A COMMITMENT TO FOSTERING DIVERSITY

THE COLLEGE OF EARTH AND MINERAL SCIENCES

2004 - 2009  Strategic Plan

August 12, 2004


TABLE OF CONTENTS

                                                                                                                                    Page

Introduction                                                                                                                 3

CAMPUS CLIMATE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS                                   5

Challenge 1:    Develop a Shared and Inclusive Understanding of Diversity              5

Challenge 2:    Creating a Welcoming Campus Climate                                              8

REPRESENTATION (ACCESS AND SUCCESS)                                     12

Challenge 3:    Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Student Body                               12

Challenge 4:    Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce                                   19

EDUCATION AND SCHOLARSHIP                                                                     23

Challenge 5:    Developing a Curriculum that Fosters Intercultural and                      23

                        International Competencies

INSTITUTIONAL VIABILITY AND VITALITY                                      30

Challenge 6:    Diversifying University Leadership and Management             30

Challenge 7:    Coordinating Organizational Change to Support Our              32

Diversity Goals

Appendix A.  EMS Strategic Objective:  To Develop a Diversity and a               36

Climate that will Empower Future Generations of Scholars


Introduction

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is committed to fostering diversity and equity.  In 2003, a revision of the College’s Strategic Plan was completed that recognizes the importance of this challenge by outlining the actions required to achieve three interrelated strategic objectives that are critical for the continuing excellence of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences:

The challenge of developing a diversity and climate that will empower future generations of scholars is both substantial and compelling. 

The disciplines within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences are of critical and enduring interest to society.  Yet, there are not enough trained Americans to fill the existing engineering, science and technology positions.  This threatens our ability to compete in the global arena, fill the future professorate, enable U.S. commerce, and provide a strong economic future for the nation.  

Women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native American Indians and persons with disabilities make up two thirds of America’s workforce, but they are a small fraction of the workforce in science, engineering and technology.  Women frequently out-compete their male peers in high school academics as well as outpacing men in earning college degrees.  Yet, only 9.8% of all American engineers are women even though women are now the majority on college campuses nationwide. 

For the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the under representation of women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native American Indians is particularly pronounced.  Historically, our disciplines have had notoriously low participation by women and by underrepresented groups.  According to a report released by the American Association of Engineering Societies, in the fall of 2002, less than only 1.1% of all the undergraduate mining engineering students, 1.6 % of all Environmental Engineering students, 2.1 % of all Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering students, 2.2% Metallurgy, and 2.0% Ceramic Engineers in the country were African American.  At the graduate level, there was not a single African American student in the nation pursuing a degree in Mining Engineering.  A recent survey of PhDs announced by the American Geophysical Union placed the broad arena of geosciences as dead last in the generation of minority-population degrees of all sciences.  A search of the CIC database on degree awardees in Earth, Atmospheric and Marine sciences yields not a single African American, Hispanic American, or Native American PhD for the year 2002/2003.  At a time in which the number of college-bound women is growing, the participation in many EMS disciplines is stagnant or even declining.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is far from reflecting the diversity of our Nation, and the demographics of our Nation and of the college-bound population are changing, as President Graham Spanier highlighted to the Board of Trustees in September of 2003.  In 2020, 65% of the population growth in the United States will be ethnic minority groups, predominately Hispanics and Asians. 

EMS must position itself to attract and enable this future generation of scholars.    Neither the fraction of, nor the trends in, traditionally underrepresented groups among students, faculty and staff are a source of pride for the College.  The statistics cited above are unacceptable for our disciplines.  The challenge for EMS is enormous, but the potential long-term consequences for the success of the College will be significant if we do not focus our energy and commitment in altering these trends.

EMS efforts are now guided by four actions developed by a College-wide task force on diversity (http://www.ems.psu.edu/news/deanfiles/archive/112202.html), fully endorsed by the faculty, and outlined as one of three key strategic objectives for the College. This strategic objective serves as a foundation for College efforts to promote diversity and equity (see Appendix A) and is intended as an enduring commitment to A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State.


CAMPUS CLIMATE AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Challenge 1:  Developing a Shared and Inclusive Understanding of Diversity

A) Defining Diversity

The College definition of diversity was written by a College Task Force on Diversity, presented to the faculty, and adopted in 2003.  It is written as a goal:

Our ultimate goal is an environment that welcomes, supports and allows all
individuals to achieve, regardless of differences with respect to age,
class, ethnicity, gender, physical ability, race, sexual orientation,
spiritual practice or other human differences.

B) Distribution of Information and Discussion of Initiatives

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is now employing multiple mechanisms for communication and discussion of initiatives and is committed to further enhancing our distribution of information and our discussions of initiatives: 

The College proposes to enhance these efforts by:

C) Diversity Committee Roles, Functions and Composition

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is committed to developing a diversity committee function predicated on the fact that promoting diversity and an enabling climate is the responsibility of all faculty and all units, not just a responsibility (or burden) for those from underrepresented groups. Many of our faculty from underrepresented groups have believed that the responsibility for continually raising issues and concerns related to diversity or serving on committees to promote diversity has been theirs alone, and many majority faculty have become accustomed to this role.  One unfortunate result of this distinction in faculty roles is “diversity fatigue” among faculty from underrepresented groups, as the responsibility is not shared among the whole. They also sense that this responsibility is “defining” their roles as faculty members.  EMS has taken several steps to ensure that addressing the College’s diversity objectives is the responsibility of all faculty and all groups.

·       The Diversity Council will take an active role in

o      developing metrics and other modes of inquiry to assess the climate within the College for faculty, staff and students and to gauge progress in achieving diversity objectives,

o      ensuring that all fully understand our definitions, goals and actions,

o      working to create a welcoming campus climate, and

o      clarifying best practices in solving climate issues, including communicating their roles as allies.

D) Role of the Multicultural Coordinator

The Multicultural Coordinator is the College’s Director of Diversity Enhancement Programs.   The Director currently serves in a number of roles including the recruitment and retention of underrepresented student groups at the undergraduate and graduate level, seeking external support for diversity programs and student scholarships, and organizing educational programs for historically underrepresented groups in science and engineering.  By operating within the EMS student Center, the Director also encourages integration and the recognition of the importance of diversity for all students. She coordinates efforts to monitor the academic progress of and mentor students in order to positively impact the academic progress of students from underrepresented groups. 

The Director of Diversity Enhancement Programs, through her development, implementation and coordination of on-campus programs, represents the College for middle school and high school students and at the community level for underrepresented groups in consultation with Minority Affairs Community Affairs.


The Director also works with faculty designing research or educational experiences for diverse groups in externally funded research projects.  EMS is represented on various college and university committees by our Director of DEP, developing and maintaining working relationships with various organizations internal and external to the University community.

The College proposes a stronger role for the Director, with greater responsibilities for overall management.

·       Director of Diversity Enhancement Programs will have greater responsibility for strategic planning and implementation of programs and activities which are central to the mission of the college.  The Director will become a member of the College leadership team (Executive Council) and will become responsible for the overall management of programs designed to recruit, retain and support outstanding and diverse pools of undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

·       The Director will collaborate with students, staff, faculty, department chairs and advising staff, the Office of the Vice-Provost for Educational Equity, Minority Affairs and Community Affairs Office of Admissions, secondary schools, private industry and donors to build a solid infrastructure, develop strong partnerships and create an effective and adaptable strategic plan for program growth and to support efforts to increase the populations of historically underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students. 

·       The Director will provide leadership and direction for College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in student services, working closely with staff, students, the University community and the broader community to recruit and retain an outstanding and diverse pool of students in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

·       The Director will take a lead role in developing metrics and other modes of assessment to ensure that the diversity and student service programs are addressing and making progress to achieve objectives.

·       The Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs will collaborate with the Office of the Associate Dean on the design and implementation of a database system for the purpose of coordinated follow-up with prospective graduate students to improve yield.

·       The Director will develop a communication strategy within the College and outside in conjunction with program mission and objectives.

·       The Director will work cooperatively with the Office of Vice Provost for Educational Equity, the Office of Graduate Educational Equity, student societies (e.g., AISES, NSBE, SHPE, SWE), and other diversity programs on campus in order to increase the impact on recruitment, retention, and graduation of historically underrepresented minorities in science and engineering disciplines and facilitate admission to graduate school, as well as placement in the public and private sector.

·       The Office of Diversity Enhancement, through the Alumni Coordinator, will work to utilize GEMS (Graduates of Earth and Mineral Sciences) as a College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Advisory Board on Diversity and Student Services to develop goals and implement strategies for continuous improvement.

Challenge 2: Creating a Welcoming Campus Climate

A) Demonstrated Commitment of Unit Leaders

The commitment by the leadership of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences to creating a welcoming campus climate is, and will continue to be, clear to members of the College community, the University community and the external community.

B) Identification and Monitoring of Climate Issues

The identification and monitoring of climate issues is a significant challenge for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.  Unfortunately, our populations of underrepresented groups are small enough that traditional surveys and assessments do not guarantee that the advice and evaluations of our faculty, staff and students will be anonymous and, therefore, sufficiently direct.  Instead, the College has made the assumption that we can do much more to improve the climate.  We have sought modes of communication to promote constructive suggestions that will enable us to provide a more welcoming environment.  We propose to continue to expand upon our efforts to identify and monitor climate issues and to take a proactive stance in providing a more welcoming environment. 

·       The EMS Diversity Council has representatives from every unit, and they take the responsibility of promoting a welcoming climate seriously.  Each individual is designated as an ally for the faculty, staff and students of each unit.  These “diversity allies” and the administrative leaders have agreed that these individuals should be reporting at unit faculty meetings.  They are also represented on the new College Council.  The College Council is composed to the student council chair, chair of the staff advisory committee, chair of the non-tenure track faculty advisory committee, faculty advisory committee, administrative representative, diversity coordinator, and is chaired by the Dean.  In addition, the Diversity Council and its activities (including their designation as allies) will be a part of the new College web page.  The objective is to improve communication, to better identify the roles and responsibilities of the Diversity Council, and to clearly indicate that the College is very interested in learning about and addressing all climate issues.

·       The College proposes, as part of our new home page design, to provide better access to materials related to the College, University, and State College region in order to facilitate and promote a sense of community and partnership.  

·       The College began a process of a college-wide climate assessment in 2003, but was advised that either the assessment would be biased or that participants would not feel free to participate honestly because of the small numbers of underrepresented faculty, staff and students.  As a result, the College abandoned these plans.  However, the College must develop better mechanisms to identify, monitor, and assess climate issues.  The EMS Diversity Council will determine the best mechanisms to assess climate issues.  However, we believe that we may not be able to employ traditional assessment mechanisms. We are currently contemplating a team of external visitors to acquire an independent assessment rather than utilizing a survey method.

C) Response to Climate Issues

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is committed to having a climate which is conducive to the success of all.   When issues arise, it is critical to have clear, publicized pathways for resolution of any issues related to climate. 

College pathways are based on the Office of Diversity Enhancement, department and institute diversity coordinators, student organizations, and the College human resources officer.  Systemic issues prompt action by the Dean and the College Executive Council.  However, the College is working to make these pathways clearer and more accessible. 

The College has also committed itself to a taking a proactive stance in improving the climate within the College and that all policies and resources are both visible and accessible.  This includes:


REPRESENTATION (ACCESS AND SUCCESS)

Challenge 3: Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Student Body

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is committed to becoming the most student-centered college in Penn State history.  This objective, one of the three major strategic planning priorities of the College, cannot be achieved without greater attention and focus on inclusiveness across the student body of our College.  Intentional efforts must be made to increase the diversity of our undergraduate and graduate population to achieve the promise of the College.  The College has made strides towards this goal.  There is a new energy and spirit in facing the critical challenges of diversifying the College. 

A) Strategies to Recruit and Retain Undergraduate and Graduate Students from Underrepresented Groups

The College and each department and institute has identified the issue of recruitment of undergraduates and graduate students, particularly from underrepresented groups, as a key priority.  A large number of activities are on-going.  These include:


In addition, the College proposes a number of new initiatives to recruit and retain a diverse student body:

B) Specific Initiatives Intended to Reduce Intergroup Disparities in Enrollment, Retention, and Graduation Rates

The College will continue to fund and support efforts to reduce disparities in enrollment, retention, and graduation.  Current efforts include:

In addition, the College proposes the following additional initiatives and events:

C) Mechanisms for Collaboration

The College prides itself on collaboration in recruiting and retaining a diverse student body.  In addition to the many collaborative activities cited above, we will continue a wide variety of activities to support this objective:

A number of additional commitments are planned for the future:

Challenge 4:  Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce

A) Locating and Recruiting Faculty and/or Staff from Underrepresented Groups

The challenge for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in locating and recruiting faculty and staff from underrepresented groups is enormous.  EMS disciplines rank at or near the bottom in terms of the diversity of the PhD populations in science and engineering, and in turn, science and engineering rank at the bottom in terms of all university disciplines.  The statistics are sobering.  More importantly, the implications for our ability to empower future generations of scholars are unacceptable.  EMS is committed to focusing our energy to alter these trends. 

In 2003, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences adopted a deliberate strategy designed to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.  Discussion of this strategy is separated into our efforts for faculty and the efforts for staff.

The strategy for faculty has a number of major elements:

Each of these key elements of a strategy to recruit faculty from underrepresented groups will continue.  We will also focus considerable resources in AESEDA for recruiting and retaining faculty.  Specifically:

In summary, the EMS efforts can be viewed as a simple yet powerful combination of strategies:  make recruitment a priority, identify funds that enable recruitment, ensure that we have the broadest possible applicant pool, and use natural strengths as a stepping stone to a diverse workforce. 

The strategy for staff is more problematic.  The College believes that the current University-wide process for hiring staff makes it difficult to develop effective strategies for recruiting underrepresented staff.  In fact, many of the strategies proposed for the faculty cannot be easily applied to the staff.  We would like to participate in a University-wide task force designed to address these issues.  The College has established recruiting staff from underrepresented groups as a priority for the College, established a staff group to develop focused “family-friendly” policies for staff, and has encouraged and promoted opportunities for staff development and advancement.  These steps alone are insufficient to recruit and retain a diverse staff workforce.

In addition, the College proposes to better utilize materials developed as part of efforts to create a welcoming campus climate (e.g. materials that describe our policies, efforts to promote community, family-friendly activities, etc) to enable recruiting of faculty, staff and students.

B) Strategies for Identification and Assessment of Credentials for Purposes of Hiring and Promotion

The College will take an active stance of identifying individuals at the start of a search process through requests for vitae, personal discussions at national society meetings, and discussions with colleagues.   As an outcome of this effort, the College will invite individuals to visit campus as part of our strategic thinking about future hires to promote recruitment and diversity in our seminars. 

AESEDA, which is currently broadly advertising for new faculty, offers the potential for identifying a host of new faculty that may not have recognized the intersection of their disciplines to the College.  EMS believes that the Alliance will enable us to identify a broader pool of applicants and to enable recruitment and retention in the College.

The College prides itself on its promotion procedures and on the comprehensive collection of data about our faculty.  Even in annual evaluations, we have developed broad assessments and definitions of scholarship in teaching, research and service that fully credit our faculty for their successes and value the breadth of their contributions.  

C) Retention Strategies Implemented to Retain and Promote the Success of Faculty and Staff from Underrepresented Groups

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences believes that we must successfully address every Challenge in the Framework to Foster Diversity if we are to attract, retain and promote the success of faculty and staff from underrepresented groups.   Some specific actions as a part of College activities are particularly supportive of retention and promotion efforts.  These include:


  EDUCATION AND SCHOLARSHIP

Challenge 5:  Developing a Curriculum that Fosters Intercultural and International Competencies

A) Supporting Multicultural Curriculum Efforts

The College is supporting multicultural curriculum efforts through five avenues:

Many of the specific elements of these programs are described in the sections that follow.

B)  Research and Teaching that Advances the University’s Diversity Agenda

Research, teaching, and service activities that advance the University’s and College’s diversity agendas take a wide variety of forms.  These include funded research projects, integrated teaching, research, and service activities, graduate and undergraduate courses that focus on diversity issues, and topical courses that integrate multi-cultural and international issues in the course content.  Some recent examples include:

·       Faculty members from Meteorology and Geosciences have initiated a new NSF Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) that involves overseas study for participants.  The project puts significant emphasis on diversity in recruiting project participants and will also be supported by the World University Network and Penn State’s International Studies Program.

·       The Biogeochemical Research Initiative for Education (BRIE), an NSF-IGERT program, encourages international collaboration by providing opportunities for extended stays at laboratories abroad.  To date, eight students have utilized a total of $20,000 in travel funds to work with researchers in Denmark, France, Italy, Japan and England. 

·       In Geography, faculty are researching new measures of spatial segregation of populations by race and ethnicity; the distribution of public policy impacts across socioeconomic groups; corporate citizenship, human rights, and violence against women along the Mexican-U.S. border; gender and nationalism; sexism, racism, and fair employment as human rights issues; and urban poverty in the United States.

·       The interdisciplinary EMS Earth and Environmental Systems Institute has an NSF and NOAA sponsored Human-Environment Regional Observatory project – a multi-institutional program centered at Penn State.  One of the major components of the project is a Research Experience for Undergraduates (RUE) program that engages students in collaborative laboratory, field, and library research.  35 students have participated in the first three years of the program, including 25 women—four of whom were minority students.

·       The Department of Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering (EGEE) has a U.S. Department of Education FIPSE award to develop an international and interdisciplinary curriculum on energy and the environment.  The program has collaborators at three U.S. and four European universities.  Student exchange programs and web-based course offerings will follow the initial curriculum development in this initiative.  The Department is currently seeking partners for a similar U.S. – Brazil curriculum.

·       A faculty member from EGEE taught a short course at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand in fall 2003 and three more will be teaching there in summer 2004.  One of the objectives is to develop research collaborations and to produce material that can be used in courses back at Penn State.

·       A faculty member in Geography is teaching courses in collaboration with colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Durban.  The classes are run simultaneously at Penn State and the African institution with video links between the classrooms.

·       Several research and teaching projects have a strong service component, the most well known being Professor Lucky Yapa’s Philadelphia Field Project – a one year (three semester) course that studies social theories of poverty, class, race, and place.  The summer semester is spent in West Philadelphia where students engage in research, community projects, and volunteer work.  For this project, Professor Yapa was awarded the Penn State Outreach Award in 2000 and the 2002 Program Award from the National Association of Multicultural Education.  Professor Glasmeier’s “onenation.psu.edu” website has data, tools, and analyses that allow the general public as well as students to study economic and social variations between different communities.  The Ford Foundation has requested demonstrations of these tools for predominantly minority communities seeking to diversify their economic base.  A project is also being developed between EGEE and the Chinese University of Mining Technology to provide education and training in mine safety.

In addition, the College proposes three new programs, the first two through AESEDA, that will promote curriculum development and innovation:

·       A Professional Masters Degree in Georesources Engineering Management. Georesources Engineering Management (GEM) will integrate social, environmental and technical aspects of resource extraction and utilization. Although focused on Africa, the model is adaptable to any environment where extraction of georesources is a fundamental component of economic activity. New integrated learning models and metrics will bring together teachers, researchers and students from several African universities, HBCUs and Penn State to increase capacity and pioneer robust and mutually-enriching programmatic elements for participating institutions. It is expected that this program will draw a wide clientele including African-Americans, who may like a focus on Africa. Several internal candidates have already expressed interest in participating in this new degree program when established. AESEDA is working on developing the curriculum, which will be submitted to the Graduate School for approval.

·       A focus on the Life Sciences.  Faculty in the Department of Geosciences are leading the development of a B.S. degree in geobiology and biogeochemistry.  Geography has added substantial emphasis in landscape ecology, and Materials Science and Engineering is developing a strong focus in biomaterials. These programs are a natural outgrowth of research strengths in the department and also serve to promote life sciences within the College.  Life science disciplines have one of the strongest track records in attracting female students of all science disciplines.

The College also proposes to promote a number of new international programs.

C) Integration of Diversity into the Curriculum

Integration of diversity into the curriculum begins with the EMS First Year Seminar.  The seminar content is academic, focusing on topics central to the College and with an emphasis on environmental issues.  Multiculturalism is not a specific part of the curriculum.  However, most instructors use the opportunity to focus on the international and multicultural implications in discussions of, for example, environmental impacts, natural hazards, and global energy supplies, or to emphasize the contributions of women scientists to Earth sciences or ocean exploration.

Students then take General Education courses that emphasize international and intercultural competencies (GI courses), and the College contributes to these offerings with four GI courses in Geography, one in Geosciences, and one in Earth Science:

GEOG 040:     World Regional Geography

GEOG 103:     Geography of the Developing World

GEOG 128:     Geography of International Affairs

GEOG 415W: Gender and Geography (cross-listed with Women’s Studies)

EARTH 105:   Environments of Africa: Geology and Climate Change (cross-listed with AAAS)

GEOSC 402W:  Natural Disasters

An additional GI course proposal from EGEE is currently being circulated for consultation within the University before being submitted to the Faculty Senate:

EGEE 120:  Oil: International Evolution

The College has now developed a task force to focus on U.S. and international competencies as a part of the new GI requirements.  We are specifically focusing on mechanisms to introduce these competencies within a science, engineering, and social science curriculum.  The College has committed resources for course development.  We are also encouraging partnerships with other colleges.

The degree to which diversity is further integrated into the junior and senior curriculum varies across the College.  Geography focuses on the social, cultural, economic, and political forces that shape the past and present human landscape, and on the interaction between human and physical processes.  The nature of the discipline ensures that diversity is fully integrated into the Geography curriculum, which has over a dozen core and elective courses that focus directly on race, ethnicity and gender, or emphasize diversity issues with respect to other areas of human and environmental geography.  For example:

GEOG 100 is a course on globalization and the global south, and provides both cultural and international credit for students.

GEOG 102 The American Scene treats race and ethnicity in the formation of the American landscape.

A new course is being proposed titled “politics of identity” that will address culture, race, class, gender and sexuality in the framework of spatial politics.

In GEOG 401W, students write papers that focus on ethnic identity as expressed in the U.S. census returns between 1870 and 1930.

GEOG 419 is an international course on cities, and students write papers on non-North American urban places in GEOG 418.

In GEOG 470, Geography of the Global Economy, meets the international requirements for the international business major in Smeal College of Business.

A host of GEOG 497 courses has also integrated or directly addressed diversity issues.

And, in a sequence of physical and human-environment courses, students are also exposed to the multi-cultural and international implications of human-environmental issues.

In addition, many courses have a strong international content.  These begin with a General Education (GI) course on World Regional Geography, which is then followed by several 400 level courses on Mexico, Europe, and Africa.  The Department is working to expand these with additional African courses.

Diversity has not yet been fully integrated into the other programs in the College.  However, the Earth program requires an interdisciplinary minor and many students choose the College’s Global Business Studies minor.  This focuses on the minerals and energy industries and has a strong international content.  This minor is also becoming popular with Meteorology students and Meteorology is also expanding its interest in commercial applications of weather information, which again has a strong international theme.  A new degree program in Global Finance and Energy has recently been approved.  This new program expands upon the existing minor and will again have a strong international focus.

The engineering programs in the College focus on designed and engineered materials, energy resources, minerals extraction, and industrial health and safety.  While they do not include courses that focus explicitly on international or multicultural issues, they all deal with society’s use of materials or natural resources and these all have a regional and international component that illustrate cultural differences.  Geosciences focuses explicitly on the physical landscape and Earth history.  While, how humans interact with this landscape is predominantly the realm of Geography.  Even so, discussions of Earth history provide opportunities for examining different cultural or religious views of Earth’s creation, the origins of life, and evolution – and these discussions take place in several Geosciences courses.  In addition, the natural environment has a direct impact on human populations through a variety of natural hazards such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, and severe storms.  These are the focus of GEOSC 402W, which examines the way in which the consequences of these hazards for society are distributed around the globe and how they vary across cultures and socio-economic groups.

At the College level diversity again becomes a major theme of the College’s annual CAUSE project.  These projects are interdisciplinary and vary from year-to-year.  While some have taken place in the U.S., most include an international field trip.  Recent examples include:

CAUSE 2001, where students examined the influence of geology on past civilizations and the effect of geologic processes on the preservation of artifacts and archeological sites in Greece and Egypt.

CAUSE 2002 (together with the Schreyer Honors College) helped subsidize a Geography course that took undergraduate students to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

CAUSE 2003a examined the societal impacts of natural hazards in New Zealand.  This very successful course was funded once by CAUSE in 1995/96 and the second time by a combination of CAUSE funding and funding from the Schreyer Honors College.

CAUSE 2003b focused on coral reefs on San Salvador in the Bahamas, but also took the opportunity to experience local communities, and to discuss human threats to the reef and the importance of reefs to the economic future of small island nations.

CAUSE 2003c examined society’s needs for energy and the societal benefits and costs of alternative energy development in Iceland and the United Kingdom.

The College utilizes College funds and has received a substantial endowment to support CAUSE.  Future CAUSE classes will include a focus on Africa, through the linkages developed by AESEDA.


INSTITUTIONAL VIABILITY AND VITALITY

Challenge 6:  Diversifying University Leadership and Management

A) Involvement of Unit Leaders in Diversity Efforts.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences expects all its administrators to actively promote our strategic goals with respect to diversity.  The College’s strategic plan, including the Strategic Objective, To Develop a Diversity and a Climate that will Empower Future Generations of Scholars, was formulated and endorsed by all Department Heads, Institute Directors and the Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee.  These leaders are also the authors of the College’s Framework for Fostering Diversity.  Unit leaders play a key role in accomplishing the College’s diversity goals.  For example, departments provide the initial funds required to utilize College and University opportunity funds for hiring faculty and staff.  They are responsible for naming the members of the EMS Diversity Council and for promoting Council objectives within each institute and department.  Unit leaders have developed key fund-raising objectives related to diversity.  They are also actively working to improve our capabilities to recruit and retain students from under-represented groups.  Each unit has set aside funds to support recruitment of graduate students from underrepresented populations.  Our strategic goals, and the actions required to achieve them, are topics of frequent discussion at EMS executive council meetings.  EMS leaders will remain as active participants in all of our diversity efforts. 

B) The Diversity Profile of the College Administrative and Executive Levels.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences has a relatively small executive team which has historically been dominated by males, with little diversity.  More recently, opportunities to hire institute directors, who join the ranks of the EMS executive council, and department heads have presented the opportunity to develop a more diverse leadership team.  This has included the College’s first female administrator (Director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute), the College’s first African-American administrator (Director of AESEDA), and with a start date of August 15, 2004, the College’s first African-American department head (Department of Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering).  The College is committed to ensuring diverse representation in the College administrative and executive levels.  Associate Deans, Department Heads, Institute Directors, and the chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee are all members of the Dean’s Executive Council.

The College faculty members have also approved a new representative body – the EMS College Council. The College Council, chaired by the Dean, will include administrative representation, chairs of the respective committees for faculty, non-tenure track faculty, staff, and students.  The Council will include members of Graduate Council and EMS Senators.  The Director of the Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs will also be a member.  The College Council will promote greater communication across the College, as well as greater access to leadership and to College representatives.  The Director of the Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs is also a member of the College’s Executive Committee – promoting communication and direct access to the administrative team.

C) Procedures to Develop Diverse Applicant Pools and Search Committees for Administrative Searches.  Communication of Management of Diversity Expectations for Potential Candidates.

EMS has an experienced leadership team.  For example, our five department heads have been in their jobs for a combined 25 years.  As a consequence, EMS has few opportunities to develop diverse applicant pools for administrative searches.  The College is committed to developing a diverse applicant pool for every administrative opening.  Recruitment will be an active process, including requests for vitae, personal discussions at national society meetings, and discussions with colleagues.

The College Strategic Plan, including the objective To Develop a Diversity and a Climate that will Empower Future Generations of Scholars provides a key mechanism to communicate EMS expectations to potential administrators.  Support for these objectives is and will be a key criterion for success in seeking new members of the EMS administrative team. 

D) Identification and Support of Staff and Faculty from Underrepresented Groups who have Administrative Aspirations or Potential.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is eager to identify and support staff and faculty from underrepresented groups who have administrative aspirations or potential.  The College proposes to support these aspirations in four ways:

Challenge 7:  Coordinating Organizational Change to Support Our Diversity Goals

A) Reflection of the Importance of College Goals and Objectives in the EMS Strategic Plan

Diversity is now one of the three major College-wide strategic objectives.  This objective, “To Develop a Diversity and a Climate that will Empower Future Generations of Scholars,” and its full set of actions, is provided in Appendix A.  In addition, diversity initiatives and programs are now, and will continue to be, a required part of the individual unit strategic plans of every department and institute within the College.

B) Organizational realignments, systems of accountability, resource mobilization and allocations, and long-term planning strategies.

The College has taken several actions to coordinate organizational change.  These include:

C) Budget and Development approaches to ensure the financial stability of Diversity Priorities.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences has instituted several recent budgetary changes and development priorities in order to support our diversity priorities:

The College will continue to expand the resource commitment and development efforts directed toward fulfilling our commitment to fostering diversity in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.  These initiatives have been described throughout this report.  Some of the key commitments that require additional financial commitments include:

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences also has a growing base of support for enhancing diversity through our development efforts.  These sources of support include:

The College is committed to enhancing our fund-raising in support of the Framework to Foster Diversity.  Specifically,


 Appendix A.  EMS Strategic Objective:  To Develop a Diversity and a Climate that will Empower Future Generations of Scholars

1.     Elevate the status, increase resources, and enhance coordination available for recruiting and retaining students, staff and faculty from traditionally under-represented populations

2.     Include participation in diversity-enhancing activities as a part of the College reward and recognition system for faculty and staff

3.     Take a proactive stance in ensuring a climate that is conducive to the success of all, that all our hiring processes are broad and open, and that all policies and resources are both visible and accessible

4.     Create avenues of scholarship that both attract faculty and students from under-represented groups and enhance the research and teaching strengths and opportunities within EMS 

Action Item 1:  Elevate the status, increase resources and enhance coordination for recruiting and retaining students, staff and faculty from under-represented populations

EMS is committed to significant organizational changes to promote our ability to recruit and retain students, staff and faculty from under-represented populations.  We propose to:

·       clearly identify our Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs with the Office of the Dean and substantially increase the budget for recruiting activities

·       include diversity initiatives as a part of every department and institute strategic plan

·       create a network of faculty that are engaged in diversity enhancement, including a designated coordinator from each unit that will make up an EMS Diversity Council that is co-chaired by the Dean and the Director of the Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs.

·       foster a vigorous and active departmental and College participation in enhancement activities such as McNair, GUTS, WISE, CURO, and SROP and personally connect current faculty and staff with prospective students

·       create departmental and College “opportunity” funds, that parallel current funds from the Office of the Provost to enable the recruitment of faculty from underrepresented populations

·       provide and encourage opportunities, particularly for all administrators, for diversity training

Action Item 2: Include participation in diversity-enhancing activities as a part of the College reward and recognition system for faculty and staff

 is an investment in the future and an investment in the scholars of the future.  EMS intends to recognize and reward faculty and staff actions and activities that support diversity enhancement.  We propose to:

·       include diversity-enhancing activities as a part of the EMS annual Faculty Activity Summary that is utilized as a basis for determining salary raises

·       create a Mentoring Award to be given at the EMS Wilson Awards banquet that includes criteria that support actions that promote the retention of faculty, staff and students from under-represented groups

Action Item 3:  Take a proactive stance in ensuring a climate that is conducive to the success of all, that our hiring processes are broad and open, and that all policies and resources are both visible and accessible

EMS is committed to a proactive stance to promote a diversity and climate that will empower future generations of scholars.  Our ultimate goal is an environment that welcomes, supports