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Unit Contributions to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

Academic Years: 
2018-2019
Department: 
CASIT
Division: 
Other
Staff
1. University Service: 

The College of Arts and Sciences IT Support Services Department formed a Diversity and Inclusion Committee in October of 2017. The Committee consists of classified staff members, student employees, and unclassified staff members. The first Committee Chair was nominated by the Director of CASIT and seconded by the other members of the Committee. Future chairs will be selected based on a vote by the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, with input from the CASIT Director if appropriate/needed. The Committee Chair reports to the CASIT Director as to the work the committee is doing in addition to acting as Diversity Liaison with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, with other Diversity Committees, and with the larger university community.

The CASIT Diversity and Inclusion Committee understands that the concepts of diversity and inclusion are not the same. The Committee understands Diversity as the inclusion of different types of people (including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and other areas of social equity) in a group or organization. The Committee also understands Inclusion to be a relation between two groups that exists when all members of the first are also members of the second. It is for this reason that we are the CASIT Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

2. Departmental Contributions: 

Our search, interview, and onboarding processes have been reviewed and updated by the Diversity and Inclusion Committee in conjunction with the Chair and the HR manager. We have increased the breadth of our searches by posting open positions with a multitude of sites that cater towards women, people of color, and other minorities/underrepresented groups in IT. We have not yet created a detailed Diversity checklist for search committees, however we have provided some insight as to how some interview questions could be considered culturally insensitive (“How do you handle workplace conflict” vs. “What values play into how you handle workplace conflict”) and have discussed including a rotating member of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee on each Classified and Unclassified search.

3. Community Service and Outreach: 

Getting involved in some kind of outreach to the local middle/high schools was a recurring topic for the CASIT Diversity and Inclusion Committee, however it is also something that never got past the brainstorming phase. There is a potential contact with Girls Who Code (Erin Barnhart) that could assist with this outreach, however I am uncertain what the appropriate process for that is.

4. Professional Development and Training: 
Unfortunately, with the switch from Making Tracks to MyTracks Learning we have not been able to actually discuss what it would look like to require mandatory training on a more frequently occurring basis. We have created a section in our Confluence Policies and Info section that records which employees took the required trainings and when.