Establish and proactively nurture a campus-wide community and culture that promotes and ensures safety, respect, and inclusion for all members.
- Launch a community-wide "I Am Bay Path" campaign to illustrate and affirm the wide varieties of diversity that exist within our community. #IAMBAYPATH
- Promote the inclusion of transgender students by finalizing and implementing the transgender admissions policy and by establishing the Transgender Working Group to examine policies, systems and support services to ensure compliance with federal law and community expectations for belonging.
Implement an ongoing professional development program for the entire campus community focused on building diversity, equity, and inclusion awareness and sensitivity.
- Hold a campus-wide 'Crucial Conversations Series' community kick off in January 2017 with classes cancelled and featuring prominent speaker (e.g. Melissa Harris-Perry).
Establish methods for holding University and leadership accountable for follow through on commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Incorporate inclusion awareness and sensitivity measures in the annual performance evaluation for all faculty, staff, and administration.
- Incorporate and track responses over time for diversity, equity, and inclusion assessment items in student surveys.
- Establish a safe 'bias-reporting' mechanism and process.
Establish a transparent process for communicating the University's commitment to an inclusive campus community and culture.
- Provide annual updates on diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan and progress at meetings of the Board of Trustees, State of the University addresses, Executive Staff meetings, Provost's Cabinet meetings and Faculty Assembly meetings.
Strengthen recruitment, retention and persistence of students from diverse backgrounds.
- Conduct a comprehensive retention analysis to better understand enrollment and attrition flow of students from diverse backgrounds.
- Establish and grow the Bay Path presence in the regional Spanish media markets (e.g. radio, television, print).
- Expand University Theme program to include an inclusion focus (e.g. once per semester speaker/program, Film Festival)
- Hold monthly celebrations of diversity, i.e. Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Heritage Month, Disability Awareness Month, Women's History Month
- Collaborate with CCGS schools to create opportunities to celebrate all types of diversity within and among area institutions.
Increase the representation of individuals from diverse backgrounds at all levels of the organization.
- Expand job posting venues and conduct targeted recruitment as needed to attract a more diverse candidate pool.
- Expand opportunities for recruitment of diverse faculty and staff through enhanced networking opportunities, search firm utilization, earlier faculty postings and adjunct faculty identification.
- Standardize process for searches across all instructional location including training for hiring managers, consistent messaging in posting and job descriptions, core list of diversity and inclusion questions for every search, requirement that all searches include qualified diverse candidate in finalist pool and at least one diverse search committee member.
- Expand the mentoring program for full-time faculty to include training faculty mentors, ongoing evaluations from mentor and new faculty and promotion of mentoring opportunities in faculty job postings.
- Consider longer term faculty contracts to attract high quality diverse candidates.
Review and enhance campus facilities planning, student support and communications vehicles to ensure appropriate compliance with ADA.
- Review and enhance website to ensure appropriate ADA compliance.
- Develop a reasonable plan for updating online courses to ensure minimum level of accessibility.
Establish a faculty standing committee on diversity, equity, and inclusion to audit curriculum, recommend enhancements and monitor progress.
- Diversify curriculum to ensure ample electives that highlight different voices and perspectives as well as expanded options for the Global, Cultural and Community Engagement requirement (consider a required common option).
- Establish paid internship program to support first-generation students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in obtaining paid work experience.
- Institutionalize and expand ALLI program.
- Revise course evaluation questions to include assessment of classroom climate and instructor respect for diverse perspectives.
- Conduct a curricular audit to assess extent to which diversity and inclusion is currently addressed and/or embedded in curriculum. Develop additional courses as needed.
