Goal 1: Campus Climate

In 2020, Rackham partnered with ADVANCE to conduct a first-in-the-nation study of the needs of graduate students with disabilities. Findings and recommendations generated by the report were posted on the Rackham website, and a case study was accepted for publication in A Practitioner’s Guide to Supporting Graduate and Professional Students (Routledge, forthcoming). Rackham is currently collaborating with the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Office and other campus partners to enact recommendations generated by the study and subsequent report. This group will likely form the core of an advisory committee charged with supporting the implementation of those recommendations.

In pre-campaign planning conversations with schools, colleges and units, the question often arises of how to diversify donor pipelines. During the first three years of its DEI plan, OUD encouraged development staff across all three campuses to diversify both donor and volunteer bases. As a first step, OUD leveraged its new policy on constituent affinity and identity information to diversify its donor base and direct donors toward DEI and other funds that speak to their interests, backgrounds and experiences. In Year Five, OUD continued its data acquisition, strategy and usage efforts to explore mitigating bias in wealth screening for prospective donors. With support from an ODEI Diversity, Democracy and Structural Racism Grant, our Prospect Development and Analytics team (PDA) and Data Science & Decision Support team analyzed in-house and vendor data to consider indicators that will help diminish bias in current wealth screenings, for instance accounting for U.S. history of redlining when using real estate data. Because of the project’s focus on both identifying untapped prospect potential and creating industry-leading best practices around wealth screening, it will have a direct impact on how OUD builds its campaign pipelines both in the short and long term.

A major goal of Year Five was to present ongoing exhibits and displays that made traditionally underrepresented groups and DEI themes visible to visitors and researchers. Initial plans called for a physical exhibit based on the Pohrt Collection of Native American Photography that would travel to libraries, historical societies and museums statewide. With the onset of COVID-19, the focus shifted to an online exhibit created by two U-M student interns. Titled “No, Not Even for a Picture: Re-examining the Native Midwest and Tribes’ Relations to the History of Photography,” the virtual experience presented the riches of the Pohrt Collection in an accessible yet rigorous way. At every step of the process, from writing a land acknowledgment to creating a glossary of terms, DEI commitments were at the forefront. This online exhibit has made the stories contained in these photographs available to Native communities across Michigan, and to scholars and students around the world, far exceeding what an in-person exhibit could have achieved.