty hiring dashboard is available for hiring teams and the staff hiring guide is under review.
We have online modules on Canvas on the following topics:
- Recruitment and Job Description Posting
- Implicit Bias and Diversity Engagement
- Document Review and Evaluation
- Interviews and Successful Campus Visits
- Hiring and Retention
We also collaborate with search committees. We offer a faculty search committee training with ODI and consultations with the Director of Equal Opportunity. Deans also review committee progress prior to on-campus interviews.
Click here to learn more about our progress on faculty hiring guidelines.
We are also working on developing pilot projects that would help us promote increased compositional diversity:
- Embedding IE in the annual review process for faculty via Activity Insight
- Developing proposal for IE leadership development for middle managers
Diversity Dashboards
We created the Diversity and Campus Climate Dashboards on the new website for Diversity and Inclusion. The Dashboard gives us a snapshot of student composition, campus climate, student engagement benchmarks, and student outcomes.
Comprehensive Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Excellence plans
The team is working closely with Deans and academic units on strategic plans. Many academic units have created Inclusive Excellence plans either within or alongside their strategic plan. In addition, the university-wide diversity audit is complete and units are in the process of receiving their specific unit audit summary. Significantly, the diversity audit data was utilized in program reviews this past winter and spring.
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Stemming from the Race, Inequality, and Social Change (RISC) working group, ODI has championed bringing ethnic studies to DU. During the fall of 2017, ODI hosted a half-day retreat for faculty, staff, and students with the goal of collectively imagining what such a curricular core would look like at DU. The half-day retreat welcomed 50 of DU’s faculty, staff and graduate students into a workshoping process that produced six themes and interest with respect to ethnic studies. ACE Fellow Dr. Melanie Harris led the charge as she presented options of what could be at DU, followed by Dr. Frank Tuitt’s facilitation of several exercises walking us through the process.
As next steps, ODI has helped establish two faculty working groups (one for undergraduate and one for graduate programs) with the aim of writing proposals for an undergraduate ethnic studies minor and a graduate ethnic studies cognate. The undergraduate minor has been recently approved and students are now able to enroll in that minor. The graduate student working group is still working on their proposal.
Working Group Members:
Undergraduate:
- Aaron Schneider (team leadership)
- Elizabeth Escobedo (team leadership)
- Lisa Martinez (team leadership)
- Armond Towns
- David Corsun
- Santhosh Chandrashekar
Special thanks to Tom Romero, Frank Tuitt, Lisa Martinez and Ingrid Tague, as well as the CAHSS Inclusive Excellence Committee:
- Alejandro Cerón
- Elizabeth Escobedo
- Kristy Firebaugh
- Lydia Gil Keff
- Rachel Lim
- Sarah Pessin
Graduate:
- Tom Romero (team leadership)
- Michele Hanna (team leadership)
- Bernadette Calafell
- Rebecca Galemba
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