Campus Spotlights

In Year Five, amidst the global pandemic, the Center for Educational Outreach (CEO) partnered with the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI), ITS, Children on Campus and the University Outreach Council. The goal was to sustain outreach efforts by CEO and University Outreach Council members in support of underserved K-12 students and educators in the state. CEO also increased its technical infrastructure to bolster virtual and hybrid initiatives by designing and creating sustainable virtual and digital companions. These included the launch of three CEO pilot programs (Ecoach, Gradecraft and Virtual Wolverine Express) in conjunction with CAI to increase impact statewide. In the year ahead, plans call for expanding the Explore Canvas Catalog and providing continued support for any new requirements of the Children on Campus policy.

LSA’s faculty initiatives include its Collegiate Fellows program, which aims to recruit and retain 50 exceptional early-career scholars in all liberal arts fields with a sustained commitment to building an inclusive and diverse intellectual community. Since 2017, the College has successfully recruited 37 Collegiate Fellows (from a total of 3,296 applications) to 22 different departments in all three divisions of Humanities, Natural Science and Social Science. All selected Fellows are evaluated for tenure-track positions in LSA departments. To date, a total of 35 Fellows have entered or will enter the tenure track based on accepted offers (a 95% transition success rate). To complement Fellows’ departmental mentoring plans, the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) continues to provide professional development offerings to support successful pathways to tenure for early-career scholars with DEI commitments, create a sense of community within and across cohorts, build professional networks and connect Fellows with relevant U-M resources.

In Year Five, the U-M ADVANCE Program conducted research to help the university better understand faculty concerns and improve overall retention rates. Our interview studies pinpoints and describes key factors that influence faculty departure. These factors include unit climate, research support and resources, opportunities for mentoring and leadership and family needs. See the report executive summary or or see this synopsis. Focus groups including BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) faculty additionally point to issues such as high levels of service, including so-called “invisible” service, challenges navigating perceived  racism on campus and pressure to secure an outside offer. Moving forward, ADVANCE will continue to take advantage of other opportunities to address climate, such as through its RISE Committee, various workshops, an ongoing collaboration with the CRLT Players and partnerships with schools and colleges.

In March, the Women of Color Task Force (WCTF) hosted its 39th annual career conference virtually. All U-M staff, faculty and students, as well as the general public, were invited to this inclusive professional development event, which drew more than 1,100 attendees. The opening program keynote by Corie Pauling, Senior Vice President and Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer for TIAA and U-M alum, focused on strategies for creating inclusive anti-racist workspaces. This was followed by a nationally renowned panel of health care experts—all of whom were women of color—responding to questions about the COVID-19 vaccine. The closing keynote program featured a legislative panel comprising U.S. state representatives: the Honorable Rashida Tlaib, MI-13, and the Honorable Lisa Howze, former state representative and Davenport University Vice President for Strategic Partnerships. Founded in 1979, WCTF provides professional development, networking and training opportunities for U-M employees, focusing on the specific needs of women of color staff. There are currently 100+ U-M staff members representing all three campuses on the U-M Women of Color Task Force.

The Officer Education Program’s (OEP) primary goal in Year Five was to expand the diversity of its talent pool by focusing on campus recruitment and utilizing the full potential of cadet peer groups. The virtual environment necessitated by COVID-19 provided new opportunities to leverage our participation in recruitment efforts across the various campuses supported by OEP programs. By deploying our cadets and working with their respective student organizations to schedule recruiting and information sessions, OEP was able to reach a highly diverse pool of candidates across the greater Metro Detroit area and its respective universities.

In an effort to diversify the health care workforce, Michigan Medicine established a portfolio of pipeline programs ranging from precollege to post-baccalaureate. In light of COVID-19 constraints and the disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion (OHEI) delivered pipeline programs virtually in the summer of 2020 within a national landscape where numerous summer pipeline programs were cancelled. To assess the impact of virtual formats on learner growth and development in areas critical to health care professions, we conducted a comparative analysis of our standard program evaluation data. Measures surveyed included service orientation, college readiness, comfort with diversity, cultural awareness, leadership, empathy, resilience and growth. Preliminary findings indicate that a virtual pipeline program format could be leveraged to reach more learners in communities underrepresented in medicine while remaining within budgetary constraints. This is a promising first step in understanding how to hybridize pipeline programs in a way that maximizes efforts to diversify the next generation of health care professionals.