ABOUT DIVERSITY AT MIZZOU
Our Progress: 2006–2010
In May 2008 approximately 300 students, faculty, staff and administrators came together for the first annual MizzouDiversity Summit. Participants in the first MizzouDiversity Summit engaged in working group discussions on a range of important topics, and administrative teams gathered to exchange best practices, challenges and ideas to address recruitment, retention, climate, curriculum, discourse, inquiry and leadership. As we prepare for the 2010 MizzouDiversity Summit we want to honor the commitment shown by those people by highlighting some of the progress that, together, we have made at MU over the last few years.
General Campus Progress
- Expanding on the university’s 2004 strategic plan, the institutional strategic plan
now under consideration will address the importance of diversity as part of the university mission and vision statements and in detailed action items within the document. The latest draft of our new strategic plan specifically states that, in order to "ensure that MU has the infrastructure and human and financial resources necessary to support innovation and excellence in teaching, research, outreach and economic development" we must "build and continually strengthen, in all University programs, a diverse, safe and inclusive culture that encourages and rewards interaction across demographic, social and interpersonal differences." - MU hired approximately 85 new tenured/tenure track and clinical medicine track faculty for Fall 2010. Of those, 19 were members of racial/ethnic minorities (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander), including 15 from under-represented minority groups.
- Additionally, seven women were hired into predominantly male STEM (sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics) departments.
- In a year with record-breaking numbers of first-time-college (FTC) students, this year’s incoming FTC class grew by 8.9 percent over last year’s class, while the number of minority students in the FTC class grew by 32.6 percent to 1,034. Minority students constitute 17 percent of the 2010 FTC class, compared to last year’s 14 percent. Overall, 12.4 percent of this year’s student body identify as members of minority racial/ethnic groups.
- MU has become a nationally-recognized leader in difficult dialogues teaching and learning. Over the last two years, 31 faculty and graduate student participants (a total of 80 since the program's inception) received professional development which improved their ability to facilitate classroom dialogue on controversial subjects related to cultural, religious and ideological pluralism and academic freedom. In Spring 2011, the MU Difficult Dialogues Program offered a course to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students to further integrate the difficult dialogues paradigm into the MU curriculum.
- Since 2008 over 300 students attended You in Mizzou, a small-group dialogue series with over 100 participants in the session about gay marriage in Missouri. The post evaluations reveal that a majority of participants believed that they learned something about themselves, or about how others differ in their views of the issues.
- The Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative created a new seminar series, Diversity in Action, highlighting the research of the nearly 200 MU faculty who currently conduct research on diversity-related topics. Faculty presentations for Diversity in Action have covered such intriguing topics as: the myth of universal values; engaging women in community change; food stamp delivery systems; Indians watching Indians on TV; West African women prophets; felon disenfranchisement laws; and white nationalism.
- The MU Equity Office, a unit of the Chancellor's Diversity Initiative, launched a new online faculty exit interview system in Summer 2010. Through the exit interviews, we are learning ways that we can improve the working environment for faculty at MU.
- MU launched the UM System-sponsored online training "Preventing Sexual Harassment" and "Preventing Employment Discrimination" which all employees are required to complete.
