Leading the Way to a More Inclusive Campus: The CIED Expands its Work

In 2019, CUNY SPS launched the Committee on Institutional Equity and Diversity (CIED) as part of an institution-wide effort to ensure that the core values of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) informed the School’s institutional identity and work going forward. During the 2020-21 academic year, the CIED has continued its important efforts with a number of events and initiatives.

In Spring 2021, the CIED’s Learning Programs subcommittee provided several educational opportunities in EDI. These included three teaching modules that were created in collaboration with the Office of Human Resources and curated for the campus community. The learning modules, which also included three discussion sessions, addressed the following topics: Confronting Bias: Thriving Across Differences; Unconscious Bias; Difficult Conversations: Talking About Race at Work; Inclusive Mindset; Skills for Inclusive Conversations; and Communicating about Culturally Sensitive Issues.

In a second program, the subcommittee hosted a panel discussion on Race and Vaccine Skepticism, focusing specifically on how such skepticism impacts Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Panelists helped participants better understand vaccine hesitancy in BIPOC communities, and provided an historical account of why members of these groups may mistrust the health system.

Additionally, the CIED Learning Programs subcommittee collaborated with the CUNY SPS Film Club and the departments of Communication & Media, Human Relations, and Sociology in live screening the film Knock Down the House via YouTube, while a simultaneous discussion took place online.

In a final subcommittee offering, CIED also worked with the CUNY SPS Book Club in selecting Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis and Michael D’Orso for April 2021 and Caste-The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson for May 2021.

Following these events, CIED members provided outreach at the 2021 CUNY Student Life Conference through a presentation and breakout session entitled Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Re-assessing our beliefs in order to serve our students. Celeste Clarke, CIED co-chair and director of campus operations, Arianna Rodriguez, senior academic advisor, and Mariam Abdul-Sattar, CIED assistant, facilitated the event, which focused on soliciting input from participants across the different CUNY campuses on how to develop and implement student-focused EDI initiatives and activities.

Alongside these efforts, the CIED is in the process of collecting data to increase understanding of where CUNY SPS stands today in terms of EDI—and where it needs to go. In April 2021, the CIED undertook a campus climate survey and needs assessment to better understand where CUNY SPS is doing well, and where further growth is needed.

The process began at the top, in the Dean’s Cabinet, when the CIED used the CUPA-HR DEI Maturity Index—a tool designed to help institutions of higher education take meaningful steps to develop their EDI efforts—as an exercise to assess how CUNY SPS was performing in areas including communication and education; assessment; culture; investment and infrastructure; and compensation, recruitment, and retention. The Cabinet is now reviewing results for future institutional focus.

At a campus-wide level, the CIED also initiated a campus climate survey, using a Minority and Women-Owned Business (MWBE) consulting firm, Bradley Consulting and Training, to roll out the survey. Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) managed the anonymous data collection process, while Bradley conducted several listening sessions with senior administration, faculty, staff, and students. Going forward, the CIED will be using what it has learned from the surveys and listening sessions to work with senior leadership as they build out broader goals and actions for EDI at CUNY SPS.

CIED Now Online

Want to know more about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at CUNY SPS? Visit the newly expanded CIED webpage! This section of the CUNY SPS website features a comprehensive schoolwide EDI editorial calendar, a list of CIED planned events, and resources for important EDI commemorative months and dates.