Policy & Committee

Diversity Advisory Workgroup Committee

The USF College of The Arts' Diversity Advisory Workgroup Committee meets at least once each semester to discuss the current activities in the units, college, and university in support of diversity initiatives including among other topics: faculty/staff recruitment, hiring and retention; student recruitment, support and retention; college and campus environment; university diversity networking and diversity summit activities; faculty and staff reports; and reviews of diversity data.

Membership representation includes staff and faculty: two from School of Art and Art History; two from School of Music; two from School of Theatre and Dance; two from Institute for Research in Art; one from the College offices. A representative from the University DEO office is regularly invited to attend and all CoTA staff and faculty are invited to attend and participate in the meeting discussions.

College-wide Diversity Climate Survey

In the fall of 2007, the College of The Arts' Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) and the Diversity Advisory Workgroup (DAW) held a meeting to consider how to address retention and diversity issues regarding under represented faculty and staff. A representative from the University's office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity (DEO) also attended this meeting to ensure diversity policies were being upheld by both groups. At this meeting, members of both the FAC and DAW decided to expand the DAW membership to include representation from the FAC. The DAW is now comprised of faculty and staff from all units in the college; it incorporates the elected membership of the FAC, the appointed membership of the original DAW, and the expressed interest of additional faculty and staff who participate in the expanded DAW group.

In the discussions of a means to identify and understand the questions of retention for the college, it was suggested that the college conduct a diversity climate survey. The Group worked with DEO to develop two survey instruments for the task. One survey instrument was administered to Faculty and the other administered to Staff. Both surveys were administered in April and May of 2008 with responses sent by the individual faculty and staff to the DEO office for summarization. Once the DEO office had summarized the data, members of the DAW developed the attached report drawn from these summaries. Response rates to the survey were: 53% response from staff 31/58 and 40% from faculty 53/131.