The Ferguson Forum in the Ferguson Student Center was filled on Monday at 2 p.m. as members of The University of Alabama community gathered to hear about UA’s new diversity mapping project.
Rona Halualani, Ph.D., managing principal and founder of diversity mapping company Halualani & Associates (H&A), spoke to the group about her company’s comprehensive, intensive and university-wide research methodology.
“We will be looking at….institutional actions and strategies with regard to diversity inclusion in regard to the last five years,” said Halualani, noting that this is not an assessment of campus climate.
Halualani said that H&A will go through documents, social media, events, syllabi, surveys and more in order to assess access, enrollment, scholarships, demographics, retention, completion, graduation, diversity efforts, diversity courses, student initiatives, institutional actions and strategies and institutional commitment to and investment in diversity.
The map will then identify assets, leverage points and gaps in UA’s diversity efforts and propose ways to improve.
H&A will also assign each effort a stage in the evolution of diversity. The first stage means the effort is foundational, stage two is the action stage, the third stage is defined by clear impact, while an effort at the fourth stage shows not only a commitment to diversity, but cultural change.
“Pervasive change is different from deep, meaningful, structural, cultural change,” Halualani said.
The mapping process will start in roughly one month and be completed between the winter or spring of 2017.
Halualani said the process is set up in such a way that participation from the UA community is encouraged and welcomed, but H&A does a lot of the front load of the work.
“We don’t want to overburden the campus,” Halualani said.
According to an invitation for the event, the mapping project was recommended by a group of UA faculty members who attended the Diversity Research Institute at UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute last summer. It also said that the project has the support of the Strategic Planning Council’s Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion.
An identical session was held Monday March 28 at 4 p.m.
For those who are unable to attend either session, a voiced-over version of Halualani’s power-point presentation will be available.
“We want this to be completely transparent,” said Jennifer Greer, Associate Provost for Administration.
