Juneteenth, diversification, belonging, and accountability

By Beth Paul, President, and Lisa Durant-Jones, Vice President for Community & Belonging

Nazareth College is committed to promoting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community as a critical component of the campus experience for our faculty, staff, and students. Our Strategic Framework extends and strengthens this commitment to preparing “the Nazareth community to be equity-minded, socially-just leaders.” This past year has challenged all of us to hold true to our ideals and ensure that we continue to work to create an anti-racist campus, reckoning honestly with our past and proactively building a more just and equitable  future. The trauma, marginalization, and harm that results from systemic racism has had an impact on our Nazareth community, and we must be steadfast with respecting and valuing human difference in all of its forms.

On June 19, our country will celebrate Juneteenth. This annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States has been celebrated by African-Americans since the late 1800s. Juneteenth is a reminder of the brutality that African Americans endured for centuries, and the tenacity and proud legacy of those who persevered in the struggle for equality in America. Overlooked for so long, there is finally an acknowledgment of the importance of this holiday.  This week, Juneteenth officially became the 12th federal holiday.

This past year, our Nazareth College community has continued to advance our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through intentional and campus-wide understanding and action. We have focused on core areas that include diversification of our campus community, enhanced campus-wide DEI education to build a culture of inclusion and belonging, and developing systems of accountability. In doing this work, we have achieved six of the eight recommendations from the 2019 Campus Climate Survey, with the remaining two in progress. Nazareth College commits to achieving an anti-racist campus with an equity mindset as a movement and not a moment. With continued work to be done, here are some highlights that point to progress.

Increased Diversification

Our efforts to increase diverse representation on our campus is of critical importance. We continually look to incorporate best practices in our recruitment efforts of employees and students, and commit to it as an ongoing strategic priority. Tactics that have been employed include:

• Inclusive search best practices for administrative, faculty, and staff hires;
  
• Mandatory implicit bias training for all search committee members;
  
• Data analysis for equity gaps in the student admissions process; and
  
• Ongoing assessment of barriers that impact successful efforts toward increased representation of faculty, staff, and students of color.
  

Recruitment and retention efforts are interdependent. The College is building upon existing strategies for the retention of faculty, staff, and students of color such as:

• Expansion of student-led organizations/clubs to advocate and promote social change. (e.g. BLM @ Naz, Difficult Conversations);
• The creation of affinity groups;
  
• New employee orientation, and program-specific professional learning opportunities;
  
• Mentoring programs for new hires;
  
• The Athletic Diversity Ambassador Program — designed to foster and sustain a culture of belonging where individual differences are embraced and empowered as part of an interconnected, inclusive community; 
  
• The Social Justice Student Scholar Grant — supports student work to design projects addressing a wide range of social justice topics; and
  
• Equitable Spaces Courses — addresses social justice issues that impact our nation and the world from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Educating for a Culture of Inclusion and Belonging

Increased and sustained professional learning opportunities for DEI have been a major initiative this past year with the goal of creating a culture of inclusion and understanding across lines of difference. Robust interdivisional collaborations have resulted in a wide array of professional learning opportunities offered virtually through community fora, common book reads, small group discussion, retreats, and campus-wide and community events. Topics included:

• Systemic racism
  
• Antiracism
  
• Allyship
  
• Implicit/unconscious bias
  
• Microaggressions
  
• Civil discourse
  
• Equity mindedness
  
• Social justice
  
• Anti-blackness
  
• Asian American Pacific Islander violence
  
• Restorative practices
  
• Inclusive pedagogy
  

In addition, academic, programmatic, and curricular revisions to intentionally integrate DEI are underway within the Schools of Business and Leadership, Education, and Health and Human Services, and the College of Arts and Sciences. DEI-related themes have been expanded within the required Academic and College Success (ACS) course with specific learning outcomes that map to the Core DEI student learning outcomes.

Accountability

Creating accountability processes that encourage leadership and the campus community to achieve goals and objectives is of critical importance to successful DEI initiatives. First steps towards accountability have taken place and include:

• The Nazareth College Diversity Scorecard (updated annually);
  
• DEI leadership education series for trustees, senior administrators and campus leaders, including a robust Board of Trustees Community and Belonging Committee;
  
• The creation of the Nazareth Bias Response and Education Team (NBRET), using a restorative justice process to hold people accountable for recognizing and taking responsibility for harm that has been done, and to give the community a chance for healing and rebuilding trust. An annual report will be posted beginning summer 2021;
  
• Area-level policy and procedural anti-bias audits (e.g. Academic Policies and Procedures Committee, Anti-Bias Faculty Manual Task Force); and
  
• Cabinet-led Institutional Research data analysis for racial equity indicators and equity gaps.
  

We have been inspired this year by the increasing community-wide engagement in Nazareth College’s DEI movement — an indicator of our advancing commitment. This fall, 2021, Community and Belonging will re-envision our existing advisory council by creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Shared Leadership Committee that reports to the president and the vice president. With a shared equity leadership (SEL) approach, advancing DEI must become everyone’s responsibility, with multiple campus stakeholders collectively assuming a role in contributing to our Equity Mindset strategic goal. This committee will work collaboratively with members of the campus community to build upon the accomplishments of this past year, and strengthen the College's commitment to equity through transformative practices. 

As we look to the new academic year, we look forward to working with you to continue to advance our movement and help to create a more just and equitable community and world. Through our movement, driven by our collective commitment, we will prepare students and ourselves for leading meaningful lives in a diverse and global society.