A faculty committee this month took the first steps in determining how to implement the recommendations of an Academic Council-approved report promoting faculty diversity and inclusion.
Touted as a new initiative on diversity based on a strong faculty-administration partnership, the report called for each school to develop diversity plans and for expansion of the office of vice provost for diversity to oversee faculty diversity and harassment issues. (The full 53-page report can be found here.)
Some of the recommendations come with no cost and are already being implemented; several schools have already created standing diversity and inclusion committees, said Academic Council chair Nan Jokerst, who was a co-chair of the faculty committee that developed the report.
However, other recommendations will involve organizational changes and other long-range programs “that will need to be evaluated and appropriate mechanisms identified and undertaken for [its] implementation,” said Provost Sally Kornbluth. She charged the new implementation committee to “assist the provost in developing an implementation strategy for centrally driven or long-range recommendations, and for coordinating with the Executive Committee of the Academic Council to implement action items that do not require Provostial involvement and/or can be developed at the unit or faculty level.”
Kornbluth also directed the implementation committee to evaluate and prioritize the recommendations and develop a plan and timetable for implementation of each. The committee would also help to develop the job description for the new vice provost for faculty diversity, who will oversee the revamped office of faculty diversity.
The 14-member implementation committee includes both members involved with writing the diversity and inclusion report as well as others who were not. Implementation committee chair Emily Klein, professor of earth sciences, was a member of the report’s steering committee.
Other members of the committee are:
- Edward Balleisen, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and Associate Professor of History and Public Policy
- Joseph Blocher, Professor, School of Law
- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology
- Gráinne Fitzsimons, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, Fuqua School of Business
- Katherine Franz, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Chemistry
- Karla Holloway, James B. Duke Professor of English and Professor of Law and Women’s Studies
- Trina Jones, Professor, School of Law
- Benjamin Lee, Nortel Networks Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
- Noah Pickus, Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute of Ethics and Associate Research Professor of Public Policy Studies.
- Anathea Portier-Young, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Duke Divinity School
- Charmaine Royal, Associate Professor, Department of African & African American Studies
- Kathryn Whetten, Professor of Public Policy and Global Health
- Delbert Wigfall, Associate Dean for Medical Education, School of Medicine
Council Chair Nan Jokerst, J.A. Jones Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will serve as an ex officio member.
The committee held its first meeting this month and is expected to report its findings to the provost May 31, 2016.