Current Initiatives

UNLV Diversity Initiatives Progress Report
Presented by Dr. David B. Ashley, UNLV President
Chancellor's Roundtable
October 30, 2007

Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Hire
After a national search, UNLV hired Dr. Christine Clark as its first Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion. Dr. Clark came to UNLV from the University of Maryland, College Park when she was the Executive Director of the Office of Human Relations Programs, the equity compliance and diversity education arm of the Office of the President for the last eight years. Among Dr. Clark's professional accomplishments, she is also a two-time Fulbright Scholar, on the editorial boards of Multicultural Perspectives and Multicultural Education, the current and founding journals of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), and communications chair for the Critical Educators for Social Justice (CESJ) special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.

Institutional Development Grant Awards
Dr. Clark, in partnership with Dr. Juanita Fain, Vice President for Planning, has identified ten diversity-related Institutional Development Grant [link to http://president.unlv.edu/idg/] proposals for funding. These proposals are being funded in a collaborative way, to promote partnership building, grouped into two large project areas, each with seed funding of $150,000. One will support the development of a new Research Center for the Study of Race, Class, and Social Justice, the other a new Institute for Multicultural Education & Diversity Training. A reception in recognition of the awardees in both areas will be held on November 27, 2007 from 2-3:30 p.m.

Diversity Programming Manager Hire
Dr. Clark has hired a new Diversity Programming Manager, Ms. Elaina Bhattacharyya, previously of the Nevada Small Business Development Center. Ms. Bhattacharyya comes to the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion with a wealth of knowledge about Las Vegas, and a wealth of experience in communications, marketing, public relations, and planning, and a strong commitment to the work of diversity and inclusion. Ms. Bhattacharyya is coordinating UNLV's, NSC's, and CSN's tri-campus "identity month" programming efforts, inclusive of expanding these efforts beyond their current race and gender focus, to include attention to disability issues, LGBT issues, and religious, faith-based, spiritual and secular issues. She is also working with the Joint Chambers (Asian, Latin, Native American, and Urban), to integrate their event calendars with the tri-campus calendar of events.

Minority Faculty Recruitment Workshop Stipend
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, the Office of the President, the Office of the Senior Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, and the Office of the Vice President for Planning, are partnering with interested Deans and Department Chairs to make it possible for at least one faculty member from each academic department to attend a minority faculty recruitment workshop detailing best practices for demographically diversifying the faculty ranks across disciplines. This workshop will be held on campus on November 16, 2007 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will be customized for the UNLV community.

Minority Faculty Retention Audio-Conference & Mailing
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion is hosting a one-hour audio-conference on mentoring minority faculty in which up to fifty faculty members, department chairs, and/or college and school deans — who are interested in identifying key minority faculty mentoring strategies that best support the department's minority faculty retention effort — may participate.
This workshop will be held on campus on October 16, 2007 from 10-11 a.m.

The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion is also mailing out a copy of the entire "Diversity in the Academe" insert to the September 27, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education focusing on retention of faculty of color in higher education to all department chairs and deans as a resource for them to consult in their on-going minority faculty mentoring efforts.

UNLV Leadership Conversations with Faculty of Color
Members of the President's Cabinet along with Associate Vice Provosts, campus Deans, the chair of the Faculty Senate, the chair of the university-wide level promotion and tenure review committee, and strategic others (see below) have been invited to attend a series of four "UNLV Leadership Conversations with Faculty of Color." Each Conversation is dedicated to the discussion of a different topic of utmost importance for faculty of color on the UNLV campus. The focus of each conversation is to develop awareness of the concerns faculty of color have in each topic area, and then to develop concrete strategies for addressing and, hopefully, resolving these concerns.

All four Conversations will be held from 11 a.m to 1:30 p.m., with lunch being served from 12:30-1:30 p.m. All four conversations will be held on Fridays to facilitate faculty in being able to attend. Conversation dates and topics are as follows:

(additional invitees to this session will include: the new Associate Vice Presidents for Strategic Communications and Human Resources)

(additional invitees to this session will include: the Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate College, the Associate Vice President for Enrollment and Student Services, the Executive Director for Enrollment Management, the Director and Assistant Director of Recruitment, and the new Associate Vice Presidents for
Strategic Communications and Human Resources)

(additional invitees to this session will include: the new Associate Vice Presidents for Strategic Communications and Human Resources)

Admissions
Dr. Clark, in partnership with Dr. Suzanne Espinoza, our new Associate Vice President for Enrollment and Student Services, as well as representatives from our faculty senate, is working on developing a more diversity-sensitive admissions process that integrates all NSHE and BOR requirements, at the same time that it is uniquely-responsive to UNLV's diversity and inclusion priorities and, concomitantly, UNLV's current and target student population, broadly considered. This effort involves partnership with, and articulation between and across, CCSD, CSN, NSC, and UNLV admissions, counseling, and diversity personnel.

Recruitment
Dr. Clark and Dr. Espinoza, with the additional expertise of Mr. Earnest Phillips, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, and Ms. Maria Marinch, from Language Sources, will be unveiling a new Spanish-language recruitment brochure designed especially for the guardians of first generation Latina/Latino college students, as well as for these students themselves They will be developing similar publications targeting other underrepresented student populations and their families in the near future.

Dr. Clark and Dr. Espinoza have also collaboratively developed and officially vetted a "Statement of Commitment to the Recruitment of Diverse Students" to the university.

Additionally, the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion is partnering with CCSD, CSN, and NSC on revisioning and strengthening the AVID Youth Summit, a twice-yearly college experience program that serves approximately 1000 late middle and early high school students. The first installment of this new program iteration will occur on Wednesday November 28, 2007. Previously, this was a half-day program that occurred four times a year. Students came to the UNLV campus but were sequestered in one room for rotating lecture sessions. With the program revisions, students will spend an entire day on campus during which they will learn how to apply to college, be given financial aid information, create their own course schedule, attend a class, partner with a current UNLV student "buddy" to complete a campus tour that has a "quest" competition component built into it, and learn about campus diversity programs. In the next year, this program will be further expanded to a two-day program where students will stay over night in the UNLV dorms — girls with their moms, and boys with their dads — and then tour the NSC and CSN campuses on the subsequent day. The mother-daughter and father-son components of this program build on similar successful programs at ASU and in the UT system. These programs have 65% or greater success rate in encouraging both the students and their parents to go on to college and graduate within six years.

Community Building
Dr. Clark has been meeting with a host of individuals and groups, both on campus and in the larger community, in order to become more knowledgeable about the array of diversity-related initiatives taking place, with an eye toward building strategic partnerships to enhance the goals of and objectives of diversity and inclusion at UNLV, in Las Vegas, throughout the state of Nevada, and nationally.

Cabinet Diversity Training
Dr. Clark is organizing a diversity training for all members of the UNLV President's Cabinet for Thursday, January 10, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The theme of the training is "Building Leadership Capacity to Support Diversity and Inclusion." The training will be co-facilitated by a team of 5-7 nationally known trainers, comprised of at least one UNLV trainer, one Las Vegas trainer, and three out-of-state trainers. The session will focus on understanding and interrupting the impact of unconscious bias in leadership decision-making.



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