This report details measurable progress toward the five goals outlined in Carleton’s Community Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity during the 2021–22 academic year.

Capacity • Representation • Resources • Engagement • Measurable Improvement

Goal 1: Capacity

Build the institutional capacity, resources, and dedicated leadership required to engage in the work of inclusion, diversity, and equity broadly, including implementing and sustaining the IDE Strategic Plan.

Progress:

  • The search for Carleton’s first Chief Diversity Officer was launched in the Summer of 2022. WittKieffer was hired as the search consultant for this position, in consultation with search committee co-chairs Professor Dan Hernandez and Associate Dean of Students Trey Williams. The search consultant was on campus Sept. 13-14, 2022, to conduct listening sessions with a range of campus constituencies and committees. This input helped shape the leadership profile for the role of Vice President for Inclusion, Equity and Community (VPIEC), which the search committee circulated the week of Sept. 19 for broad feedback from the campus community. Candidates for the position of VPIEC will be recruited throughout the fall, with publicly-announced finalists to come to campus in January 2023.
  • In fiscal year 2021 and 2022, the President’s Cabinet allocated both ongoing and one-time funding toward IDE initiatives, in addition to launching endowment and annual fundraising efforts to support aspects of the IDE Plan. Portions of this funding will lay the foundation for the VPIEC and their department.  
  • The work of the Division of External Relations has assisted donors with allocating their gifts toward IDE priorities. As of September 2022, gifts for new IDE purposes total over $60 million, including:
    • Expanding socioeconomic diversity of the student body—especially at the lowest income level—is a priority of the Plan, and the opportunity to receive up to $50 million from the Schuler Education Foundation represents a major step forward to accomplish this goal. To date, $29.8 million has been committed by Carleton donors toward this matching challenge, resulting in $59.4 million to fund the financial aid packages of Pell-eligible and undocumented students. This fall term, 19 additional students were able to enroll at Carleton through this funding. This number will increase over the next three years resulting in a total increase of 69 students when the program is fully enrolled. 
    • A new endowed scholarship fund for Indigenous students was created by alumna Judy Sosted ’61.
    • A grant from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), which is managing National Endowment for the Humanities funding from one of the pandemic-relief bills, allowed the hiring of an Indigenous communities liaison position within the CCCE office to build and strengthen ties with Indigenous communities. Marcy Averill assumed this position in September 2022.
    • The Class of 1972 established the Get Started Fund to assist our lowest income students with funding for the initial transition to Carleton. This summer, 122 members of the Class of 2026 received checks of $500 each to “get started” at Carleton this fall.
    • The Mellon Foundation renewed the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which seeks to diversify faculty by encouraging students from underrepresented groups to pursue a doctorate in the humanities.
    • The creation of the Fred and Mary Easter Fund for Africana Studies will provide annual support for the department to provide funding for students to attend conferences or bring speakers to campus.
    • Through the generosity of donors providing for Carleton in their estate plans, approximately $2 million was set aside as an endowed fund for IDE work.
    • Alumni and parent donors to the annual fund continued to respond positively to the option to designate their gifts to support the College’s commitment to IDE by contributing over $400k for this allocation in Fiscal Year 2022.
  • The Office of the Provost has drafted a template for academic programs to use to conduct department equity audits. The Office will share the template draft with the Education and Curriculum Committee (ECC), department chairs, and program directors to solicit their ideas for modification and to develop an implementation plan that is workable, consistent, and sustainable. This work will help inform strategies to address disparities in curriculum structure that may hinder student progression through major/minor requirements and capacity of current faculty to deliver curricular offerings that reflect and support a robust commitment to the values of IDE.
  • The Division of Student Life is currently exploring and evaluating three online modules about diversity that students can review and discuss well beyond New Student Week. Everfi is a leading contender, which is the tool Carleton uses for new students. A new financial literacy module and a study skills session on how to prepare for finals will also be offered in November. 
  • The Division of Student Life partnered with the organization Strategic Diversity Initiatives to provide diversity training for all staff in Student Life. The training explored a series of case studies on decision-making and supervision of both full-time and student staff. The Division will create a similar workshop for student Peer Leaders and student workers.
  • The president of the faculty and the President’s Cabinet are working on a map of the governance structure that will help illuminate the ways in which decisions are made. This map, and sample decision processes, will be communicated to the campus community in fall term.
  • Security Services engaged the Tazel Institute in two separate training sessions specific to the work of security staff. The first was about anti-racism and the second on inclusion, diversity, and equity for security service professionals.
  • This Progress Report (Fall 2022) is one step in the process of communicating about the goals and objectives of the IDE plan. The campus can expect regular updates as progress is made in implementing the strategies identified in the plan. The new Community of Belonging website, launched in September 2022, was created as a gathering place to document current IDE initiatives and provide visibility to how Carleton’s initiatives, programs, organizations, and resources across campus align with the goals and objectives of the IDE Plan.

Goal 2: Representation

Significantly increase representation of students, faculty, and staff on campus from underrepresented populations.

Progress:

  • The Financial Aid Working Group had an initial meeting in September. The first meeting served as an opportunity to orient Working Group members on key aspects of financial aid, including components of student financial aid packages and how Carleton financial aid is funded at the college. Future meeting topics will include: how a family’s need is determined, student loans, summer earning contributions, student employment, and determining key enrollment considerations for the college.
  • The college introduced language on opportunity hiring to the Department Chairs handbook during the 2021-22 academic year, but it became clear that some process elements needed to be further fleshed out.  The Office of the Provost will continue to work with the ECC, the Faculty Curricular Planning Committee (FCPC), and the Faculty Personnel Committee (FPC) throughout the academic year to clarify guidelines and processes for proposing and approving opportunity hires.
  • The Provost’s Office is currently reviewing the office website to address the lack of IDE-related content. At the same time, Associate Provost Yansi Perez is developing a web page for faculty candidates that will provide them with information that we think will be particularly useful for candidates from a variety of under-represented population groups. This work is expected to be completed by the end of Fall Term. 
  • Provost Michelle Mattson is working to build a Resource Archive for search committees on best practices in recruiting and hiring BIPOC faculty. Rather than having this be housed publicly on the website, it will likely be a digital folder in Dropbox. The goal for completion of this Resource Archive will be January 2023, to ensure departments and programs that are proposing new faculty positions have it available as searches begin to be approved.
  • In spring of 2022, the Provost’s Office began partnering with outside consultant Strategic Diversity Initiatives to work with search committees and entire departments that are hiring faculty on increasing awareness of the full range of biases that individuals bring to searches and on best practices in terms of ad copy, candidate interviews, and campus visits. The team plans to continue using this consultant in the coming year while they look toward training more faculty to take on that role. 
  • The Provost’s Office is also working on gathering material through LACRELA to provide more training opportunities to faculty and staff on IDE-related issues relevant for recruitment, retention, and curriculum matters.
  • Provost Michelle Mattson has drafted two short surveys that the college may ask faculty candidates to fill out, either after initial interviews for candidates that are not invited to campus or after the campus visit for position finalists. These survey drafts are currently in review in the Provost’s Office and will then be shared with Human Resources to ensure everything abides by current legal expectations related to hiring practices.
  • The Provost’s Office is reviewing additional recruitment strategies, and once that is completed, they will turn their attention to reviewing Carleton’s faculty retention efforts. Specifically, the Office is interested in whether a different model of new faculty mentoring can help address retention efforts. The review will begin in the spring of 2023 in collaboration with the Learning and Teaching Center with a tentative goal of making any agreed upon changes ready for the 2023-24 academic year.
  • Human Resources is working on adapting current exit, stay, and candidate experience interview practices to be more attuned to equity and inclusivity.
  • With the assistance of outside consultants from 3DC, all staff in External Relations completed the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) along with individual coaching sessions and group sessions to understand where each team member is on the continuum and to identify the differences that make a difference in our work and our goal to be inclusive.
  • Staff with frontline-facing responsibilities in External Relations completed nine hours of training with 3DC on how to handle difficult conversations with our constituents, especially dealing with the variety of perspectives on race and diversity.
  • Communications staff completed a course specifically focused on ensuring our marketing and communications efforts are inclusive and equitable.
  • With a goal of ensuring that alumni-hosted new student send-offs are more inclusive and open, locations were moved to parks or public locations accessible by public transport and away from private homes and clubs.

Goal 3: Resources

Establish and sustain the resources and practices necessary to provide an equitable environment for all students, staff, and faculty to thrive.

Progress:

  • A Student Life survey is being developed and will be ready to distribute after Midterm Monday to collect student feedback about New Student Week.
  • The Vice President and Treasurer’s Office is examining student fee structures with a focus on academic fees during the 2022-23 academic year. 
  • The Vice President and Treasurer’s Office is collaborating with the Facilities Management and Student Life teams, and many others, to bring the Student Life and Housing Plan (formerly the Plan for Strengthening Residential Student Communities) to fruition. This project includes new and more equitable housing options for students, multicultural programming space and new, dedicated spaces for the Student Health and Counseling Center, the Office of Accessibility Resources, and the Gender and Sexuality Center. The Multicultural Center and Black Student Center are part of the first phase of the Student Life and Housing Plan. 
  • The Financial Aid Working Group has established a Student Employment Experience Subcommittee to review the student employment program. The subcommittee is chaired by Associate Director of Student Financial Aid Kris Parker and Associate Director of the Career Center Rachel Leatham. The subcommittee’s charge is:
    • “This subcommittee will discuss how students experience work at Carleton; wages and employment expectations; objectives and effectiveness of student jobs in instilling longer-term job skills; and how student work fits into the broader financial picture for Carleton students.” 
  • President Alison Byerly and Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Art Rodriguez and Professor Michael Hemesath, co-chairs of the Financial Aid Working Group, met with the subcommittee co-chairs in September 2022. The remaining members of the subcommittee are being finalized and will be shared with the campus community this fall.
  • Diversity of key volunteer and leadership groups for the College is a stated goal, and the Carleton alumni body is 15% non-majority, though the ten most recent graduating classes are 30% non-majority. Current representation of the three volunteer groups noted in the IDE plan are:

Goal 4: Engagement

Integrate and sustain engagement with the principles of IDE, including the full diversity of perspectives, experiences, and intellectual contributions of historically underrepresented voices.

Progress:

  • A review of Carleton’s Institutional Learning Outcomes and Graduation Requirements will begin in the Provost’s Office this fall in coordination with the ECC. Analyzing both qualitative and quantitative institutional data will be part of this review.
  • The Dean of Students Division is restarting the Convocation Winter Dialogue Program that had been held prior to the pandemic. The program brings faculty, staff, and students together in discussion groups focused on the Convocations held in weeks 1, 3, and 5 of Winter Term ’23.
  • Plans are in the works to expand the 10-week Student Success Series, initially offered to first-year students in 2021, to all students. The core three subjects are exploring differences, financial literacy, and navigating Carleton.

Goal 5: Measurable Improvement

Demonstrate our commitment to measurable improvement of IDE outcomes (retention, recruitment, achievement, thriving/belonging, and cultural competence) through data collection and analysis and transparent communication.

Progress:

  • Various committee co-chairs and Cabinet members have been routinely meeting with established governance committees, faculty, staff, and students to provide IDE-related progress updates on their searches and initiatives already in progress. Frequent updates have been provided in the campus community’s weekly news source, Carleton Today. This progress report serves as the first IDE website quarterly update that is shared with the entire Carleton community.