Office of Academic Diversity Mission Statement
The Office of Academic Diversity (OAD) works to strengthen and diversify the academic pipeline at UC Davis. It develops programming to advance the recruitment, retention, and promotion of faculty members whose research, teaching, and service advances multicultural perspectives in all fields of studies. It similarly supports programs aimed at graduate student success, especially for those students who may be the first in their family to pursue a graduate degree. Finally, the office recognizes that all undergraduate "Rising Scholars" are an invaluable campus resource, and therefore champions their success as well, primarily by spearheading the campus initiative to become a Hispanic Serving Institution.
Academic Diversity 2022-23 Impact and Goals
EMPOWERING FACULTY EQUITY LEADERS
By this we mean to engage faculty in designing their own solutions to some of the most difficult challenges they face. We hope to bring people out of their isolation in their perception of problems and to unite them into communities seeking a common understanding and deep learning from one another. We seek to combat the sense of disempowerment that comes from the fatigue and despair that these things are too hard to change, and to develop a generation of leaders within our institution who believe that change is possible. We emphasized that implementation could not rest solely with the administration—not only because of limited resources but because many of these solutions need to be faculty-driven in order to be successful.
One of major initiatives this academic year is Dialogues Across Difference, funded through a $250,000 2-year grant from UCOP, and work has already begun on a middle space between such notions as cancel culture and absolute Academic Freedom. In this third way, the institution takes some responsibility for providing guidance in learning spaces,which are the shared domain of students, instructors, and the institution. While many leaders in higher institution have issued statements or published opinion pieces on this issue, no other institution is piloting tactics for addressing it in the learning environment.
ELEVATING THE WORK OF DIVERSE FACULTY AS THEY SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS
The other projects that came out of the FRIENDS grant are related to service and most especially the service tax that many faculty members from marginalized backgrounds experience as they seek to help students. Academic Diversity has two projects running this year to address the service tax that many faculty members from marginalized communities pay as they seek to help students in their teaching and service: ENHANCE with CAMPOS and FOCUS–Faculty of California United in Scholarship. Both of these projects are about providing space, time, and money for faculty to advance their research projects.
We anticipate seeing these faculty accelerate through merit and promotions processes; more importantly, many of these scholars are working on projects related to the UN's sustainable development goals. We cannot solve global problems without ensuring that these scholars are able to do their important work.
SUPPORTING EQUITABLE ECOSYSTEMS FOR STUDENT OPPORTUNITY
In 2019, the HSI Task Force recommended hiring a director to lead our Hispanic Serving Institution initiative. Hired at the beginning of FY 2021-22, the new HSI Director, Lina Mendez arrived October 1, 2021 to focus on ambitious projects to serve our "Rising" or "At Promise" scholars. In collaboration with other partners across the DEI office and campus-wide, we are writing one of our first major grants targeting the intersection between UC Davis’s excellence in STEM and our excellence in DEI. If funded, we will be responding to other activities targeted by the HSI Task Force report, namely providing funds for college-and department-level transformation in fields such as Artificial Intelligence and Climate Science that mesh with our commitment to connecting students to research that returns benefit to their home communities.
MODELING EQUITY INCLUSION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
After many years of grant-funded programming and support, our Academic Diversity team recognizes that we can only make broad change in higher education by spreading the word about our success. In 2022-23, we are disseminating the launch of new writing projects based on our institutional efforts, with the first publication, Uprooting Bias in the Academy: Lessons from the Field (based on UC Davis's NSF-ADVANCE project), available December 2021.