{"id":119673,"date":"2018-02-08T12:40:39","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T17:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=119673"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:23:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:23:58","slug":"building-a-path-to-diversity-one-school-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2018\/building-a-path-to-diversity-one-school-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Path to Diversity, One School at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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February 8, 2018<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\"thumbnail-classroom\"<\/a>Hoping to gain clarity and guidance through one of the\u00a0thorniest\u00a0issues on college campuses, nearly two dozen faculty and administrators from universities across the Boston area gathered at the School of Public Health on February 2 to share insights and develop methods of promoting diversity.<\/p>\n

Moderated by Yvette Cozier<\/a>, associate professor of epidemiology and assistant dean for diversity and inclusion, the event provided a forum for top advocacy officers to discuss best practices and to solicit new approaches to increase\u00a0student and faculty representation among under-represented groups.<\/p>\n

Michael McClean<\/a>, associate dean for research and faculty advancement, emphasized the importance for schools to have both a community and a faculty that reflect the broader world. \u201cSo much of what affects our research focus is reflected by who is our faculty,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cWe also want to make sure that we\u2019re creating a welcoming environment for our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenneth Elmore<\/a>, associate provost and dean of students at Boston University, challenged his fellow attendees to reconsider their approach to fostering diversity and inclusion. \u201cPart of what gives me pause is that we\u2019re so muddled as to why we do this, and continue to be muddled,” he said. “We also discount how important heart is in all this. We\u2019ve metrics-ed ourselves to death, but we\u2019ve forgotten about the people behind the numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmore suggested that the attendees remember the importance of building empathy by building better interpersonal relationships between different groups of people.<\/p>\n

Thomas Harwell, director of student diversity and inclusion initiatives at the\u00a0Questrom School of Business<\/a>, spoke for a group that discussed scalability of efforts, challenges related to having conversations relating to diversity, the role of white allies, the danger of overcompensating, and the need for balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about the realization that our students are having tough experiences on campus and are suffering, there\u2019s a need to help them,\u201d Harwell said. The group also discussed the \u201cBU Bounce,\u201d named for the unfortunate tendency of minority students to leave BU after a year or two, citing lack of community.<\/p>\n

Peter Cahn, associate provost for academic affairs at the MGH Institute of Health Professions<\/a>, was part of a group addressing faculty diversity and how faculty searches can be made more inclusive. One way, the group suggested, might be with an academic version of the NFL\u2019s \u201cRooney Rule,\u201d which actively aims to increase the number of head coaches of color by increasing the number of potential candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also the need to speak the same language as faculty and present data, to know how many minority doctorate students are out there, and keep them in the pipeline so that they are recognized when openings come up,\u201d \u2028Cahn said.<\/p>\n

Hee-Young Park<\/a>, assistant dean for graduate medical sciences at the School of Medicine<\/a>, discussed holistic admissions\u2014when a broad spectrum of criteria are considered when admitting applicants, not just test scores. Some schools are considering dropping GRE requirements, Park said, while others\u00a0are resistant to it. She is currently writing a paper based, in part, on findings at MED\u00a0that suggest GRE scores are not an absolute predictor of passing grades in graduate school, but have more of a correlation when looking at top students.<\/p>\n

Maria Madison, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion at Brandeis University<\/a>, welcomed Park\u2019s approach and encouraged other attendees to seek data to challenge deans or provosts who believe they must keep their US News and World Report<\/em> scores high by only seeking top-scoring students.<\/p>\n

Several administrators echoed the frustration of Samantha Kaplan<\/a>, director of the Early Medical School Selection Program <\/a>at MED, who acknowledged the widely loathed but unavoidable connection between MCAT scores and US News<\/em> rankings.<\/p>\n

Crystal Ann Williams<\/a>, associate provost for diversity and inclusion at Boston University, remarked, \u201cAs we aspire to go up in the rankings, as we aspire to become more selective, there\u2019s a tension about not only how many people we admit, but who we admit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ariana Hajmiragha, administrative coordinator of the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University<\/a>, acknowledged the seriousness of the task of fostering diversity, and suggested schools should spread the workload among different administrators and faculty.<\/p>\n

There was near universal agreement of a suggestion that the attendees should be at the forefront of a cohort to help fight the perception of Boston as not being as welcoming and diverse as other cities, a factor that might play into the decisions of some students not to apply or attend Boston schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some of us who have been in Boston for 40 or 50 years, and we\u2019re able to navigate it and make it work. I\u2019d like to see some more of those stories\u2014especially for students,\u201d Elmore said. \u201cI have a desire to have more students, especially students of color, to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Michael Saunders<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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