The MSU Diversity and Inclusion Framework, embedded in the strategic plan, Choosing Promise, delineates intentional actions meant to guide the university’s diversity efforts. The College of Letters & Science is also engaged in this work and, in the fall of 2020, Dean Idzerda convened a CLS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. This newly formed committee created three sub-committees that focused on communication, community, and department listenings sessions.

In Spring 2021, the listening subcommittee met with 12 departments (Native American Studies will be scheduled for Fall 2021) and 2 programs, American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, in the College. Members of the subcommittee included Bridget Kevane, Beth Burroughs, Jamie McEvoy, Dan Flory and Jelani Mahiri. Graduate students Chloe Wasterly and José Sánchez also participated. The purpose of these sessions was to gather information about department initiatives, challenges and goals for diversity. We wanted to hear about curriculum, hiring goals, and the general environment in each department and how the department (faculty, staff, instructors, and students) could contribute to strengthening diversity in the College. Further, we wanted to hear about how the CLS could support departments in their vision for diversity at the local level.  

Likely due to the format of the meetings, a greater percentage of faculty participated in the departmental listening sessions than did instructors, staff, and students. Our findings may be skewed, then, to the faculty perspective. Most departments expressed a real desire and commitment to advancing diversity while, at the same time, expressing concerns about the University’s and the CLS’s commitment toward allocating resources and support to departments in order to achieve DEI goals. Put another way, in the absence of sustained resources faculty are not incentivized to engage in DEI initiatives. Questions raised by several departments capture some of the ambivalence around these efforts:

  • What does successful change look like to the CLS’s DEI mission?
  • What are the CLS’s actionable metrics?
  • What resource investments will be committed to DEI initiatives for structural change?

Despite uncertainty around resources, common elements emerged that most departments considered critical to advancing diversity: BIPOC hiring, curricula innovations, staff and faculty trainings, community building, and leveraging existing resources. We summarize what we heard around each of these common themes below.

This summary of the listening sessions is not comprehensive but rather is meant to provide a snapshot of some of the common themes shared by departments. From these themes, the CLS DEI committee hopes the CLS Dean and leadership team will articulate actionable goals for the College. We provide some recommendations in each area. We do recognize that diversity work is very complex, constantly evolving, and that it requires strong collaboration among numerous partners within the College and at the institutional and state level. The work cannot be done in isolation but rather must be both vertical and horizontal. In the end, most departments understand that work around DEI endeavors require focused and sustained action with benchmarks and goals that involve the whole CLS community and that it will not be overnight.

Hiring

Diversity hiring was the number one area discussed in the listening sessions. Departments view prioritizing the hiring of diverse candidates as critical for advancing diversity within the College. “We need to change the face of the faculty and staff,” said one faculty member.

While many departments enthusiastically embraced the goal of BIPOC hires, they were uncertain about the structures that the university, and to a lesser extent CLS, would put in place to advance this goal. Without those structures, many thought the challenges in attracting BIPOC faculty would not yield positive results. A few departments were frustrated by the fact that the inclusive hires were cancelled or set aside without any communication about the future of these hires. These departments asked for a clarification from Montana Hall about what the institutional commitment to diversity hires is, and how it is being implemented.

Recommendations:

  • To address the lack of diversity within the Bozeman and MSU community, many departments asked about the possibility of cluster hires which could be leveraged to strengthen existing fields such as WGSS and new ones such as Africana Studies while also creating a collaborative faculty cohort. Some departments suggested that cluster hires should be a priority. (*Below we provide sample language of how a university can advertise cluster hires.)
  • Other ideas around hiring revolved around how to best create a pipeline for tenure track hires, how to target graduate students, post-docs, or recruit earlier than the normal hiring cycles.
  • Other solutions offered by departments included creating an ADVANCE type institutional commitment to hiring TT faculty of color/ diversity, targeting candidates early in their careers, building and/or improving relationships with HBCUs and black land-grant universities, and improving start-up packages.

Curricula Innovations

The committee noted that several departments in the humanities and social sciences stated that diversity is already embedded in their major or minor and thus they have always been engaged in this work. Others, realizing that DEI work in their fields and curricula must be explicitly addressed, have established DEI department committees. A couple of departments  have created their own DEI plan.

While many faculty would like to modify, enhance, or revamp their courses to be more inclusive, they expressed hesitancy about moving forward due to a lack of resources and the time provided for this endeavor. The committee hears and recognizes that embracing the goal of creating more inclusive content in course offerings is not something that can be done without significant research and time to make thoughtful changes. We suggest ongoing curriculum development initiatives like the grants offered this summer. Listed below are a few of the comments that we heard:

  • Africana Studies is great but with limited resources what is its future?
  • We can add DEI courses, but does an increase follow to base budget?
  • We can add DEI courses, but how do we find instructors?
  • Can specific DEI efforts be reflected in Activity Insight?

Recommendations:

The committee heard the following suggestions for advancing DEI curricula:

  • Incentives for curriculum development
  • Removing obstacles to cross-listing courses
  • Making visible/ marketing classes that already focus on themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion

Staff and Faculty Training

Departments identified specific training opportunities they would like CLS to sponsor:

  • More CFE trainings on how to address white neo-nazi chatter in classroom
  • Conflict management in classroom
  • Implicit Bias in reviewing TT or NTT applications
  • Micro-aggressions in the classroom
  • How to negotiate hostile political climate in classroom
  • More trainings like Safe Zone, Diversity Certificate, IEFA

Recommendations:

The committee notes that these trainings are offered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Center for Faculty Excellence. Partnering with Ariel Donohue and her office as well as CFE to offer trainings specifically designed for CLS or making sure that opportunities for trainings are communicated to the CLS community may be key. In addition, because the CLS DEI has developed a monthly newsletter, they are committed to further highlighting trainings. The committee also will recommend in the newsletter that departments ask for trainings designed specifically for their individual needs or desires.

Community Building

The committee heard from departments that MSU appeals to a certain demographic at the expense of underserved populations: the outdoor ski type. Recruitment, often targeted to highlight outdoor recreational opportunities, limits opportunities to speak to and recruit a diverse population. Emphasizing and building upon other aspects of the Bozeman and MSU community in promotional materials, etc., is recommended. 

In addition, in terms of recruiting and creating community for BIPOC students, some departments felt the data related student demographics in their majors and minors was difficult to find and to use. For example, MSU reports international students as one category, so international students of color are difficult to count. Departments expressed that resources to create community for BIPOC students are limited. They wanted easy access to student information to create a more inviting space for BIPOC students in their home departments.

Recommendations:

Departments offered these solutions to helping build a more diverse and equitable community within the College:

  • Creating a grad student area for diversity (As a note, the Chemistry Department has an incoming graduate cohort that is the most diverse in it’s history. They both want to celebrate that achievement and make sure that the incoming students feel welcome.)
  • Having Departments conduct their own community surveys (The committee notes that the departments will need the proper resources and training for these surveys to be effective. However, we believe that the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Office of Planning and Analysis can help with that development and training.)
  • One very important question did arise during the listening sessions: How do we reconcile inclusive environment and a gun climate? (The committee assumes that there will be some training around this from the institution.)

Leveraging Existing Resources

Departments believed that existing resources such as WGSS, American Studies, the BIPOC and LGBTQ student communities could be leveraged more effectively. WGSS is underfunded and has a proven track record in terms of student interest. In addition, individual faculty and some NTTs expressed that they are underutilized in DEI efforts in the sense that their work is not know to the larger university community.

Recommendations:

  • Conduct a feasibility study for WGSS. Could it add Queer Studies? Could it become a major under American Studies?
  • Continue to highlight and promote individual faculty or NTT research focused on DEI on the new DEI webpage and in the newsletter.
  • Consider creating a DEI CLS award.

Challenges

The committee noted three issues were consistently identified as challenges for MSU and the College of Letters and Science in advancing DEI goals. Although some of these have come up already, we believe that they are enough of a concern to repeat:

  • Housing. The cost of housing and unavailability of housing in Bozeman and surrounding areas work against our DEI efforts and impact graduate student, staff, and faculty.
  • Salary. The low salary for graduate students (stipend), staff, and faculty, relative both to housing expenses and nationally, work against our DEI efforts and impact graduate student, staff, and faculty.
  • Predominantly White Institution. Because MSU is a predominantly white institution, MSU community members who are Black, Indigenous, or are People of Color have expressed concern related to the culture at MSU. The Black Student Union in particular has expressed its concerns around the lack of academic programming to reflect their culture. The committee notes that the BIPOC committee has established metrics to change this at MSU but recognized that it remains difficult to recruit more BIPOC students, staff, or faculty because we are predominantly white institution without a proven track record with regard to curricular diversity in the academia.

Conclusion

The committee noted that while for the most part CLS faculty, students, and departments believe in the importance of diversifying the university and college, that while they want to be proactive, they don’t believe they have all the tools necessary to implement the goals. Further,  it is not clear what the principle goals are for the College. Is it hires? Is it curricular changes? Is it diversifying student body? Staff?

What remains clear is that budgetary decisions and a planning document with specific focus areas and benchmarks will be key determining factors in pursuing infrastructure changes such as hiring and innovative curricular reform within the CLS.

*Example of Cluster Hire Language

At Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, the College of Liberal Arts launched an effort to increase faculty and curricular diversity by hiring scholars from various fields linked by research, teaching, and service around diversity and equity. This college-wide DEI Cluster Hire, resulted in hiring a diverse group with backgrounds in Multicultural Psychology, Ethnic American Literature, Queer Studies, etc. After seeing the success in the college, the university decided to launch a university-wide cluster hire, which lead to a cohort of hires across the university