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Wendy Hill, provost and dean of the faculty, and Shirley Ramirez, vice president for institutional planning and community engagement, announced today that the College will undertake a campus climate study. Their message to the campus follows:
As part of our diversity and inclusiveness initiative of the strategic plan, the Faculty Committee on Diversity and others have suggested that we conduct a campus climate study. This study would help us to better understand our current campus climate and would in essence serve as our “baseline” for assessing at some time in the future whether initiatives we have implemented to improve the campus climate have had an effect. Through the support of a presidential grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we have identified a firm, Rankin & Associates, that is a leader in this work.
Dr. Susan Rankin is an authority and nationally known expert on climate assessment, strategic planning, and intervention strategies. She has worked with over 70 higher education institutions and developed and copyrighted the model and the instruments that will provide the basis for our institutional climate assessment and strategic plan. Most recently, Dr. Rankin is conducting a climate study and plan with Grinnell College.
As part of the process outlined by Rankin & Associates, we will have a working group (made up of faculty, administrators, and students) that will discuss issues with the firm as a way to make certain the study asks questions relevant to Lafayette. The study will involve both focus groups and a survey. Rankin & Associates will conduct the focus groups, put the survey together, analyze the data, write the report, and hold town meetings. The working group will help determine what the foci of the study are and discuss the findings.
The campus climate study will provide the College with institutional information, analysis, and recommendations as it relates to climate. Specifically, it will provide the following outcomes:
The final phase of the project will include the development of strategic initiatives based on the findings of the internal assessments, feedback from the Climate Study Working Group, and input from the campus constituent groups. Dr. Rankin will facilitate a retreat to assist the community in developing strategic initiatives that identify for example, well-defined goals, specific intervention actions, person(s) responsible for carrying out the actions, participants involved in the action, time-frames, costs, outcomes, and assessment. The information from the study will be used in conjunction with other data to provide Lafayette with an inclusive view of the climate for students at the College. Moreover, the efforts of the Campus Climate Working Group and the results of this study will be critical to the future direction of the College.
The Climate Study Working Group includes faculty members Rexford Ahene (economics), Mary Jo Lodge (English), Ann McGillicuddy-De Lisi (psychology), Xu Lijuan (Skillman Library), James Schaffer (chemical and biomolecular engineering), Derek Smith (mathematics), and Muhannad Suleiman (civil and environmental engineering); administrators George Bright (athletics), Amina DeBurst (intercultural development), Annette Diorio (student affairs), Lisa Rex (human resources), Hannah Stewart-Gambino (Dean of the College); and students Shariff Dean ’11, Lauren Jackson ’11, and Ashley Juavinett ’11.