University announces Diversity Roadmap

Led by President Ronald J. Daniels, the University released the JHU Roadmap on Diversity and Inclusion last Friday.

The document was compiled partially as a response to the Black Student Union’s (BSU) protest in November, during which they demanded an increase in the representation of black faculty, students and staff on campus, and addressed the lack of support for black students. The plans  were in development before the protest.

After addressing the protest, Daniels hosted a forum with the BSU to address its concerns, during which Daniels responded to their demands, which were reflected in the Roadmap.

In the document’s opening letter, Daniels wrote that “the realization of true equality is a core value for this university.” He emphasized the historical legacy of the University’s founding by Johns Hopkins, a notable abolitionist, and the University’s efforts to integrate women and black faculty into the student and faculty communities.

The University has four key goals that it wants to achieve: fostering greater diversity within the Hopkins community, improving opportunity for community members of all backgrounds, enabling engagement with diverse viewpoints and fostering a climate of respect.

In order to achieve these goals, the University will convene a committee to rewrite the University’s statement of principles, reflecting the core values of what it means to be Johns Hopkins. Faculty, staff and students will write a draft of new principles to increase diversity and equity, which will be submitted for approval by May 2017.

The University has pledged to increase the amount of full-time faculty who are from underrepresented minorities from 6.5 percent. These faculty have expressed feeling isolated, lacking mentoring resources and suffering prejudice from members of the Hopkins community. The University has found that in previous efforts to increase diversity by additional funding, the results have been lackluster, and the report states that the University must take steps to combat conscious and unconscious biases.

The small pool of black and Hispanic PhDs, at nine percent and six percent respectively, makes it difficult to find qualified candidates to fill posts. The University will use cluster hiring to add five faculty members to the Center for Africana Studies (CAS) within the next few years, as well as improving faculty mentoring programs.

The Faculty Diversity Initiative (FDI), announced in the fall, has guaranteed $25 million to include diverse sources for faculty recruitment and to better support diverse faculty at the University. The FDI will provide funding for faculty searches and for an increase in the number of visiting faculty and diverse postdoctoral students and for the creation of a $50,000 research award for work on diversity and inclusion.

In the next few months, departments will submit three-year faculty diversity programs to the University, create a baseline faculty diversity report and tabulate the results of the 2015 faculty mentoring survey.

Between 2009 and 2015 the number of Hopkins students coming from underrepresented minorities (URM) increased from 12 to 23 percent, with a 100 percent increase in applications. Six-year degree completion rate for URM students is now on par with that of other students, partially due to a low-income and URM-focused peer mentoring programs, more networking opportunities and an increase in resources at the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), including two new positions and supporting LGBTQ Life.

The University stated in the report that supporting URM students in STEM is a goal to be achieved through increased access to STEM summer programs, internships and research opportunities. Hopkins has implemented the Hop-In program, which supports at-risk students such as first-generation college students and will expand from 31 to 160 students over the next four years.

Homewood Student Affairs will create two new positions focused on diversity by fall 2016 and will relaunch a student advisory board for multicultural affairs. The University will work on strengthening LGBTQ support, mental health through the new Task Force on Student Mental Health and Well-Being and through the Baltimore Scholars program, which offers full-tuition scholarships to Baltimore City public school students accepted to Hopkins.

Since 2010, URM professional staff has increased from 14.8 to 16.8 percent, technical staff from 27.5 to 31.5 percent and executive staff from 13.1 to 14.8. The University aims to recruit more diverse entry-level talent by building professional development and mentorship programs. The University aims to support Baltimoreans through programs that promote local hiring like HopkinsLocal, which supports summer jobs and internships for young people in Baltimore, and sponsoring internships at Hopkins by working with Year-Up.

The University has supported reforms of the employee benefits to make costs more affordable for faculty and staff as well as protecting the right to choose preferred plans. The University has implemented a program that increases insurance premiums more slowly for low-income employees, as well as extending marriage benefits in 2016 to domestic partners of employees and transgender employees. A faculty committee was recently started that examines several areas of employee health services to improve care, especially for low-income employees.

In the recent future, the University will increase local entry-level hiring, expand diversity mentoring programs and improve staff professional development.

The BSU challenged the University to include mandatory cultural competency training and potentially a distribution requirement in cultural competency. Around 60 percent of Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) students and 25 percent of Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) students take a course in gender, sexuality, religion, race or ethnicity before they graduate. The University stated that it is open to providing additional courses, new research and service opportunities or a distribution requirement for cultural competency.

The BSU demanded that the CAS be made a full department, but Daniels denied this demand, citing the inherent cross-disciplinary nature of Africana studies. The University committed to hiring five new faculty: two in CAS, two in History and one Bloomberg Distinguished Professor.

The University will create a second Commission on Undergraduate Education to assess undergraduate education, including whether there should be a cultural competency distribution requirement, and will issue its recommendations in 2017. KSAS will work with center heads to determine if centers like CAS deserve more autonomy and funding.

Currently, students, faculty and security have been trained in recognizing unconscious biases, discrimination and sexual harassment, reporting mechanisms through the Office of Institutional Equity and increasing student participation.

New cultural competency trainings and modules will be created, along with a mandatory workshop for incoming undergraduates that was piloted this fall.

The Diversity Leadership Council, Programs on Race and Culture and programs to explore the University’s complex history with race have been instituted in recent years, and all divisions of the University have introduced diversity programs. In Baltimore, the University has expanded its economic inclusion programs, its public school partnerships and projects with faculty that specifically relate to the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray.

Soon, the University will increase participation of students in the Diversity Leadership Council, will host an academic conference on race and inequality in Baltimore in fall 2016 and will expand the HopkinsLocal program. The deans of KSAS and WSE will create a Homewood Diversity Council that will unify the two school’s diversity councils and convene in spring 2016. Hopkins will also launch a partnership with Dunbar High School that will allow students to achieve both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree from a local community college in six years and at no cost to the student, who will then step directly into a healthcare-related job or higher education.