Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Campus Climate Study

Challenge

In 2014, Stetson University’s leadership chose to address diversity and inclusion on the university’s campuses. The university wanted to make a conscious and concerted effort toward diversity and inclusion.

 

Actions

The president and campus leadership decided to make diversity and inclusion part of the university’s 2014-2019 Strategic Map. The map organizes university actions and efforts over five years, and making it a foundational goal of the map ensures it would receive the level of attention it needed and deserved.

Once the 2014-2019 Strategic Map was finalized, the president and provost organized the Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Task Force, DIETF, a group of students, faculty and staff, around efforts of making the goal “Become a Diverse Community of Inclusive Excellence” a reality.

The task force undertook a review of past efforts toward diversity and inclusion and presented the results. The next step was to create a baseline measurement of campus climate at university campus locations in DeLand, Celebration, Tampa and Gulfport Florida.

In 2015, the task force hired Rankin and Associates, a national agency with experience in diversity and inclusion reporting. As part of the survey, Rankin and Associates made two promises. First, the surveys would be cleaned of personal information and be anonymous; and second, everyone would receive the results at the same time.

In the spring of the 2015-2016 academic year, Rankin and Associates and the task force finalized the results of the survey. In fall of 2016-2017 academic year, the results for all campus locations were posted online and Sue Rankin, president of Rankin and Associates, visited Stetson University’s campuses to personally report the results of the campus climate study.

Outcomes

The study created a baseline for Stetson University, and the university held open forums to collect feedback from the community. The feedback has been built into action plans assigned to each area of the university, and a university steering group is reviewing status on an annual basis.

Contact

Bruce Chong

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