Faculty Council Committee Corner: Ethnic and Minority Affairs
Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing CU Connections series in which the Faculty Council highlights each of its committees and their efforts. See past installments here.
The Faculty Council Ethnic and Minority Affairs Committee (EMAC) has prioritized connecting with and developing strong understandings and working relationships with individuals, teams, committees and groups who consider the concerns of, and advocate for, CU’s ethnic minority faculty.
We believe these efforts give us a longer reach, deeper connection, and power in numbers. But we sense there are many “unsung heroes” that our committee and the larger CU community may be unaware of. We’d like to know about you and partner with you to help advocate for and meet the University of Colorado’s diversity goals. Below, you will find the link to a short poll that will help us to connect with you.
Throughout the year, EMAC has made progress toward our goals through several other actions. When the presidential search commenced, EMAC wrote a memo of support to the Board of Regents to include Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Brenda J. Allen on the Presidential Search Committee. We believed in the “importance of including one of CU’s Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) on the Presidential Search Committee in order to practice Regent Law Article 10: Nondiscrimination. The CU system has committed itself to diversity and each CU campus has incorporated inclusivity and diversity in its strategic plan in some form. Including a CDO on the Presidential Search Committees would help ensure that this commitment to diversity and inclusion be communicated to candidates as well as the larger CU Community.” Although our request was denied, we believe that it has paved the way for the CU Faculty Council and EMAC to recommend the inclusion of a CDO on future Presidential Search committees.
To show appreciation for and build community among CU’s faculty of color, we have budgeted for and planned appreciation luncheons for each campus. We partnered with the CU Boulder Faculty of Color group, the Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) Diversity Committee, and the LEAP office to host a faculty of color appreciation luncheon on Nov. 2, 2018, on the Boulder Campus. Similar efforts are underway for CU Anschutz this spring. CU Denver and UCCS will have their EMAC-hosted appreciation luncheons in the 2019-2020 senate year.
Thus far in the 2018-2019 senate year, EMAC hosted key administrators at our monthly meetings, including UCCS’s chief diversity officer Dr. Andrea Herrera (Sept. 7, 2018); Dr. Bob Boswell, vice chancellor and chief diversity officer (Oct. 5, 2018); vice president, university counsel and secretary of the Board of Regents, Patrick O’Rourke (Dec. 7, 2018); vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion on the CU Denver and CU Anschutz campuses, Dr. Brenda J. Allen (Feb. 1, 2019); Dr. Carlos Duarte, co-chair of the UCCS Faculty Minority Affairs Committee (March 1, 2019); and Dominic Martinez, senior director of the CU Anschutz Office of Inclusion and Outreach (April 5, 2019). We plan to meet with Carissa Smith, chair of the CU Staff Council, for more connections and collaboration opportunities.
These efforts help us to understand each campus’s diversity plans and challenges, and open avenues for partnership opportunities with individuals and groups from each campus so that we advance our – and your – missions and goals.
Take our poll to connect with the EMAC Committee
If you, your team, group, office or committee also incorporates diversity-related missions, we would love to hear from you!
From this survey, we would like to create an informal directory that lists individuals or groups who work to advance the university’s diversity goals.
We would like to know: how to contact you, what you (or your team) are working on, what kind of supports you need, whether you have opportunities for partnerships, and how we can get in touch with you. Please answer these questions in this short Qualtrics poll: