EIC Taskforce Report

EIC Taskforce Report pdf download

Part A. Taskforce logistics

Background

The Equity & Inclusion Taskforce (EITF) was created by the Executive Committee of the Senate (ECS) as an interim measure to address existing equity and inclusion issues until the Equity and Inclusion Committee (EIC) could be assembled via regular faculty elections. (See Appendix A for the Faculty Handbook description of the EIC.) The charges to the EITF made clear that the EITF would dissolve when the EIC was assembled and began its work.

Membership

The EITF was comprised of the following members:

Regular (voting) members

  • John Bender (CHM)
  • Dave Cannon (ACT) - Fall 2016 only
  • Brandon Fitzgerald (Student Senate VP for Diversity Affairs)
  • Ella Fritzemeier (Student Senate President)
  • Abhi Ghosh (LIB/REL)
  • Karen Gipson (ECS/UAS)
  • John Golden (MTH)
  • Grace Huizinga (KCON)
  • Cael Keegan (WGS)
  • Marlene Kowalksi-Braun (AVP of I&E; AVP for Student Affairs)
  • Salvador Lopez-Arias (SW)
  • Erica Millspaugh (UL) - Fall 2016 only
  • Andrew Plague (past Student Senate President; I & E intern)

Ex-officio (non-voting) members

  • Enrollment Development: Chick Blue, Jodi Chycinski
  • Human Resources: Dev Butler
  • Provost’s Office: Suzeanne Benet
  • Inclusion & Equity: Jesse Bernal, Taran McZee, Relando Thompkins-Jones

Charges

The initial 2016-17 charges to the EITF from ECS in September 2016 were to:

  1. Consult with the LGBT Center and make recommendations for including a non-binary option on all university forms (e.g., male/female/non-binary);
  2. Plan for the Teach-in in January 2017;
  3. Work with Action Teams to recommend classroom policies;
  4. Consider other ways to prepare for the EIC to begin its work in Fall 2017. An additional multi-part charge was added in early February 2017: to take action or make recommendations for Senate action to ensure an appropriate university response to President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration.

The EITF met regularly throughout the fall and winter semesters to address the original four charges and scheduled a special meeting to address the additional charge. EITF members often organized into subgroups as appropriate to interest and expertise to most expediently address the charges. The EITF’s responses to these charges are detailed in Section B of this report, and additional recommendations to ECS/UAS appear in Section C.

Part B. Progress on Senate charges

Charge (1): Recommendations for non-binary language

  1. Members of the EITF who initially worked to address this charge (Bernal, Huizenga) carefully reviewed the documents created by the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center. It was determined that although federal regulations mandate reporting of legal sex in a “Male/Female/Unknown” format, an additional question on gender identity should be included on university forms. See summary bullet at the end of the end of Charge (1) for specific wording.
  2. Additional EITF members (Blue, Chycinski) subsequently became involved in this charge; they reported that legal sex and gender identity are not requested for Admissions applications.
  3. EITF members Blue & Bernal are currently working with the Vice President for Finance (Scott Richardson) and the Director of IT (Sue Korzinek) on a related aspect of this charge: integrating various software packages (e.g., Banner, Blackboard, etc.) so that only the preferred names and pronouns of students would be displayed. This group (called the Display Name Group) is pushing the envelope of the software packages, but Grand Valley is proud to be at the forefront of these changes.
  4. Following successful implementation of the Display Name Group’s recommendations, Human Resources will follow a similar process for faculty and staff.

-- The EITF recommends the inclusion of the following two-part, optional, sex and gender identity section on all forms that collect sex, gender, or gender identity information.

The University is committed to inclusion and equity and recognizes a broad definition of gender. For University purposes, please indicate your gender identity (select all that apply):

  • Man
  • Woman
  • Transgender
  • Non-binary
  • Not listed above, please specify: __________
  • Decline to respond

For some reporting requirements, the University is limited in reporting options for sex. For these requirements, please indicate your sex:

  • Male
  • Female
  • Decline to respond

Charge (2): Teach-in January 2017

EITF members who worked on the subgroup to address this charge were: Bender, Fitzgerald, Ghosh, Gipson, Kowalski-Braun, Plague, Thompkins-Jones. Extensive administrative support was provided by a Dean of Students PSS (Rhonda LeMieux), and additional input was solicited from the entire EITF on crucial issues. The date had already been set and rooms reserved the previous year. Some initial planning had taken place in Summer 2016, before the creation of the EITF.

  1. Planning efforts in Fall 2016 included recruiting presenters, promotion of the event, reviewing proposals and communicating with presenters, and setting the schedule.
    1. Recruiting presenters
      1. The Call for Proposals (CFP) was updated to include current logistical information and revised to make explicit that successful proposals needed to include co-presenters from two groups: faculty/staff and student/community members (EITF Teach-in subgroup). After obtaining special permission from the President’s Office, the CFP was then sent via direct email to all members of the campus community via the UAS email account (Gipson).
      2. Additional recruiting of presenters was done in the following ways: (a) direct email to past Teach-in presenters, (b) direct contact with targeted groups or individuals (such as specific departments or offices, the social justice centers, etc.) by assigned EITF members, (c) direct email to Registered Student Organizations via the Student Senate OrgSynch account, (d) creating a slide to display in key locations (KC, LIB, SCB), (e) Student Senate tabling in KC. Additional suggestions for future years include college representatives being charged with direct contact to faculty in their colleges and assigned EITF members reaching out to alumni, Housing staff and the General Education Committee.
      3. The website and online submission form were updated by I & E intern (Plague) and DOS PSS (LeMieux) to include current logical information.
      4. Session hosts were recruited from EITF, UAS (Gipson), Student Senate (Fritzemeier) and staff (Kowalski-Braun, LeMieux).
    2. Promotion of event
      1. The Teach-in was mentioned in advertisements of MLK Commemoration Week.
      2. Various materials specific to the Teach-in were distributed in the fall, including a Save the Date announcement to faculty/staff via campus mail (Kowalski-Braun, LeMieux) and email from UAS email account (Gipson).
      3. Banners and posters were updated by University Promotions Office (LeMieux) and a slide was created for display (Plague).
      4. Student Senate Twitter and tabling was done on multiple days (Fitzgerald, Fritzemeier).
    3. Review of proposals and communication with presenters
      1. Proposal submissions were compiled by I & E intern (Plague) and sent to subgroup members via email in advance of a special proposal review meeting. A list of proposals and scoring system (1=yes, 2=maybe, 3 = no) was also distributed to expedite the in person review of proposals.
      2. In the spirit of a “Teach-in”, proposals were only screened to ensure that they met the stated criteria of focusing on social justice education and including co-presenters from the required two groups (faculty/staff and students/community members). 
      3. The proposers of any proposals that didn’t meet the stated criteria or whose descriptions needed corrections (e.g., too long, multiple typos or grammar errors) were contacted (Gipson) and allowed time to make adjustments as necessary.
      4. All proposers were notified (Gipson) of their status by the stated deadline.
    4. Scheduling and final preparations
      1. In order to meet the time frame and to avoid potential overlap between presenters, one person (Gipson) was in charge of setting the schedule. From 70 proposals submitted, 58 different sessions were offered, with selected sessions offered on both campuses. (See Appendix B for overview of Teach-in program.)
      2. The schedule was then posted on the Teach-in website (Plague, LeMieux) and sent to UPO to create programs and signage (Kowalski-Braun, LeMieux). Easels were reserved for signage (LeMieux).
      3. Evaluation forms for presenters/attendees and scripts for hosts were updated (Gipson, Plague, Kowalski-Braun). Session packets containing hosting scripts and evaluation forms were prepared, and a schedule for hosts was set (LeMieux).
  2. Implementation
    1. One hosting table at each campus was staffed by DOS (LeMieux in Allendale and Stephen Lipnicki at Pew) with support from others (Gipson, Kowalski-Braun, Plague). These people posted signage, checked-in session hosts, distributed/collected evaluation packets, and provided general assistance to Teach-in participants.
    2. Session hosts opened each session with the standard script and distributed/collected evaluations for each session.
    3. Over 1300 participants were engaged via the event. There were approximately 200 presenters and over 1100 attendees.
  3. Evaluations
    1. Evaluations were tallied and results sent to session presenters (LeMieux).
    2. Results were overwhelmingly positive. The few concerns raised were regarding the timing of the event or the low number of participants in each session. (The overall attendance was approximately the same as previous years, but attendees were distributed over a larger number of concurrent sessions, resulting in a lower average attendance per session.)

-- The EITF recommends continuing the Teach-in but moving it to occur in early November.
We also recommend:

  1. outreach to the additional groups identified under section a(1)b,
  2. modifying the submission form next year to enforce a word limit for the session description (to reduce the number of revision requests) and to include a place for presenters to indicate if they are submitting multiple proposals (to facilitate scheduling the sessions), and
  3. exploring alternates to previous proposal review methods.

Charge (3): Work with Action teams to recommend classroom policies

EITF Members who worked on the subgroup to address this charge included Bender, Bennet, Bernal, Blue, Butler, Chycinski, Fritzemeier, Golden, Huizenga, Keegan, Kowalski-Braun, Lopez-Arias, Thompkins-Jones. (Gipson and Plague joined this subgroup after Charge (2) was complete.)

  1. This group had much good discussion on principles of inclusion, best practices, and related issues, resulting in the various recommendations to ECS/UAS in Part C of this report.
  2. t was uniformly agreed that this is a significant task that EIC should continue working on in 2017-18.

-- The EITF recommends continuing this charge into 2017-18.

Charge (4): Recommendations for 2017-18 EIC

In addition to the separate recommendations for each of charges (1) – (3) above, EITF recommends that the EIC make the following issues topics of high priority in 2017-2018:

  1. Distinguish between I & E & EIC’s roles, in order to best interface without duplication of efforts. Also explore similar considerations regarding the work of FTLC.
  2. Review Faculty Handbook for inclusivity of policies and consistency with strategic plan (using a rubric developed by I & E).
  3. Collaborate with individual colleges to encourage review of college-level policies and practices for inclusivity.
  4. Create a website with resources. This website could include links to I & E, FTLC, national organizations, best practices for inclusive classrooms 1
  5. Examine institutional barriers to inclusion across Academic and Student Affairs. Work with I & E to examine current infrastructure for hidden discrimination (e.g., encourage holistic assessments rather than only secondary admissions based solely on GPA).

Additional charge regarding President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration

A special meeting was called to address this additional charge. There was much productive discussion, but the EITF felt that no action was necessary due to (a) the courts overturning the EO, (b) President Haas signing onto the AAC&U resolution, and (c) concerted efforts to reach out to affected campus community members by existing campus entities (such as HR, PIC, etc.)

Part C. Additional recommendations to ECS/UAS

The EITF also recommends that ECS/UAS take the following actions in as expeditious manner as possible:

  1. Include the Director of the FTLC (or designee) and the Dean of Students (or designee) as ex-officio members of the EIC. (See Appendix C for recommended new committee membership.)
  2. Include a new question on LIFT: “How would you describe the learning environment?”
  3. Mandate diversity training for all faculty and staff: a. I & E trainings for unit heads & deans; b. Online training for faculty & staff (similar to Title IX, Cybersecurity online modules).
  4. Include staff on UAS committees as appropriate. We especially recommended two specific examples: a. Include the Chair of the AP Committee as an ex-officio member of UAS. b. Include representation from the AP Committee and the PSS Union as regular members of the EIC. (See Appendix C for recommended new committee membership.)
  5. Continue to advocate for an Ombuds Office for faculty and staff.

Appendix A

2.01.A.4.g. Equity and Inclusion Committee

  1. Faculty Membership: Faculty membership of the Equity and Inclusion Committee consists of four members from CLAS, one from each of the remaining colleges, and one from the university libraries. The term of office is three years beginning at the end of the winter semester. Terms are staggered.
  2. Student Membership: One undergraduate & one graduate appointed by Student Senate
  3. Administrative membership (ex-officio):
    • Vice President for Inclusion and Equity (or designees)
    • Provost (or designees)
    • Vice President for Enrollment Development (or designees)
    • Associate Vice President for Human Resources (or designees)
  4. Responsibilities: The role of the EIC is to promote and facilitate faculty involvement in support of a healthy and equitable campus climate. The committee accomplishes its role by engaging social justice and diversity issues on campus, including but not limited to:
    1. Advising UAS on policies and practices to recruit, support and retain a diverse faculty, staff, and student body (e.g., reviewing the Affirmative Action Plan on an annual basis).
    2. Organizing and running events to promote awareness of the importance of social justice and campus diversity (e.g., the Teach-in).
    3. Identifying faculty for the various university awards related to diversity.
    4. Fostering faculty involvement in student recruitment and retention efforts (e.g., working with pipeline, bridge, student support, and curricular programs).
    5. Serving as a liaison with the Division of Inclusion & Equity and Student Senate Diversity Affairs Committee.

Appendix B: Teach-in program

PDF version of Teach-in program

Appendix C: Changes to EIC recommended by EITF

2.01.A.4.g. Equity and Inclusion Committee

  1. Faculty Membership: Faculty membership of the Equity and Inclusion Committee consists of four members from CLAS, one from each of the remaining colleges, and one from the university libraries. The term of office is three years beginning at the end of the winter semester. Terms are staggered.
  2. Student Membership: One undergraduate & one graduate appointed by Student Senate
  3. Staff Membership
    • One representative from the AP Committee (elected by the membership)
    • One representative from the PSS Union (elected by the membership)
  4. Administrative membership (ex-officio):
    • Vice President for Inclusion and Equity (or designees)
    • Provost (or designees)
    • Vice President for Enrollment Development (or designees)
    • Associate Vice President for Human Resources (or designees)
    • Director of Pew Faculty and Learning Center (or designee)
    • Dean of Students (or designee)
  5. Responsibilities: The role of the EIC is to promote and facilitate faculty involvement in support of a healthy and equitable campus climate. The committee accomplishes its role by engaging social justice and diversity issues on campus, including but not limited to:
    1. Advising UAS on policies and practices to recruit, support and retain a diverse faculty, staff, and student body (e.g., reviewing the Affirmative Action Plan on an annual basis).
    2. Organizing and running events to promote awareness of the importance of social justice and campus diversity (e.g., the Teach-in).
    3. Identifying faculty for the various university awards related to diversity.
    4. Fostering faculty involvement in student recruitment and retention efforts (e.g., working with pipeline, bridge, student support, and curricular programs).
    5. Serving as a liaison with the Division of Inclusion & Equity and Student Senate Diversity Affairs Committee.

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