In May of 2012, faculty and staff assembled to discuss our path moving forward relative to diversity within the college. The primary goal was to develop a diversity plan that provided specific actions we could undertake to continue to improve diversity in the college. We began by collectively defining what diversity means in the CoT, why diversity is important to us (value statement), and our purpose in focusing on it. The CoT’s diversity plan is available to download, and over the last six months we have made significant progress on the action plan we laid out.
One of the things that emerged from our day-long diversity retreat was how little people knew about what we were doing in diversity and what successes we had already experienced. Did you know the CoT had the highest percentage of African American students of all colleges at Purdue in 2011-12? Are you familiar with the programs we offer to recruit women and underrepresented minorities and which ones are having the biggest impact? What is our most successful student success program? Do you know who serves on the Diversity Committee, Diversity Coordinators Committee or what the roles of those committees are?
If the answers to these questions are unclear, you are not alone. Many at the retreat were surprised to find out the answers. And, most were surprised to learn that we have made a lot of progress relative to diversity over the last 10 years – although we humbly acknowledge we have much more work to do.
For this reason, one of the actions that our diversity plan calls for is a diversity newsletter. It is our hope to publish the newsletter three times a year to make faculty, staff, and friends of the college aware of our successes, our initiatives and activities in the area of diversity. We hope that by providing an electronic newsletter we can make everyone aware of the progress we are making in this area and to encourage the involvement of everyone as we continue to transform the culture and composition of the College of Technology.
Toni Munguia
Director of Diversity Programs
James Mohler
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Diversity
P.S. Please feel free to share items of interest with Steven Lincoln, Toni Munguia, or James Mohler to be included in future newsletters.