Nathaniel Bachelder
Hello all! I have been in Portland much of the last week. I am still trying to look for people to do the video. Next week I am going to meet with a bunch of people to do some pre-video interviews and also try to get some more leads on good people to have on the video. If you know of any one, especially someone with the 'negative' or neutral view, please put them in contact with me. Thanks!
Jessica Billingslea
No update reported
Spencer Hamlin
In Mongolia (still havin' a blast)
Jason Mak
This week I've been scheduling many appointments with people who are seemingly on vacation...but I did meet with Carla Gary to go over my recommendations and narrow them down. I will be meeting on Thursday morning with Stephanie Carnahan (of Student Life) and Kirk Koenig of Admissions. I have also done alot more research on other universities diversity initiatives. I have learned that Oregon St. has rewritten their University mission statement to include statements on diversity and civic responsibility. hmmm. Fancy that. I'd hate to be out done by DA Beavers. Our mission statement as it stands is very weak and needs to be rewritten. Also, the University homepage has almost nothing linked to diversity on the campus...can't this be changed fairly easily? We should put the statement of respect on there as soon as it is done. Also, I've been looking into a written INSTITUTIONAL PLAN for Diversity which includes a 1)leadership statement which has a vision of what we want the university to be 2) long term and short term goals for the institution 3) a TIMETABLE for implementation 4) Coordination and responsibility 5) MONITORING and ACCOUNTABILITY (an audit of diversity)
Take a look at Penn St for a really good example :
http://www.lions.psu.edu/diversity/framework/
or Michigan State's "IDEA"
http://www.msu.edu/access/ideaone.html
Huy Ong
No update reported
John Riordan
I met with Camilla Mortensen, PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, who teaches WR 121/122 classes (as well as some other courses). We met mainly regarding the writing classes. - Do y'all remember the fond memories of those 121 days? - Anyway, one major thing is that we interns (I) may be able to influence the fall Comparative Lit. Conference. This conference is attended by all who are currently teaching or will be teaching WR 121/122. There are two different specific ways that I may be able to get involved in this conference. Please inquire, if interested?
Anne and I did some brainstorming on Institutionalizing our work, and what comes after the summer. I think we have some ideas that we should all talk about and then break it down to some specific ways of answering these questions. The following 'brainstorm' has a bit to do with what we talked about.
I am still just starting to bring together all of the ideas and recommendations that I've come across.
That's about all worthy of reporting.
*(brainstorm)* I believe there are a series of meetings that we should conduct:
- a couple of meetings with Dave Frohnmeyer (one with Mosely & Williams
-
updating him on what we have done, getting feedback, finding out some
basic ideas he has, and trouble shooting.
- then, with Dave's/Admin. input, meet with the Deans - little more
formal, but solicit their input, etc.
- any members of FAC, University Senate who are around.
**random idea from Jason: we should talk to Regents and the Board of
Trustees about all of our issues. good idea, eh?! alright JMak!
Missy Rock
This past week I met with only a couple of people. The one's I need
to meet with soon seem to be out of town on vacation (ie/ Provost Mosely).
Anyway, I met with Law Professor Robin Morris Collin about some of the
Diversity initiatives and research we are doing this summer. Particularly
I mentioned the email/meeting that John made note of in his last update
regarding the Law School's status on diversity and works in that area at
the Law School. She disagreed that the Law School was at a stage which
could be used as a University-wide model for diversity. She invited John
to do a follow up meeting with her regarding these specific issues. Particularly
she pointed out that Scholarships in general as well as for students of
color/ diversity, do not exist. She did note that they probably have the
one of the most diverse faculty mixes on campus, but that it could still
be improved - especially the climate to retain faculty of color. Another
thing she mentioned was a tangent, but pertinent to our overall work: There
is very high # (nationally) of African American PhD's in the area's of
Education, but that we still have few to none in our University's College
of Education. A bit of a discrepancy.
Another meeting I had was with a couple of people from OMA - Carla Gary,
Randy Choy, Linda Liu, & Consuela Zumwalt. This was a very productive
meeting to update the OMA staff on what has been going on overall with
the internships and where they might be headed. We had good conversations
about our goals and objectives - and about how to continue the work after
the summer. They were in support of continuing the internships throughout
the school year. They also voiced support for any other info or help we
needed of them. They are very interested in staying in touch with what
is currently going on and how it will all continue - seconded that there
is a need to institutionalize the efforts that have been started this summer.
Jennifer Rosen
*I found out that both the general and department course evaluations
will be changed in the near future so I am now looking into what sort of
committee will be set up to deal with those changes. I am planning to try
and get one of the people who hopefully will be continuing our work to
be a part of that decision making process. I will be talking with the department
heads over the next few weeks to see how they feel about some of the changes.
*I have run into a few problems as far as "advertising" the courses that meet the multicultural requirement. The fliers are too expensive, I am still working on finding a sponsor for an ad in the Emerald, and I am currently working with the link to the UO homepage. The problem I keep running into is that it is unfair to promote one group of courses without promoting every single course offered at the UO. I will be meeting with the director of the office of communications as soon as possible. Also when I speak with the department heads I'm going to look into getting a link off of the department web sites to a site that lists the MC classes off of duck hunt.
*I'm also in the process of trying to get a copy of the course evaluations for the business school for all of you to see. They're very close to what I had envisioned
*Finally I'm trying to set up a meeting with Sherri Argyres who is in charge of the Pathways (FIG) to see how one goes about setting up the different subjects
So as you can see I'm in a real "in the process of" time. I'll also be meeting with my mentor and a few other people some time soon.
Jessie Wofsy
Some good stuff this week...
I think Rebecca Tobin is going to be appointed for the conduct committee next year which is great cause she is smart, vocal, and a strong student advocate. I spoke with Hong at the ASUO and it seems like formalities. Otherwise, met with Lisa F. (yes again) but we have our timeline mapped out and got her some new info. this week about cases dealing with harassment over email. Today was the first day I have gotten interested responses back from a few of the JSchool profs and GTF's about "Bias Crime Awareness Week" and Stephanie and I sat down earlier this morning and started the first planning stages of that. If it works out with JSchool projects, then we are looking at Winter Term. I am going to start taking around my Bias response Team first proposal next week to various people to have a 2-3 week re-do period.
Kathleen Workman
I don't have too much to update y'all on because I'm waiting for Patty Gwartney. She just got back from a trip and we have not been able to set up a time to get together. I have been gathering questions still, and I'm still looking for input from everybody as well. Let's do a little brainstorming on this and then I will have something to present to Patty to get a feel for the cost of this. Cost will not only depend on the amount of students, faculty, staff that we ask to participate in this assessment, but also the number of questions and the nature of the questions (the amount of work required to analyze the results). Obviously Scantron questions for the quantitative questions would be more cost effective, but there is real expense in doing qualitative studies.