May 2021 Minutes

MSU Diversity Council

May 20, 2021

1:30-3:00 pm

WebEx

1. Welcome
2. Approval of minutes from April 15 meeting—no corrections.
3. Subcommittee report: Campus Climate
   Members: Marianne Brough, Bradford Watson, PJ Diamond, Kyla Bush
   1. PJ and Bradford: Highlights—thinking about the upcoming survey; will administer March 2022.
      Implemented by the office of planning and analysis, recognizing and collecting data as it pertains to
      constituencies on this campus. Thinking about how to analyze and use data to inform action items and
      how to collect quantitative vs. qualitative data. How can we better use qualitative data? The impacts
      come with the stories accompanying that data—how can we use that information to move forward?
      Collect quantitative data from a large group, use smaller groups to collect qualitative data. When does
      the data get reported? What are actions planned or implemented? If the survey is in March, is the
      reporting is in the fall? Do students remember participating and is it meaningful?
   2. Thinking about having a Day of Dialogue, welcoming specific groups to have connection spaces, eliciting anecdotal information. Creates new relationships between faculty, staff, and students. Day of dialogue is not about data collection, but about workshops and discussions, lectures, celebrations; education about who we are and how we become inclusive.
   3. Previous campus climate survey—previously had a sample of students, faculty, and staff. Can we invite
      whole campus to participate, can we oversample minority groups? From the student perspective—can
      we incentive participation in quantitative and qualitative? Champ change?
   4. Becca Belou—last time 4,000 students, 1,000 faculty and staff. We could increase those numbers. It
      may have been rushed, we didn’t want to over-survey. Next time we could include more students. ADP
      members are trying to think of ways to drum up excitement about the survey—ie raffles. We can
      oversample underrepresented populations.
   5. Liz Greenfield—doing some qualitative data collection in JABS next year. Conducted by American
      Marketing Association—student organization on campus
      (https://www.amamontanastate.org/consulting). Part of the “JEDI” mission.
   6. PJ—Athletics might be another group that we want to collect data from separately. 
4. Subcommittee report: Education and Scholarship
   Members: Michael Lee, Liz Greenfield, Mayuri Singh, Alison Harmon
   1. Liz Greenfield—our subcommittee is in an advisory role, developing ideas. Subcommittee is threefold:
      Engagement—creating further engagement and awareness; streamline processes that are decentralized; identify gaps; map out what is happening on campus; marketing for web site; make events more visible; connecting the dots on information, creating an automated system to show publications and presentations about DEI work. Is there someone in Communications who is assigned to DEI work?
   2. Scholarship/Research—panels, showcases, library publishing research that can be highlighted for DEI
      focus, showcase and use the new knowledge created. Scholarship is not funding from the foundation,
      but research and creative activity
   3. Training and Teaching—DEI work begins with us/you; if I am an expert, I can lend that expertise all over campus. Assessing MSU curriculum and what it has to offer DEI. Data mining exercise.
      Changing the name of the subcommittee so that it reflects “teaching, scholarship and engagement”.
   4. Michael—could this subcommittee help raise awareness about the campus climate survey and day of
      dialogue? Is there a link to the results of the previous climate campus survey.
      https://www.montana.edu/diversity/data/index.html
   5. Bradford—engagement indicates mutually beneficial activities, outreach on and off campus
   6. Michael—will subcommittees be transparent on the website, to the public. We will have our own web
      page? Our minutes are public, agendas are public.
5. Subcommittee report: Access and Success
   Members: Kimberly Anderson, Brennan Reeves, Bridget Kevane
   1. Bridget—we had one meeting with Ariel to define what our role is, and the conversation was preliminary. Two general themes: 1) giving people (students) the space (physical or virtual) they need to have dialogue and be together; 2) access and finances
   2. Space: For example, there is not specific international student hub for student groups to meet etc.
   3. Bridget—reaching out to communities that do not see MSU as their place; what admissions is doing to
      connect with different communities that we aren’t accessing (local Hispanic community)
   4. Megan (for Kim Anderson)—serves on a committee (the Pipelines Analysis Group) to think about the
      student pipeline and enrollment; Thinking about how we might target our tuition waivers to increase
      access for students from underrepresented groups. How can we leverage funding?
6. Public Comment
   No public comment
   
   Next meeting: Fall 2021, 3rd Thursdays of the month at 1:30 pm