Diverse Strategies for Chief Diversity Officers - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Sometimes the administration of academe has something to tell the corporate world about management (OK, only sometimes, but bear with us).

• At a Leadership Institute organized by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the assembled officers offered a variety of successful strategies for increasing diversity in an organization without derailing the core mission.

• But all the officers agreed that no strategy or approach works without full support from the top, in this case the president or chancellor — including a commitment to hold faculty and administrators accountable for achieving diversity benchmarks.

• Shirley Ramirez, vice president for institutional planning & community engagement at Lafayette College, said diversity must be integrated into the core veins of the institution.

• “We have expertise, not just in diversity issues,” Ramirez said, and the role of a chief diversity officer must be viewed in the context of how to incorporate diversity into the “traditional ways in which the academy has functioned.”

• Archie Ervin, associate provost and director of diversity, uses incentives as much as possible to ensure buy-in at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. But he also provides public reports about the accomplishments — or lack thereof. It’s amazing how that can motivate people, he noted.

The Diverse Education article