Many institutions are committed to creating nurturing environments to increase diversity among their engineering students and faculty. In addition, institutionalizing diversity work can help create an inclusive and welcoming institution for students, faculty and staff. Learn how institutional climate surveys can build the rationale for institution-level action.
Why should institutions use climate surveys?
+ To drive support for diversity initiatives.
+ To meet institutional responsibility for conveying the message that diversity matters to everyone.
What is needed to conduct an institutional survey?
+ Building institutional support and funding.
+ Details of how to initiate, organize, choose an instrument, and conduct an institutional-level climate survey.
What do you get from a climate survey?
+ Specific examples of how actual data can be effective in institutionalizing diversity work that helps to create a more inclusive and welcoming institution for all students, faculty, and staff.
+ What kind of analysis should be done? Who can do it? What if the data do not show what was expected?
Our Presenters
Chris S. Anderson, Special Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity at Michigan Technological University
Chris has over 25 years of experience in developing precollege academic programs; and student/faculty diversity, retention, and support programs.
Anderson's current role at Michigan
Tech involves the establishment and ongoing development of partnerships with secondary schools, community colleges, corporations and state and national organizations that strengthen the University's outreach, recruitment, retention and graduation of underrepresented populations; and the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and staff.
The University's ongoing Climate Study is directed by Anderson and she reviews unit diversity plans with the provost and deans on an annual basis. She also helps assess Michigan Tech's progress towards towards achieving diversity goals, including fostering University participation in state and national efforts to track, measure and evaluate programs, processes, and outcomes related to diversity initiatives and student and faculty success.
Lily Gossage, Research Associate for the Office of Engineering Educational Research & Assessment at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).
Lily Gossage is the Research Associate for the Office of Engineering Educational Research & Assessment at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).
Lily's responsibilities involve studying and evaluating academic trends and practices that hinder student success and timely graduation. She develops college- and institutional-level proposals to enhance engineering student success. Her expertise involves the use of data query tools and data warehouses for tracking student performance and guiding academic planning and decision making. She assesses advising, career explorations and development, tutoring, mentoring, summer programs, and other student-related activities.
As the former Director of Engineering Recruitment & Retention for CSULB, she took the opportunity to blend her role in managing student advising and retention with K-12 outreach for strengthening the STEM pipeline.At CSULB, she is Chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, through which a gender equity and campus climate study was first initiated. She holds membership in the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Federal Asian American Pacific Council (FAPAC), and Phi Beta Delta (International Honors Society).
