Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan

FIVE-YEAR STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES, MEASURES, AND FY21 ACTIONS

I. Diversity Equity and Inclusion Strategic Plan: Overview

GOALS: DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION:

Diversity

• We commit to increasing diversity, which is expressed in myriad forms, including race and ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, language, culture, national origin, religious commitments, age, (dis)ability status and political perspective.

Equity

• We commit to working actively to challenge and respond to bias, harassment, and discrimination. We are committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, veteran or familial obligations.

Inclusion

• We commit to pursuing deliberate efforts to ensure that our campus is a place where differences are welcomed, different perspectives are respectfully heard and where every individual feels a sense of belonging and inclusion. We know that by building a critical mass of diverse groups on campus and creating a vibrant climate of inclusiveness, we can more effectively leverage the resources of diversity to advance our collective capabilities.

Rationale

• The University of Michigan Office of Research’s (UMOR) mission is to advance the excellence of research, scholarship and creative activity across all three campuses by encouraging new research and providing central services in research policy; compliance, contract development, and negotiation; federal relations; technology transfer; business engagement; and communications. We believe that (a) having organizational diversity and an inclusive, equitable environment within UMOR units, as well as (b) devoting specific attention to enhancing DEI in the broader research enterprise, improve our ability to carry out this mission and enables us to attract the best talent to do so.

II. Planning Process Used

Year-4 Implementation Co-Lead(s)

Tabbye Chavous, Sabrina Ervin

Year-4 reporting / Year-5 Planning Team

UMOR DEI Implementation Co-Leads, UMOR Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Unit Contacts (Laura King, Manish Verma, Lisa Rabaut, Barb Hibbard, Tammy Culler, Hurley Riley, Debra Dill, Sarah Hallum, Valerie Johnson), UMOR VPR8 Leadership

Year 5 Planning Process Summary

In January 2020, the newly formed UMOR DEI Unit Contacts Committee was launched. This was a particularly important process since the Office of Research is made up of a wide range of units with different sizes, foci, staff composition, and locations on campus. The work of this committee was intended to help advance our DEI strategic plan by serving as an umbrella entity for unit representation, as well as for soliciting input, feedback, and idea exchange across units. The committee also was intended to help integrate innovative and effective practices created and enacted within specific units into a broader guiding framework that all units could use to develop and adapt practices for their specific unit missions.

Already we have seen the positive morale impacts of representing and spotlighting these UMOR DEI Unit Contacts and committee members as UMOR leaders and as supporting the direction and accountability around UMOR work. Even more, UMOR DEI Unit Contacts were instrumental in reviewing the Year-4 plan and providing feedback and suggestions for change. These unit representatives also provided in-depth information on DEI-based activities within their units and brought forward concerns of staff within their respective units, as well as a wealth of information to aid in a successful Year-4 strategic plan reporting process.

Along with working on strategic objectives related to UMOR staff and units, our intent this year was to begin to add to our DEI plan a focus on how UMOR can contribute positively to DEI in the broader research enterprise, that is, (1) addressing DEI issues in the research pipeline (who participates, barriers to participation and advancement), as well as (2) supporting, catalyzing, and promoting important scholarship on DEI issues for societal impact. Some efforts in this area were slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the current national spotlight on racial inequities, particularly on Black Americans, has brought overdue attention to structural racial inequality here at U-M, sparking many units across campus – including UMOR – to reassess their current practices and commit to more proactively addressing this pervasive and systemic issue. As UMOR takes on this task, we think it critical to acknowledge that many individuals, groups, and entities at U-M have long been working on these issues, and hope the current new and renewed attention and efforts will serve to affirm, support, and advance that work even more. After a series of conversations and iterations with members of OVPR leadership, a set of interrelated goals and action items were defined to address systemic racial inequities in our programs, units, and many of the other ways we catalyze, support, and safeguard research and scholarship across three campuses. Many of the priorities will require close collaboration and partnership with several other units across campus.

It is important to note that the developed goals and plans to understand and address racial inequities across research operations—both in the short- and long-term—will be used in our development and refinement of a more holistic and integrated plan to address DEI more broadly (including race along with other related domains) both within UMOR and the U-M research community overall.

FY21 Implementation Lead(s):

• Tabbye Chavous, Sabrina Ervin

Unit DEI contacts:

• Designated by unit directors and/or administrators

Implementation highlights Year 4

Below, we highlight different UMOR units and how their mission areas engage DEI. This description also includes ways that the unit might be more explicit about their DEI foci and leverage their positions/missions for advancing DEI more explicitly and effectively.

Center for Human Growth and Development (CHGD)

Historically CHGD offered programming to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in the research pipeline.  For instance, for over 21 years, CHGD offered the NIH-funded Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Program (MHIRT) to attract academically stellar minority students, as well as other underrepresented students, for training in biomedical and behavioral sciences. (This programming ceased in 2016 as the center experienced changes related to the university research funding model and other mission-related transitions. However, the unit continued to offer resources (workshops, guest panels, symposia) on DEI topics relevant to children and adolescent research. However, as of July 2020, CHGD has closed its operations.

Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG)

Established in 1995 to promote and support faculty research in all academic disciplines on gender, women, and sexuality, IRWG serves both U-M and the surrounding communities. IRWG is nationally recognized as an academic leader in these areas and can serve as an on-campus resource for U-M schools, colleges, and units.

Research: IRWG currently houses a NIH-funded T32 interdisciplinary substance abuse training program with an overall record of diversity recruitment (at both the pre-doctoral and post-doctoral levels) that surpasses the wider university population and remains one of the most diverse training programs in the National Institute on Drug Abuse portfolio, with 30.8 percent of the trainees in the past decade coming from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. IRWG also houses an NSF funded project focused on university responses to sexual violence in changing legal contexts.

IRWG also supports, sponsors, and co-sponsors initiatives and collaboratives focused on a range of topics related to women, gender, or sexuality. Examples of current projects include: Ending preventable maternal and infant morbidities and mortalities; Black feminist health studies; Colonialism, race, and sexualities; Consortium for gender-responsive prisoner healthcare; Transgender health network; among others. For more, see https://irwg.umich.edu/research.

Effective practices: IRWG’s Lane Hall offers gender-neutral bathroom facilities and is (dis)ability-accommodating. IRWG also has made the conscious choice to make its events more caregiver-friendly by moving the start times from 4 pm to 3 pm, making it possible for parents to attend the entire event and still retrieve a child from daycare by closing time. Finally, IRWG has examined its own practices in communications and elimination of biased language and has shared its analysis with broader U-M communities as a model.

Economic Growth Institute (EGI)

The institute (formerly the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment, and the Economy) has for 35 years executed programming that addresses issues of community and workforce development.  The unit has significant potential for making impacts around equity and access in communities in Southeast Michigan and beyond. Along with other UMOR units, we will encourage EGI to make its DEI goals and impacts more explicit, including measurable indicators of impact. 

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Project (NAGPRA Project)

The University has made substantial progress on NAGPRA compliance since UMOR initiated the project.  To date, the University has transferred approximately 164 site collections to the appropriate Tribes.  This included Native American human remains from a minimum of over 800 individuals and any associated funerary objects.  As a result, the University has developed an outstanding reputation for compliance with the National NAGPRA Office and has developed excellent working relationships with many Tribes.

The successful work and building of relationships within the NAGPRA Project has translated into other partnerships with Tribes and Native American communities.  This includes:

• Heritage Seeds Project/Indigenous Collaborative Garden which has been organized between Tribal partners, the UM Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA), and the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum.  The project initiated a collaborative garden using indigenous seeds that have been planted annually at the University.  The goal is to eventually plant seeds identified among the UMMAA’s collections that were originally acquired from some of the Anishinabek communities involved in the project.
• The Wiidanokeendiwag Basket Exhibit which was organized as a collaborative project between the UMMAA and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Cultural and Lifeways (in Mt. Pleasant, MI).  It marked the first exhibition of some of the baskets among the UMMAA’s collections made by Tribal artists.
• Most recently, the Mnomen Initiative started and has just received a Catalyst Grant from the Graham Sustainability Institute.  The grant is conducting a feasibility study to restore mnomen (wild rice) to some University-owned properties within the State of Michigan.  You can read more about it here:  http://graham.umich.edu/feature/catalyst-grant-support-applied-science-collaborative-research

III. Data and Analysis: Key Findings

SUMMARY OF DATA

Demographic Data

Listing of all staff within UMOR units in Year-4, including part- and full-time employees (numbers in parenthesis):

• Advanced Research Computing (ARC) (3)
• Animal Care & Use Office (17)
• Business Engagement Center (BEC) (12)
• Center for Human Growth and Development (CHGD) (14)
• Consulting for Statistics, Computing, and Analytics Research (CSCAR) (17)
• Energy Institute (UMEI) (9)
• Exercise and Sport Science Initiative (3)
• Functional MRI Facility (fMRI) (10)
• Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) (24)
• Mcity (11)
• MCubed (3)
• Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering (3)
• Michigan Institute for Data Science (22)
• Office of Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) (61)
• Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) (53)
• Research Ethics & Compliance (33)
• UMOR Central Office (50)

UMOR VS. U-M DEMOGRAPHICS RACE/ETHNICITY FROM FACULTY AND STAFF HEADCOUNT: 2019

The overall diversity related to race and ethnicity (representation of People of Color, including historically underrepresented groups, compared to White people) for all UMOR units is below that of all U-M campuses. Variations between units and amongst different employee groups are substantial, and for some units, numbers are too small for significant comparisons on a unit-by-unit basis. However, we cannot let that be a barrier for examining our data in rigorous and creative ways (quantitatively and qualitatively) to help us in interrogating processes that result in our hiring and retention outcomes.

KEY FINDINGS, THEMES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Several UMOR units including the Center for Human Growth and Development (CHGD); the Economic Growth Institute; and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) have developed or begun to develop plans, objectives, and activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion in their scholarly and/or practice work. All units have been prompted to more actively develop plans to address recruitment, development and retention of staff (and faculty, as appropriate to unit mission/personnel types). Moreover, for some UMOR units, creating environments that are diverse, equitable and inclusive have been central to their mission from their inception. At this point, all units are keenly aware of what is needed to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, and can be better supported through centralized UMOR resources.

Over and above the actions stated below, in the short term, we plan to:

• Rewrite the UMOR mission, vision and values statements to reflect our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. 
• Ensure that all UMOR units comply with and complete any U-M Human Resources-mandated training on conflict resolution, sexual harassment, and DEI.
• Develop a process for continuous review, improvement and evaluation of DEI activities within UMOR, including assessment during individual employee reviews.

End of Year 1: A systematic review of websites and communications for promotion of DEI goals was conducted. Two units, the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), developed unique plans to evaluate their communications for promotion of DEI goals. ORSP staff reviewed 198 pages of their website, 250 email communications, all other digital materials, such as videos and invitations, and all their print materials. They created a work plan to improve the ADA compliance of their website, as well as to supplement their stock photography account images with more inclusive images. ORSP also is working to improve signage and accessibility of events without infringement on major religious holidays. ORSP has plans in place to make sure future developments in their content remain ADA accessible. IRWG staff took a slightly different approach, drawing a random sample of 55 communications pieces from the 2016-17 academic year, including 10 website pages, 10 event flyers, 10 email newsletters, 15 Facebook posts and 10 Calls for Proposals, and rating them according to pre-set criteria for inclusiveness and diversity.

These efforts confirmed that some of IRWG’s accessibility efforts have saturated through everyday communications, but that some barriers to inclusiveness remain, which will be addressed in the upcoming year. Both these communications review plans show how units can take different strategies to self-review, showing areas for improvement even in cases where past efforts have already been somewhat successful.

We are thinking about broadening the information collection and analysis effort that was spearheaded by IRWG.

Towards the end of Year 2 we note that there was a flurry of activities in the various UMOR units as summarized in the detailed online reporting system. Overall interest in and identification with the goals and objectives of the DEI effort are quite high.

We learned that despite our bi-monthly UMOR newsletter that also includes a section on DEI, there is a strong need locally for more specific guidance on a range of topics. The resources that can be found via diversity.umich.edu are not broadly enough known and staff report a desire to have help with implementation examples.

Year 3: During year three we made progress on a number of fronts.  The MonDEI Minute was a highlight. Rebekah Ashley composed a weekly missive that incorporated current events to highlight the needs and successes for our DEI efforts. As word of the power of these weekly messages grew requests came in from all over campus to be included in its circulation. This was a wonderful success. We will plan for another team member in the future to pick up the torch continuing those activities or other relevant efforts that address the same needs.

A second highlight was the office helping to bring Dr. Donna Strickland to campus on Oct 30th to speak in Rackham. Dr. Strickland is only the third woman to receive a Nobel Prize in physics.  The President will be speaking at her introduction and this event will showcase the very positive impact that women have had on science. 

Going forward we are very fortunate to have recruited two new DEI leads, Sabrina Ervin and Tabbye Chavous. They will be contributing to current efforts as well as considering ways that the UMOR DEI work and planning could engage more strategically and programmatically around DEI-focused research/scholarship (e.g., efforts to: understand the breadth of DEI focused research/scholarship at U-M and the impacts of DEI research/scholarship developed by U-M scholars; consider programmatic ways to improve or create new synergies among DEI-focused scholars across disciplines around societally relevant DEI-topics; among other areas).

In addition, Brad Orr will stay on and lend a hand with a new concern that is sweeping universities across the country. Over the past year there has been a marked increase in the recognition of “foreign influence” in research.  The government funding agencies started to implement much stricter disclosure requirements for international support and collaborations.  This has led to an environment where researchers with ethnic backgrounds (often Chinese) are feeling watched and persecuted.  This climate issue is important to the University for a myriad of reasons and very much needs to be monitored for its DEI implications.

Year 4: UMOR is assessed as a whole but consists of 15 units of approximately 400 employees, with individual units ranging from seven to 120 employees. Even our largest units are small compared to most academic units. We have learned that not all strategies will work for all units, but there are cross-cutting principles that can be applied to all units and adapted in ways that make sense for the units’ respective missions. Some units have hired new leadership and have been undergoing reorganization, which in cases lead to new momentum related to DEI.

Overall, our implementation is benefitting from significant and increasing buy-in from UMOR leadership and better integration into UMOR leadership structure and work. There were multiple levels of participation on the DEI committee ranging from Associate Vice President to administrative staff members, and contributing members from multiple UMOR units. The engagement of all levels and units provided a variety of perspectives and showed that everyone not only had the opportunity to contribute, but wanted to do so. (That said, there is more to be done in terms of refining the most effective leadership infrastructure for advancing DEI, especially as we’re adding research impacts to our plan, along with supporting “internal UMOR”, or the staff and units formally under UMOR. We are confident about our ability to progress even further in year 5 and in preparation for DEI 2.0, following the initial 5-year plan phase.)

UMOR used a multitude of processes to collect information and to evaluate what worked and what needs work. These included local committees in our various units, a dedicated email address to the UMOR Unit DEI Contacts Committee, as well as a UMOR Unit DEI Reporting Template that was sent to all unit DEI contacts to request input for our annual report. We will continue using these mechanisms to continue assessing and updating our Strategic Plan.

UMOR leadership and DEI committee began to develop plans and engage in first actions around research impacts and the broader U-M research enterprise (the research community “external to UMOR”), which was a missing area from UMOR’s initial DEI plan. In addition, through working with our new DEI Committee and DEI Contact members, we improved and expanded the ways that we worked on UMOR’s internal DEI plans, e.g., expanding focused on HR issues primarily, to more explicitly name and refine objectives in areas of focus such as in hiring and recruitment, and professional development and climate.

IV. Strategic Objectives, Measures of Success and Action Plans*

* All strategic objectives and related actions will be pursued in accordance with the law and University policy.

IV. A. Recruitment, Retention and Development

FACULTY

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Increase diversity of UMOR faculty through targeted and aggressive recruitment strategies, while fostering faculty retention programs and seeking opportunities to partner in grant collaborations to secure hires that show a commitment to diversity.

Measures of Success

Overall increase in diversity among faculty within UMOR units, including the number of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty and the gender balance ratio.

FY21 Actions

• Share and communicate best talent pool development, hiring and retention practices amongst UMOR units
• Institute a formal policy requiring all UMOR faculty and senior staff within 12 months to complete the free, 1.5-hour Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence (STRIDE) training offered by ADVANCE, as well as bias training
• Require that faculty unit directors consider the diversity of their search committees, and that all committee members to complete Diversity in Hiring training prior to serving on or chairing hiring committees
• Partner with other UMOR and U-M units for recruitment opportunities
• Determine how to best assess diversity, equity and inclusion beyond gender and racial categorization
• Continue to stay engaged with various cluster hiring initiatives and determine if/how UMOR can provide assistance (e.g., proposal development, workshops, funding when it allows, etc.)

Primary DE&I Goal: Diversity

Other applicable domain: All others

UNDERGRADUATE/GRADUATE STUDENTS

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Increase the diversity of students recruited into UMOR units for internships and part-time positions.

Measures of Success

Increased diversity in applicant pools, interview pools and hiring yield with a focus on the underrepresented minority (URM) and gender balance ratio among students working as interns or part-time employees in UMOR units.

FY21 Actions

• Share and communicate best talent pool development, hiring and retention practices amongst UMOR units
• Continue to utilize multiple internal and external job posting outlets, including U-M’s Diversity Outreach Network and others included in the proposed UMOR recruitment toolkit.

Primary DE&I Goal: Diversity

Other applicable domain: All others

STAFF

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Increase the multi-dimensional diversity of UMOR staff through targeted and aggressive recruitment strategies while fostering staff retention programs.

Measures of Success

Increased overall diversity in applicant pools, interview pools, and hiring yield, including underrepresented minority (URM) staff and the gender balance ratio among staff within UMOR units.

FY21 Actions

• Share and communicate best talent pool development, hiring and retention practices amongst UMOR units
• Institute a formal policy requiring all UMOR staff involved in hiring decisions to complete Diversity in Hiring training offered by UMOR prior to talent searches (one-time training on use of the Interview Architect Tool)
• Ensure unit directors consider the diversity of their search committees
• Partner with other U-M and UMOR units for recruitment opportunities
• Determine how to best assess diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond gender and racial categorization
• Review and revise current operations as necessary to be consistent with recommended effective practices in recruitment, hiring and retention processes as well as climate and culture
• Provide and post guidance to UMOR units for recommended effective practices in recruitment, hiring and retention processes as well as climate and culture.

Primary DE&I Goal: Diversity

Other applicable domain: All others

IV. B. Advance DEI in UMOR Research Community – Education and Scholarship

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Ensure practices around reviewing funding decisions and award nominations and outcomes are aligned with recommended effective practices that reduce unconscious bias and address racial and gender diversity of grant/award nominations and awardees.

Measures of Success

• Development of a report on current practices, proposed changes, and drafting of guidance to issue to other campus partners
• Development of a regularized mechanism for reviewing unit practices and supporting data examination
• Engagement / partnerships with units around recommended practices.

FY21 Actions

• Determine the range of practices in place at U-M for addressing unconscious biases in award nominations and selections
• Review relevant research and practice literatures (e.g., recommended by ADVANCE, ODEI, NCID, etc.)
• Determine whether current practices align with local and national recommended effective practices, including those based on scholarship in this field
• Update report to include guidance around unconscious biases related to scholarship type (e.g., legitimacy/importance of research on race and gender questioned across disciplines) that impact nominations, evaluations, and awards and that are often correlated with scholar demographics

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Proactively highlight racial inequality work and more diverse experts.

Measures of Success

Improvement of representation (in topics and scholars) more broadly, including race and other DEI areas.

FY21 Actions

• Regular reviews of our own social media, Michigan Research, Research Blueprint, and other communications to ensure topics related to race (racial inequality, other cultural and diversity processes related to race, etc.) are represented
• Build and refine processes and norms around who is included in communications, how those individuals are chosen, and how UMOR works with other units

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Analyze institutional spending and other internal research metrics with race (and other demographic factors like gender and ethnicity) explicitly included.

Measures of Success

Generation of reports and additional materials developed based on data collection and analysis.

FY21 Actions

• Review seed funding and prestigious award nomination processes
• Review faculty grant submission profiles and the areas and types of research within them (e.g., health and biological sciences, social sciences/psychology).
• Review support structures designed for researchers
• Investigate the ability to provide U-M units with data to raise awareness and encourage informed unit- and disciplinary-based action around inequities in the research enterprise/pipeline more broadly

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Catalyze more research and scholarship across campus on racial inequality.

Measures of Success

Development of a suite of efforts/offerings that include and enable bigger, sustained efforts and impacts around research innovation.

FY21 Actions

• UMOR partners with provost’s office and broader group of units on suite of grants programming
• Work with provost’s office (including ODEI) to co-lead and launch grant program in fall 2020 focused on advancing research infrastructure (grants to support research innovation, interdisciplinary collaboratives, and external grant seeking
• Visualization of current research and scholarship around DEI and racial inequality (in collaboration with units already working in this space, including NCID, ODEI, Provost’s Office, and schools/colleges

Primary DE&I Goal: Equity

Other applicable domain: All others

IV. C. Climate and Culture – Promoting an Equitable and Inclusive Community

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Require that all UMOR communications and marketing materials reflect the vision of diversity, equity and inclusion for the University of Michigan.

Measures of Success

Full compliance with all DEI related requirements in all UMOR unit communications.

FY21 Actions

• Monitor all UMOR units’ communications and marketing materials to maintain diverse and compliant content.
• Ensure all websites are ADA-compliant; if not, provide funding to aid units in website upgrades.
• Develop a formal policy addressing diversity, equity and inclusion requirements for UMOR communications tools and disseminate to UMOR communications practitioners.

Primary DE&I Goal: Inclusion

Other applicable domain: All others

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Foster a workplace culture of inclusivity through events, communication, employee engagement, and staff recognition.

Measures of Success

• Increased employee participation/attendance in U-M, UMOR and unit-sponsored events
• Expressed employee satisfaction
• Increased awareness and utilization of professional development and training tools and resources

FY21 Actions

• Review data from U-M climate study to assess UMOR staff concerns
• Implementation of staff to staff appreciation program
• Review and update job classifications.
• Provide more opportunities for staff development and training.
• Continue to publicize existing University pathways for reporting concerns and encourage students, faculty, and staff to do so.

Primary DE&I Goal: Inclusion

Other applicable domain: All others

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Advance DEI in “internal” U-M community (UMOR leadership, staff, units).

Measures of Success

Defined lead/coordination, distributed leadership, and support roles for DEI implementation.

FY21 Actions

• Develop an infrastructure for plan execution and assessment
• Review and revise current operations as necessary to be consistent with recommended effective practices surrounding promotion of an equitable and inclusive climate
• Elevate/improve the integration of staff UMOR Unit DEI committee
• Develop communication and feedback loop mechanisms between UMOR leadership team and staff DEI committee

Primary DE&I Goal: Inclusion

Other applicable domain: All others

Five-Year Strategic Objective

Raise awareness of UMOR’s commitment to DEI

Measures of Success

• Development of an internal communications plan to promote new diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans; achievement benchmarks; add new phases in the implementation of deliverables
• Periodic DEI communications plan evaluation, including engagement, tactical results, metrics, and analysis of the UMOR DEI Strategic Plan adoption rates.

FY21 Actions

• Develop a DEI communications plan in conjunction with goals/milestones set forth by the U-M Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
• Encourage UMOR units to ‘sponsor’ at least one DEI activity, either as an individual unit or in collaboration with other UMOR units
• Work with UMOR Communicators’ group to disseminate information from UMOR’s DEI strategic plan.
• Design method to capture anonymous DEI-related feedback (requests/suggestions/concerns) from UMOR staff

Primary DE&I Goal: Inclusion

Other applicable domain: All others

Five-Year Strategic Objective

All UMOR’s training programs will reflect U-M’s vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Measures of Success

All training materials will reflect diversity, equity and inclusion, and will be ADA-compliant.

FY21 Actions

• Development of DEI-based training “suite” for all UMOR staff based on offerings normally available through Organizational Learning
• Review Navigate suite of training programs for research training to ensure DEI- and ADA-compliance.
• If training programs do not currently reflect U-M’s vision for DEI, develop a plan and budget for updating programs and materials.

Primary DE&I Goal: Inclusion

Other applicable domain: All others

Five-Year Strategic Objective: 

Educate our community on sexual and gender-based misconduct prevention in an effort to promote a safe and supportive environment for all members to work, learn, and thrive.

Measure of Success

• 100% completion rate of required training prior to established deadlines
• Expressed staff/employee satisfaction with work environment

FY21 Actions

• Support central efforts to educate faculty, staff, and students on the forthcoming University of Michigan Policy on Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct prevention (“umbrella policy”).
• Develop and socialize unit-specific value statements that align and reinforce the forthcoming university level values that promote culture and climate change consistent with both the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Prevention work that is already underway
• Placement of links to University resources related to sexual harassment and misconduct prevention on UMOR DEI web page(s)

IV. D. Service (as applicable)

Note: UMOR’s service mission for internal constituents is guided and controlled by what is described in the previous sections of the strategic plan.

V. Goal-related Metrics – School, college or unit measures tracked over time

Diversity

UMOR will continuously monitor its faculty and staff diversity profile in all units and provide centralized support for those units seeking/needing resources to attract, hire, train and retain a diverse workforce.

Equity

On an annual basis, UMOR Human Resources will analyze the merit review documents submitted to UMOR’s director of human resources in order to track demographics of promoted faculty/staff, as well as the demographics within salary bands of employees.

Inclusion

Results on the U-M climate measures of UMOR faculty, staff and students.

Overall

Require all units to submit to UMOR annual progress reports on status, activities, and achievements related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Based on the central U-M template for guidance on DEI Metrics Tracking we will define what to track based on the results from the All-Staff-Survey. Those data will be catalogued and then reviewed when the survey is repeated in Year 5.

VI. Action Planning Tables with Details and Accountabilities

VI. A. Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention

VI. B. Advance DEI in UMOR Research Community – Education and Scholarship

VI. C. Climate and Culture – Promoting an Equitable and Inclusive Community

IV. D. Service (as applicable)

Note: UMOR’s service mission for internal constituents is guided and controlled by what is described in the previous sections of the strategic plan.

VII. Plans for Supporting, Tracking and Updating the Strategic Plan

Tabbye Chavous and Sabrina Ervin will serve as DEI Implementation Co-Leads as the key contacts for the stewardship of this plan in FY21.

The guidelines document on our website https://research.umich.edu/diversity-equity-inclusion including select links supports the units with implementation efforts.

VIII. Conclusion

Regular status reports will be shared with the UMOR Leadership Team, directors and senior staff with information regarding progress-to-goals and areas requiring further attention.

UMOR views this strategic plan as a living document and will continue to search for additional ideas and sources of information to better guide the implementation and evaluation of this plan. Examples of external sources and references are included below.

Bensimon, E. M. (2004). The diversity scorecard: A learning approach to institutional change. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00091380409605083

(link is external)

Harvard University. (2013). Recruiting for diversity. Retrieved from http://hr.fas.harvard.edu/files/fas-hr/files/recruiting_for_diversity_9.17.13_0.pdf

(link is external)

Lim, N., Haddad, A., and Daugherty, L. (2013). Implementation of the DOD diversity and inclusion strategic plan. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR333/RAND_RR333.pdf

(link is external)

University of Michigan. (2016). Recruiting for staff diversity. Retrieved from https://hr.umich.edu/working-u-m/management-administration/recruiting-employment/recruiting-staff-diversity

University of Southern California Center for Urban Education. (2016). Equity scorecard. Retrieved from https://cue.usc.edu/tools/the-equity-scorecard/