University Diversity Strategic Plan: Sharing Draft Goals

Action Steps

• Enhance outreach and recruitment processes employing targeted practices to attract diverse student populations, monitoring the impact of competitive financial packages to increase enrollment of accepted undergraduate and graduate students.
• Increase institutional support to ensure the success of all students, such as students from underresourced backgrounds and those facing other academic or social challenges.
• Reduce equity gaps, such as time to degree disparities and metrics of post-baccalaureate success for low-income, first-generation, and Black, Latinx, and Native American students.
• Establish mechanisms to facilitate collaborations between staff and faculty using evidence-based practices to promote student success and reduce equity gaps.
• Build a coordinated strategy for cultivating new alliances and enhancing existing partnerships with minority-serving institutions to promote diversity in graduate student enrollment.
• Formalize processes to recruit, hire, train, evaluate, and recognize staff and administrators that promote access and equity.
• Create mechanisms to enable purposeful professional growth of all staff and develop support structures to identify and promote diversity in staff leadership.
• Ensure our faculty search and hiring processes employ evidence-based practices to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity in hiring outcomes.
• Develop targeted supports to recruit and retain a diverse faculty and engage in purposeful efforts to develop future faculty.
• Formalize mechanisms to enhance effective faculty mentoring to support all faculty members in the tenure and advancement process, as well as develop support mechanisms to enable progression into academic leadership.

Action Steps

• Articulate diversity, equity, and inclusion competencies for students, staff and faculty members, as well as mechanisms to enable and incentivize growth.
• Develop and expand opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to engage in ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion education to promote cultural humility and competency.
• Create and expand conflict resolution and conflict mediation pathways for faculty, staff, and students.
• Equip leaders to develop and sustain academic and workplace cultures that center respect, address instances of inequity, and encourage belonging by creating an environment where all students, faculty, and staff feel welcome and valued.
• Create clearly defined and transparent inclusive leadership expectations and competencies as well as mechanisms for ongoing self-reflection and incentives for growth.
• Utilize performance management to recognize inclusive leadership as a necessary competency of supervisors at all levels and champion professional growth related to cultural humility.

Action Steps

• Increase support and resources for instructors to advance equity in the classroom, as well as recognition of those that are leading the way.
• Review, amend, and expand curricular offerings to promote understanding of and obstacles to diversity, equity and justice; ensure visibility of existing offerings.
• Develop incentives and pathways to promote inclusive teaching, such as incorporating universal design and other culturally responsive practices.
• Encourage visiting appointments of scholars who advance institutional diversity goals in the classroom, through their research, and/or through public engagement.
• Build intellectual community through mechanisms that foster research focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.

Action Steps

• Adopt a definition of community engagement, in which reciprocity serves as a guiding principle.
• Strengthen relationships with the New Brunswick and Piscataway communities, engaging in the purposeful work of repair and relationship building to facilitate long-term mutually beneficial collaborations and establishing mechanisms to facilitate information and resource sharing.
• Develop community roundtables and other avenues to ensure that the voice of the community is heard and that its stated needs are prioritized as we seek to expand university-community partnerships.
• Leverage Rutgers’ educational mission, extending our reach throughout the state of New Jersey, the nation and the world through intentional partnerships.
• Increase civic engagement/service-learning course offerings, ensuring they are identifiable in course management software.
• Foster collaborations among curricular and co-curricular community engagement efforts.
• Expand opportunities for co-curricular community engagement, extending the notion of the beloved community beyond the university walls.
• Facilitate the centralized tracking of community engagement research and service projects to better coordinate and actively steward university-community relationships.

Action Steps

• Audit institutional policies and practices for alignment with diversity strategic priorities.
• Establish metrics and information-sharing mechanisms to facilitate transparency and data-informed decision making to support goal achievement, such as dashboards to report and track applicant pools for students, faculty, and staff.
• Strategically align efforts and organizational resources to facilitate collaboration on goals and designate responsibility for oversight to enable accountability.
• Develop and implement a strategic communications plan for diversity and inclusion that facilitates ongoing updates on how the university is working towards achieving the diversity strategic priorities and enables coordination and consistency across units in meeting this objective.
• Adopt consistent hiring, promotion, and advancement committee policies and practices across the university to further equitable outcomes.
• Identify, coordinate, and expand existing comprehensive studies that measure multiple dimensions of campus climate and engagement for students, staff, and faculty in a scholarly and rigorous manner that allows for an assessment of longitudinal changes.
• Formalize robust mechanisms for recognition and rewards (e.g., unit-specific, chancellor-led, etc.) that promote progress toward inclusive excellence for organizational units.
• Provide an annual comprehensive update on progress made toward goals stated in the institutional diversity and inclusion plan.

• Continue recruiting outreach that attracts diverse students and consistently monitor disaggregated data on applicants to increase enrollment of undergraduate and graduate students.
• Continue to market and fund Bridging the Gap to increase access and affordability and annually evaluate the success of the program.
• Develop holistic, data driven and evidence based approaches to student success focused on improving academic success, increasing retention, decreasing time to graduation and post-graduation success for historically underrepresented and/or first generation students.
  • Annual assessment and updating of equity scorecard and sharing progress with campus community.
  • Expand opportunities for first generation and historically underrepresented students to participate in experiential learning, both domestically and internationally.
  • Develop initiatives that specifically address equity gaps for Black and Latinx students.
• Examine policies and processes that are obstacles and barriers to inclusive and equitable participation and student success.

• Develop DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) informed recruitment and onboarding practices and policies for faculty and staff that align with the university’s shared commitment to creating, retaining and valuing a beloved community.
  • Create a manual for recruiting staff and faculty with clear expectations and resources on conducting an equitable and inclusive search process.
  • Develop and implement training for all hiring committees, with all faculty search committees attending CIED Faculty Search Committee Training.
  • Continually review search processes, hiring practices and outcomes to assess progress towards increasing faculty and staff diversity.
• Institutionalize the use of diversity hiring plans that outline how departments will seek to recruit a diverse applicant pool, attend to areas of underrepresentation/historical exclusion, and conduct an inclusive and equitable search.
• Establish a “search advocate” model in which a DEI expert acts as a consultant to search committees and can provide advice and counsel to academic units on DEI issues.
• Enhance assistance with hiring and visa processes for international faculty.
• Allocate funds to supplement salary and/or research resources in recruitment packages for potential faculty members from underrepresented/historically excluded backgrounds.
• Connect with university-wide hiring programs to enhance recruitment of underrepresented/historically excluded faculty; consider targeting senior/tenured faculty hires of members of underrepresented/historically excluded groups
• Demonstrate clear commitment to retention of underrepresented/historically excluded faculty (e.g. availability of funding to compete with offers from other institutions).

• Develop DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) informed recruitment and onboarding practices and policies for faculty and staff that align with the university’s shared commitment to creating, retaining and valuing a beloved community.
  • Create a manual for recruiting staff and faculty with clear expectations and resources on conducting an equitable and inclusive search process.
  • Develop and implement training for all hiring committees, with all faculty search committees attending CIED Faculty Search Committee Training.
  • Continually review search processes, hiring practices and outcomes to assess progress towards increasing faculty and staff diversity.
• Evaluate staff salary structures and polices surrounding promotions, reclassifications, and in-grade adjustments to identify and address areas of inequity in staff salary.
• Develop opportunities and training focused on leadership development to increase staff satisfaction and retention

• Establish clear expectations for diversity, equity and inclusion competencies for all leadership, staff and faculty, as well as a mechanism to enable and incentivize growth.
• Conduct exit interviews on faculty, staff and students who choose to leave the institution to better understand and where necessary, address challenges experienced. 
• Develop and implement process to understand campus climate and share results and plans for improvement with campus community.

• Implement college and department self-studies relating to diversity within the curriculum and classroom and provide resources to support addressing areas found to be in need of improvement.
• Adjust general education requirement to require a Div (Diversity) course in the general education curriculum.
• Develop a Faculty Fellows program that will assist faculty in developing more robust and impactful courses that meets the general education requirements for diversity
• Provide all faculty and teaching staff training, readings and resources on best practices for inclusivity in the classroom.

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• Provide campus and/or university support for DEIA research and intellectual engagement.
• Enhance the campus’s reputation as a center of DEIA-related scholarship by establishing designated funds to support DEIA research and/or providing seed funding for pilot studies that lead to external DEIA-related grants.
• Create a speaker series or consistent academic forum that highlights the work of Rutgers-Camden faculty in DEIA and provides opportunities to engage external scholars.

• Develop a local procurement initiative that targets Camden city and Camden County.
• Develop a local hiring initiative that targets Camden city residents.
• Expand current K12 partnerships and strengthen internal collaboration of K12 initiatives that serve Camden and local historically underrepresented and marginalized youth.
• Increase the number of Camden youth successfully transitioning to post-secondary institutions.
• Develop opportunities for Camden residents to audit Rutgers-Camden courses.

• Enhance community outreach approaches that provide opportunities for residents and community stakeholders to inform campus based civic and community engagement initiatives.
  • Develop community advisory board and establish bi-monthly community stakeholder meetings.
• Review current policies and procedures governing community usage of Rutgers facilities and better communicate policies and facilitate community access to campus space.

• Establish Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Center.
• Implement the recommendations of the Committee on Public Art and History: Representing Equity, Diversity, and Racial Justice on the Grounds of Rutgers Camden
• Increase Camden residents’ access to criminal and civil justice initiatives through Rutgers Law.
• Leverage the work of the Institute for the Study of Global and Racial Justice. 
• Develop and offer courses on the history of the city of Camden for Rutgers students and the general public.

• Work to institutionalize the guidelines for evaluating publicly engaged scholarship into the promotion and tenure process
• Acknowledge and reward publicly engaged scholarship through awards, merit and promotion and tenure process.
• Create a publicly engaged scholarship fund that support research that includes faculty, students and community partners collectively and addresses community focused need.
• Develop directory of nationally recognized academics who conduct publicly engaged research that can serve as letter formal external letter writers for tenure and promotion for similarly engaged faculty.
• Expand the role of the Faculty Director for Engaged Learning and Scholarship to increase awareness of engaged learning and publicly/community engaged scholarship, connections and collaborations between faculty, staff, students and community partners, and provide administrative support, mentoring  and advisement to faculty who pursue engaged scholarship to advance their promotions and tenure.
• Enhance communication strategies that highlight community engaged work internally and with the broader community to increase Rutgers-Camden’s standing as a leader in civic and community engagement.

• Shift engaged civic learning courses to critical service-learning pedagogy.
• Expand participation in civic engagement and social justice certificate and adjust certificate to include diversity course requirement.
• Modify general education requirements so that all students need to participate in both a Diversity and Engaged Civic Learning course.
• Create formal mechanism for community partners to share areas of need to be addressed through engaged civic learning courses.

• Develop an interdisciplinary Civic Leadership Program for undergraduate and graduate students and city residents to increase civic literacy and participation and develop initiatives with grassroots organizations to create positive change in their local communities.

• Create programming that is more inclusive of the alumni base, with the development of events that focus on expanding understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Survey interests of alumni of color and their sentiments on university engagement processes.
• Ensure more inclusive representation of diverse alumni and faculty of color as speakers.

• Increase capacity at health centers (human and financial) to address the health needs of the community.
• Create a community advisory board to advise Rutgers-Camden nursing faculty and staff on community health needs and a stakeholders group to discussion issues uncovered by advisory boards.

• Develop a shared language and understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Develop professional standards and expectations for campus leadership to enhance and promote diversity and inclusion within their designated areas of responsibility and spheres of influence.
• Utilize performance management system to recognize inclusive leadership as a necessary component of supervisors at all levels.
• Ensure every academic and administrative unit develops a DEI plan that grows from the campus and university plan.
• Create a robust online presence for DEI activity at Rutgers-Camden with a communication plan for amplifying DEI commitment and success through various media.

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• Develop formal and informal events and community-building activities to educate students on diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Provide spaces and support for historically underrepresented and marginalized students to gather and create community.

• Create formalized training programs, such as a DEI certificate for faculty, staff and students with course modules that create a shared understanding of DEI across stakeholders and advanced learning modules based on role and sphere of influence.
• Ensure opportunities for all employees, regardless of role, to participate in DEI trainings, campus dialogues and community building experiences.

• Identify data streams tied to DEI and Rutgers–Camden strategic plans and priorities to populate a web-based institutional “dashboard”; dashboard should include equity goals and numbers needed to reach equity, update on a regular basis, but not less than quarterly; track and report change over time.
• Develop metrics to measure success of DEI plan against progress toward goals; develop comparators within Rutgers and outside of the university; apply that information toward the public-facing dashboard; issue regular reports to University administration based on the data.

• Develop a transparent process and structure for addressing bias complaints that transcends institutional silos.

• Create positions to report to the VC for DICE and to serve as liaisons for faculty, students, and staff with responsibility for partnering with campus units or, in some cases, directly managing DEI initiatives.
• Assess current campus DEI initiatives to determine best alignment to achieve campus and university goals.
• Formalize a standing campus wide DEI committee with representation from all academic units, including faculty, staff, students, and alumni to implement campus strategic plan, progress towards goals and provide consistent updates on achievement of goals.  

• Increase the diversity of faculty, staff, and learners from historically underrepresented populations, people with disabilities, veterans, diverse sexual identities, and gender expressions.

• Enhance the existing framework for faculty reappointment and promotion to reflect and recognize the importance of quality teaching and impactful community engaged scholarship.

• Provide support for professional development and advancement. 

• Identify and enhance outreach, recruitment and explore holistic admissions processes, employing targeted practices to attract diverse student populations.

• Assess and enhance as needed, institutional supports to ensure the success of diverse students, particularly those from under-resourced backgrounds.

• Explore development of post-doc and resident to faculty transition programs for those from historically underrepresented backgrounds and groups.

• Establish a workgroup to explore best practices and review the framework for promotion and advancement that considers inclusive excellence and that encompasses and values teaching, scholarship, and service.

• Enhance mentoring programs and structures of support for reducing isolation and enhancing support of diverse faculty.

• Create mechanisms to enable purposeful professional growth of diverse staff and recognize, and reward staff and administrators that promote advocacy, access, and equity.

Build an integrated, collaborative, diverse and inclusive, patient-centered workforce that leverages the expertise of all healthcare professions to serve patients, families, and communities.

• Support innovative scholarship and teaching by ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion are included in all aspects of our educational programs, teaching efforts and research endeavors and that support is provided to those involved with this work.

• Create and cultivate learning environments that consider the diverse needs and backgrounds of all students and where all students feel valued and have equal access to learn.

• Offer inclusive courses, curricula, and learning opportunities for students across RBHS schools to achieve cultural humility and antiracism learning and educational goals/competencies.

• Coordinate community engagement activities at RBHS to improve reach, focus and impact.

• Seek to understand issues impacting communities and leverage community assets to develop and support strategic partnerships focused on health issues of mutual concern.

• Connect community partners to resources at Rutgers, including faculty expertise and student service learning opportunities.

• Provide students with opportunities to learn about community health improvement and community engagement, enhancing their ability to impact community health.

• Bring together multisector collaboratives to foster the use of evidence-based practices in support of community-led collaboratives to advance health.

• Identify ways to acknowledge and value the efforts of those who provide substantive community engagement and have substantial community impact.

• Explore establishing and/or enhancing a Community Advisory Board with roundtables and mechanisms to ensure the voice and needs of the community is purposefully solicited and integrated as we seek to expand university-community partnerships.

• Consider how community-based translational work is rewarded or valued in evaluations and promotion.