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Unit Contributions to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion 6484

Mon, 10/02/2017 - 16:49 — fwhite
Academic Years: 
2017-2018
Department: 
Anthropology
Division: 
Social Sciences
Academics
1. Faculty: 

Our faculty are strongly committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive environment and are involved in many initiatives – individually and as a group – that speak to this commitment. Our faculty are strongly committed to the recruitment and retention of faculty from underrepresented populations and faculty in our department have been recognized for their roles as advisors and mentors for junior faculty from underrepresented populations. We have had five searches and made eight hires since our last review: two searches resulted in two hires and one hire was a spousal hire associated with another department. We made sure that we advertised all our positions in a range of places (including the Ford Foundation, AAPA diversity committee, Association of Black Anthropologists, Association for Latino and Latina Anthropologists, etc. ) to broaden the pool of applicants. Working with our AA office, we learned that we were very successful in regards to composition and size of our applicant pool (BioAnth 2011, Cultural Anthropology 2015, Archaeology 2017). We value a diverse faculty. Currently we have 21 tenure track faculty members (including hire for 2017): ten men and eleven women or 48% male and 52% female. Of our 21 current tenure track faculty members, 8 or 38% are faculty of color. We hope to increase this number in the next few years to reach a goal of 50% faculty of color. In terms of both gender and faculty of color, the Department of Anthropology does considerably better than the University of Oregon as a whole. In AY 2015-2016 the University of Oregon faculty was 62 percent male and 72 percent white.

2. Staff: 

As we currently have 2 staff members. Both interact daily with our diverse faculty, graduate student and undergraduate students. Our two staff members have been included in our department-wide bias training and training on best practices for search committees.

3. Graduate Programs: 

Faculty actively recruit graduate students from home countries where their research takes place and support their applications by assisting with application fee waivers and support for family visas when necessary. Faculty also actively recruit graduate students from underrepresented populations through individual outreach to colleagues (specifically those colleagues at minority serving institutions or local community colleges) and through more structured programs (Preview Oregon; submitting UMRP grants). In 2012 and 2013, a number of faculty members in our department developed and ran Preview Oregon, a graduate student recruiting effort, which brought students from underrepresented groups to visit our graduate program. Although we are no longer running this specific program, members of the Graduate and Community Committees have worked to incorporate what was learned - increasing departmental efforts in bringing prospective students to campus, trying to broader our outreach, and providing more resources to our graduate students. For example, the Graduate and Executive Committees have worked together to greatly increase the amount of summer support our graduate students can receive, a major pinch point for many students when considering our program—particularly for students from under-represented groups. We have also received 10 Promising Scholars awards over the last 4 years, combined with departmental funds to provide first year funding without teaching, to support incoming graduate students from underrepresented populations. Faculty in our department have been recognized for their roles as advisors and mentors for graduate students from underrepresented populations.

4. Undergraduate Programs: 

Our faculty are strongly committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive environment in our classrooms. Faculty in our department have been recognized for their roles as advisors and mentors for undergraduate students (and graduate students, and junior faculty) from underrepresented populations. Anthropology as a discipline is focused strongly on questions of equity and inclusion globally and many of our classes satisfy the Multicultural Group (American Cultures or AC, International Cultures or IC, and Identity, Pluralism & Tolerance or IC) requirements. We are also on the leading edge of developing high quality online courses that help make coursework accessible to students with disabilities and/or constraints that make live classroom attendance difficult or impossible. The number of underrepresented undergraduate students in our classes has steadily increased following university trends (usually less than 10%), with a low of 3.3% (2012) and a high of 17.1% (2016).

5. Outreach and Partnerships: 

The majority of our faculty conduct research outside of the United States and many are a part of international collaborations. In addition, a number of our faculty members are involved in both University-level and professional service that supports international efforts (e.g., International Affairs Office committees, editors or serving on editorial boards of international journals, international NGOs, historic preservation of international sites, etc.).
Training Informed, Empathetic, Global Citizens: Almost 100% of our course offerings at the graduate and undergraduate level deal teach students to understand the commonalities that underlie the human species through time and the rich and complex differences that also define the different ways in which humans around the world and through time have lived and solved basic life problems. Students who major in anthropology are required to take courses about geographic diversity as well as human diversity linked to culture, biology, gender, race, ethnicity, nationalism, and other topics of difference. This is true for our graduate students as well. In addition, faculty members in our department regularly involve graduate students and undergraduates in international research. We have developed field programs (e.g., through Global Education Oregon) and help facilitate participation in non UO affiliated field schools when possible.
Community Outreach: Our faculty are strongly committed to community outreach and interact with our communities in a variety of ways, including the following: public lectures and activities in Oregon; public lectures and activities where we conduct research; multiple workshops and institutes for K-12 educators; media interviews, films and more accessible print publications; social media; and through the development and implementation of a number of summer camps activities.
Service Related to Equity and Inclusion: Our faculty have been involved in the following groups on campus: Grad Council, the University-Wide Diversity Committee, Women of Color Group at CSWS, CLLAS, UO President’s Native American Advisory Counsel, and UO Committee on Sexual Orientation, Attraction, Gender Identity and Expression. We also created a departmental Community Committee, which is responsible for department diversity and equity considerations and initiatives. The committee works to improve the departmental climate and the continued support of a diverse constituency. In addition, many faculty members routinely provide professional service related to equity and inclusion (e.g., Native American Scholarship Committee of the SAA, co-founded the Science and Medicine in South Asia Interest Group as part of the Society for Medical Anthropology).

6. Other: 

In order to collect information for the Equity and Inclusion section of our 10 year review in AY 16-17, the Departmental Community Committee conducted an on-line survey of 25 faculty members including all tenure-track faculty, senior lecturers, lecturers, and instructors. The survey included eight queries: 1. Describe any specific efforts you have made to recruit and retain faculty, staff and students from underrepresented populations; 2. Briefly describe any initiatives you are a part of that focus on international research and service; 3. Briefly describe any initiatives you are a part of that focus on the recruitment and retention of international students; 4. Briefly describe any initiatives you are a part of that provide our students with international experiences; 5. Briefly describe any community outreach initiatives you have developed and/or participate in; 6. If you are involved in any professional service (e.g., AAA, AAPA, SAA, etc.) related to equity and inclusion please describe that here; 7. If you are involved in any professional service (e.g. AAA, AAPA, SAA, etc.) related to equity and inclusion please describe that here; 8. Please provide any additional information that you feel is relevant to this part of our self-study. The lengthy and impressive responses to these queries are contained in the appendix available as an Excel spreadsheet (includes names of respondents), and Adobe PDF (does not include names of respondents).