SA Diversity Affairs Coalition Committee Meeting Minutes
February 15, 2013
Physical Science Building 401
8:30–9:30 PM
I. Call to Order
II. Introductions
III. Discuss Mission of the Group
- 1. Venue for students and staff to talk about initiatives (emphasis on academia and diversity)
- 2. Coalition formed to involve students in discussions that affected their college experience
- 3. Academic initiatives are outside the jurisdiction of the SA but they would like to be involved
- 4. Looking for methods to create a form of consistency across all the Colleges
- 5. Looking for measurable progress
- 6. Big question: How can we better incorporate diversity into the academic curriculum?
IV. Set Semester Goals
V. Overview of Initiatives
- 1. P. Nguyen: Institutional Research and Planning (a diversity dashboard) — diversity.cornell.edu “Who We Are” holds a lot of data regarding demographics of the university
- 2. P. Nguyen: Does the SA also have its own diversity initiatives?
- i. Yes, it models Towards New Destinations
- 3. N. Porter: In Engineering, the Diversity office gathered input across the college before submitting their initiatives to the Provost
- 4. E. Rodriguez: The Hotel School is in the infancy stages of this movement — still working on how best to incorporate diversity
- 5. Dean Corazon: Dean LaPage (?) has been spearheading this process in A&S. Most TND initiatives have to do with the faculty. Initiatives:
- i. Development of a post-doc program
- ii. Support of Africana studies
- iii. Posse(?) Program: 10 students (this round from Chicago) to work with OADI and A&S for leadership training
- iv. Bolstering involvement in Melon Maze: getting more underrepresented people in the faculty of US Universities to focus on humanities and social sciences
VI. Social Justice/Diversity Requirement
- 1. Overview of report
- 2. Recent coverage
- 3. Next steps for student engagement
- 4. P. Nguyen: Per the President’s White Paper, a university-wide blanket internationalization requirement is being discussed — this diversity requirement can potentially be discussed in tandem as it will affect the whole university
VII. Questions
- 1. When is the next meeting? Doodle poll will be sent out for next month’s meeting, but everyone must fill it out based on availability and not personal preference.
VIII. Adjournment
- 1. U. Smith adjourned the meeting at 9:30am
Respectfully submitted,
Chelsea Cheng