Piecing Together a Diverse Duke
Initiatives underway to create a more inclusive campus culture
Look at Tom Rankin’s profile, and he is white, male, married to his wife of 8 years, and 58 years old.
He is also a Duke professor, documentarian and member of two Duke faculty job search committees.
Before Rankin began reviewing resumes for the two faculty jobs, he underwent training about unconscious bias, which includes implicit positive or negative attitudes or associations toward a person that sways choices, decisions and behavior. The training is required for all search committees in Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
During the training, which is provided by Duke’s Office for Institutional Equity, Rankin and other search committee members discussed casting a net in a diverse applicant pool by nurturing professional relationships with Duke Ph.D. graduates or attending national conferences with a focus on minority or female faculty, among other actions.
“We do risk replicating ourselves if we’re not careful,” said Rankin, a professor of the practice in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies. “If you think of it like an ecosystem, you don’t survive very well just replicating the same DNA over and over and over again.”
Following racial and homophobic incidents on campus last year, and amid a broader national discussion about race on college campuses, significant university initiatives are underway.
These include unconscious bias conversations, a focus on diversity and inclusion in the development of Duke’s new strategic plan, and the appointment of a Task Force on Bias and Hate Issues by President Richard H. Brodhead and Provost Sally Kornbluth. The task force is reviewing Duke’s policies, practices and culture as they pertain to bias and hate, and is expected to make an initial report to Brodhead and Kornbluth by mid-April.
“Intolerance and bigotry have no place in civilized community,” Brodhead told students, staff and faculty during a community forum in November. “Intolerance and bigotry have no place most specifically in a university community, and they have no welcome and will receive no welcome at Duke University as a community.”
Whether it’s a department hosting diversity workshops or an individual taking steps to learn more about her unconscious biases, areas across Duke are continuing to foster open, proactive dialogue to create a more inclusive campus culture.
Diversity: Key tenet for new ideas, creativity
A look at Provost Sally Kornbluth’s appointment calendar reveals that she’s trying to talk about diversity and inclusion every day in all corners of the campus.
She’s meeting with a search committee about a pool of job candidates. She’s attending an Academic Council meeting focused on faculty diversity initiatives. She’s talking with student groups about the campus climate.
“These conversations need be part of the day-to-day conversation,” Kornbluth said. “You have to be in it for the long haul and really be committed.”
This spring, Duke’s new Strategic Plan will be written, and a top goal is to “develop a truly diverse, inclusive and vibrant Duke community.” She said the community must recognize diversity as a key ingredient for new ideas and creativity, and while advances have been made in diversifying student populations, “our success on the faculty diversity front has not kept pace. And in both groups, we need to make the environment more inclusive.”
According to the Academic Council “Task Force on Diversity” report released last May, the percentage of black faculty at Duke increased from 3.8 to 4.4 percent from 2004 to 2013; Hispanic faculty increased from 1.8 to 2.6 percent, and Asian faculty increased from 11 to 15 percent. Regular rank female faculty increased from 30 to 36 percent during the same period.
As part of the effort to build a broad and diverse faculty community, a new Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement whose mission will focus on faculty diversity, inclusion and development will be appointed by Fall 2016. Meanwhile, this spring, all schools will create a Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee to partner with their respective dean and form a plan that includes improving mentoring and retention programs and addresses unconscious bias, faculty hiring, harassment prevention and cultural awareness.
Committees will work with the new vice provost for guidance and assessment of school diversity goals, so that each Duke school will have a customized diversity and inclusion plan, said Duke Academic Council Chair Nan Jokerst.
“The faculty, chairs and dean in each school will collaborate on a diversity and inclusion plan based upon faculty data, informed by best practices, and followed by assessment and revision, which is a great process for creating a community in which all of our members are respected and valued,” Jokerst said.
At the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, which awards nearly 80 percent of undergraduate degrees and is second in faculty size only to Duke’s School of Medicine, Dean Valerie Ashby has been visiting each department since she joined Duke last May to talk about diversity values with faculty and staff.
Unconscious bias training has been a requirement for all Trinity faculty search committee members since early 2015, and a small group of Trinity faculty is part of a pilot program that provides training around the subtleties of speech and communication in classrooms.
“Sustainable change is going to happen from folks who are going to be here day in and day out, and it’s really going to start in the faculty and in the administration,” Ashby said.
Exploring hidden biases
When Whitney Baker voluntarily took an online implicit bias test, she said it made her think about growing up in a lower-middle class household in Graham, N.C., and how despite struggling with money sometimes, she may have had more opportunities than others because she is white.
As part of the implicit bias test, which is available through Duke, Baker played a sorting game that associated photos of Asian-American and European-American faces as looking “American” or “Foreign.” Another aspect of the test examined biases regarding obesity and other identities.
“I wanted to take the implicit bias test because I know just by the nature of being a white person raised a certain way in a certain place, these things exist in my life, too,” said Baker, web design and production manager at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). “The whole idea is getting out of a place of self-judgment to improve.”
At work, Baker and other CDS staff have met for lunchtime conversations about race, gender and sexual identity issues, and last April, they invited Duke’s Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) to speak about unconscious bias.
In 2015, OIE hosted more than 20 in-person unconscious bias trainings for areas across Duke, from Undergraduate Admissions staff to Duke orthopaedic surgeons. OIE has seen more requests for unconscious bias training, which has been offered by OIE at Duke for about 13 years. Duke community members can find the online “Implicit Association Test” that Baker took as well as other resources in an OIE toolkit. OIE also offers workshops on sexual and gender diversity, generational differences, religion, and other topics.
When Benjamin Reese, vice president for Institutional Equity at Duke, leads the in-person unconscious bias training, he discloses one of his own unconscious biases. When he worked with an employee who used a wheelchair, Reese would instinctively place his hand on the back of her wheelchair, helping to push it. The employee pointed out the habit. Reese said he realized he was acting upon an implicit bias, that individuals in wheelchairs needed his help.
Being aware of personal tendencies is key to positively altering interactions in the classroom or workplace, Reese said.
“We all have first impressions,” he said. “It’s about being able to recognize and admit areas of your own personal bias so when you’re in those situations, you can be extra vigilant.”
Creating safe spaces for conversations
Visitors in Michelle Coleman’s office in the Duke Clinical Research Institute may notice the sticker on the wall next to her Duke calendar. She said she hopes the bold yellow equal sign that represents equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning individuals sends a clear message: Her office is a safe space where differences are valued.
When the Duke Clinical Research Institute, also known as DCRI, hosts diversity conversations for staff and faculty, Coleman makes it a point to attend with colleagues. During a recent workshop led by Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, Coleman shared a story about recently navigating an awkward conversation with a colleague, who was surprised that Coleman has been in relationships with men and women.
That workshop, which was part of a Diversity Lecture Series for DCRI employees, provided another safe space for Coleman and others, whether they are members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning community or not, to ask questions and share experiences.
“We don’t have to believe the same things. It’s OK to be different,” said Coleman, a budget and proposal analyst in DCRI. “At the end of the day, we’re here to do a job, so in the workplace, we all need to be accepting of each other.”
Gina Streaty, Human Resources and Organizational Learning program coordinator for DCRI, which has more than 1,300 employees, organizes the Diversity Lecture Series. She’s now planning a program about diversity of thought with Noah Pickus, director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, who will discuss how Americans define American citizenship.
“That special takeaway moment is to see people happily come into the room and sit there and say to themselves, ‘Finally, I have space. I have a place that I can be who am,’ ” Streaty said. “It’s opening up doors.”
For more diversity and inclusion events and resources, visit the Duke website.