Topic 2: Demographic changes and Diversity

From WolfWikis

• Based on your experiences at the departmental level, what “diversity of the workforce” (faculty and staff) related issues need to be addressed now and in future planning (e.g. minority representation, gender balance, age/generation, etc.)? Why are these of concern?

• What challenges with respect to worldwide demographic shifts in age and ethnicity/race are unique to your department/discipline? And what challenges confront the University in general?

• Describe programs, initiatives etc. that you have found to be most effective for enhancing appropriate demographic/diversity balance.

• What resources, policies, programs, … are needed to help address the challenges you have identified?

Table 8 Demographic changes and diversity: table 8

1) dept level : what issues need to be addressed re gender, age, race etc. Why are these a concern.

Percent of US PhD recipients (female) is over 50%, expected to grow, depending on discipline. If there are ways that we could be better at atracting and retaining female, need to be sure we are on our best game. Need to get the women grads in these disciplines. Same for minorities.

Agreement w/ Wake Tech will help us see a change in student demographics. Need to have faculty here to support them. i.e., Hisspanic population. Hiapanic/Latino Task Force study (Jose Picart) shows what we need to be doing.

NC high school population is changing: decline in whites, rise in Hispanic/Latino students; we might get a small critical mass of Latinos we don’t have now. But need to change the tuition policy for undocumented hs graduates.

Women in STEM fields: if we are going to attract young women they need to have role models. As a faculty without diversity it makes it hard to attract. In almost every field see percent goes down at each rank. Need to address the cultures that attract women, e.g., industry is more attractive/flexible for women.

% of African American women going in to industry is even higher. Can pay more and has better policy OR academics not doing a good job of finding the women grads…

e.g., % of women scientists w/ partners who are scientists is over 80%.

Demograpghic opportunities to hire exist but need to attract them.

Fear that we will hire women in ‘female’ disciplines and say we are done. Or in NTT jobs.

Pipeline competition begins right after college - - need to attract women and minorities as grad students. Other colleges are ahead of NCSU in recruiting minority students. UncW great w/ Hispanic, not w/ African American students. We don’t actively recruit from community colleges (cc). Do we have to if we have the agreement w/ Wake? We’ll be forced to do it with other schools. The cc transition makes it cheaper/easier. Question is do they get out once they get here. Need to have that transitional help for the cc students. E.g., issue w/ rural students, financial constraints. Cc faculty: incoming students saying they did not get foundation to go on to advanced classes. Depts. need to work w/ them to improve their preparation. This has happened in the past (e.g., PAMS), but inconsistent. If we do that and they still don’t succeed we might need to rethink policy of accepting cc transfer students.

We are committed to trying to improve k-12. Do we have some programs/policies for cc?

% of full-time vs part-time cc faculty. FT also have heavy load.

Need to focus on the gen ed requirements for the cc transfer students. Find a way to gleen the top students from the cc system.

2) challenges w respect to changes in world wide demog shifts effect your disc?

Lots of international diversity in staff (skilled crafts/service/maintenance). This is a resource we need to think about and use in the educational program. When we study Africa do we bring in these resources? This workforce raises immigration issues: will the pool contuinue to be available if immigration policy changes?

White population is declining – elite institions will have to change (but will be resistant…) change is scary! A role of the university is to expose students to things that make them uncomfortable. Faculty/staff also… Need to prep students for global/internationalism. Not serving them if we don’t push to be on the edge. Exactly why we need to diversify the faculty. Push study abroad.