coe-fac: Thanks for joining us Monday night

[Lisa Fortin]

Dear COE Students,



I am most appreciative of the honesty and concern that you shared with Dr. Chronister and myself on Monday. I also want to acknowledge Lisa Fortin, our events coordinator, for putting together this event on such short notice, and our Student Diversity Advisory Board and Dean's Student Advisory Board for their attendance. As expected, I learned a great deal from my conversations with so many of you, and I appreciated your listening attentively. As I expressed to you then, I am fully aware that our work to create an inclusive and equitable learning environment in the college will require long term commitment and the efforts of many.



As I mentioned to some of you, we have at least begun the work. Listed below are some of the efforts we have made in the past year to begin to move our college toward the dual goals of improving inclusion and equity.



We created an Assistant Dean for Equity and Inclusion position this summer.  Dr. Krista Chronister serves in this role at .40 FTE (Full Time Equivalent), and her charge is to support the intellectual and civic excellence of our students, faculty, and staff by helping to establish equitable and inclusive practices across our instructional, training, service, and research activities.

In collaboration with our Student Diversity Affairs Committee (SDAC), we administered a College student survey last spring to assess the quality of students' learning experiences.

We now have a student, staff, and faculty representative to the UO Diversity Committee.  Each representative reports back to Krista.

We meet quarterly with the Dean's Student Advisory Board to hear from students about their experiences and needs as well as to share College information.

We maintain a College Diversity Advisory Committee comprised of community members specializing in education and social services.

We formed new collaborative partnerships with UO and local community groups to foster the post-secondary development of youth in our community and connection between College of Education students and community leaders.

We maintain an active Student Diversity Affairs Committee and support this committee formally with a GTF (Graduate Teaching Fellow position). SDAC and the GTF are supervised by Krista.

We started the Our Space art initiative. The purpose of Our Space is to bring into our College learning spaces artwork that reflects the diversity of our College student community and the diversity of the children and families our graduates will serve.

We collaborated with United Academics and Academic Affairs to offer two new faculty mentoring initiatives that aim to increase retention of faculty from traditionally underrepresented groups in higher education.

We are devoting much time and collaborative energy to creating a plan that meets the requirements of House Bill 3375; a plan to articulate how the College will increase recruitment, retention and graduation rates of UO domestic minority education personnel.

I also heard you and your colleagues across campus ask for more participation in the faculty hiring process. We began this Fall by routinely including both a student and staff member on every new faculty search committee. But, I am well aware that one of your central goals for us is to create a workforce of faculty and staff that better reflects our local, national, and international leadership aspirations. We did make some progress last year (See our new faculty hires at : https://education.uoregon.edu/office-dean/new-faculty-2015-16) by hiring new faculty that meet the highest standards of academic excellence. We are vigorously pursuing the same goal this year with your assistance.

I am grateful to all of your for participating in this important work,

Randy


For scheduling, please contact Amanda Eakins at aeakins at uoregon.edu<mailto:%20aeakins at uoregon.edu> or 541-346-6467.
________________________________
[COE logo]

R.W. Kamphaus, Ph.D. | Professor and Dean
randyk at uoregon.edu<mailto:randyk at uoregon.edu> | 541-346-3405
HEDCO 130
1215 University of Oregon | Eugene, OR 97403



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