To address issues on campus, the University has created several task forces in recent years. The Chronicle complied a list of the committees launched to make recommendations on improving Duke.
Task force on bias and hate issues
Following a community forum Nov. 13 in which students voiced concerns about the campus climate, President Richard Brodhead created the task force on bias and hate issues modeled after the University’s Gender Violence Task Force. The task force released the results of student surveys about bias on campus and issued 11 recommendations in its final report, which was emailed to the Duke community May 4.
These included establishing a campus-wide policy for handling complaints of hate and bias, centralizing authority for carrying out that policy within the Office of the Provost and having university officials review student support services to ensure the staff is diverse and trained to handle bias and hate issues. In addition, the report suggested forming a standing committee that will release an action plan by the end of Fall 2016.
The task force was chaired by Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy, and Linda Burton, James B. Duke professor of sociology, and also consisted of five undergraduate students, five graduate students and 17 faculty members, administrators and alumni.
Academic Council’s Diversity Task Force
The Academic Council announced the creation of a diversity task force in February 2014 to assess the status of diversity and inclusion at Duke.
The task force aimed to study the recent demographics of faculty and hiring processes and make recommendations to the University. Nan Jokerst, J.A. Jones distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, and professor of law Trina Jones served as co-chairs.
In May 2015, the task force presented its findings, which called for an expansion of hiring programs to increase faculty diversity, improving faculty retention through community building and creating a faculty diversity standing committee for each division of the University.
The task force also found that the proportion of non-White faculty remains low but has seen a modest increase in the past decade—the percentage of Black faculty increased from 3.8 percent to 4.4 percent, and the percentage of Hispanic faculty from 1.8 percent to 2.6 percent. In addition, the University’s success in hiring female and black professors has been uneven between schools, and its percentages of female and Hispanic professors are lower than other colleges ranked in the top 20.
As a result, Academic Council created the Faculty Diversity Task Force Implementation Committee, which is responsible for establishing a vice provost for faculty advancement—a position announced during the Nov. 13 community forum.
This initiative follows previous efforts to increase faculty diversity. In 2012, President Brodhead announced his President’s Diversity Initiative and requested that each senior administrator set three goals each academic year and report back on their progress. In addition, the Black Faculty Strategic Initiative helped double the amount of black faculty members over a 10-year period from 1993 to 2003.
IFC sexual assault task force
Last summer, the Interfraternity Council created a student-led task force in an effort to investigate the role of Greek life in sexual assault. Consisting of 12 IFC members—10 regular members along with two from the executive board—the group planned to examine the social culture at Duke during the 2015-16 academic year and make recommendations to prevent and address the issue of sexual assault.
After it was initially created, the task force decided to include three female members. Senior Annie Adair—the only female non-Greek affiliated member—noted that having women serve on the task force was necessary to obtain accurate results.
“We were there to consult and be part of the conversation about solutions to IFC issues,” she said.
Adair explained that the task force met six or seven times during the Fall semester and at least once during the Spring for group discussions. She said that the committee also sent out a survey to the IFC as a whole, which “got to the root of the problem.”
However, the task force has yet to release its findings.
Adair noted that she thinks the task force has done an impressive job so far.
“We’ve had good discussions about why sexual assault happens,” she said. “We’ve gotten a lot of different perspectives.”
Strategic Planning Steering Committee
In December 2014, Provost Sally Kornbluth announced the launch of a Strategic Planning Steering Committee to define “the overarching themes we should consider for Duke, and for higher education in general.”
The committee’s four key goals were to enrich student experiences by bolstering intellectual communities, especially at the graduate level; develop a diverse and inclusive Duke community through collaborative endeavors among schools, centers and institutes; engage beyond borders to address real-world problems; and support faculty research projects with resources, infrastructure and recognition.
Susan Lozier, Ronie-Richelle Garcia-Johnson professor of earth and ocean sciences, served as chair of the committee.
Since January 2015, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee has been meeting with faculty and students. During the summer of 2015, it wrote a framing document outlining the committee’s goals, which Kornbluth sent in an email to all students Nov. 19.
Since then, the office of the provost and the committee have continued to invite and collect feedback and have worked on developing a more detailed plan, which is scheduled to come out this fall and be approved by the Board of Trustees in February 2017.
Trinity University Advisory Committee
During an Arts and Sciences Council meeting April 15, Valerie Ashby, dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, announced the creation of the Trinity University Advisory Committee to foster ongoing conversations about diversity on campus. The committee, which is composed of faculty and staff, will focus on education, conversation and communication.
At the meeting, Ashby stressed the importance of institutionalizing efforts to integrate diversity into both the curriculum and conversations on campus.
Ashby wrote in an email May 25 that the committee is currently discussing courses of action.
Abele Committee
After students released demands at a community forum Nov. 20 to rename the West Union to Abele Union in order to honor Julian Abele—the black architect who led the design of the—campus from the 1920s until the 1940s—an advisory committee was created in December 2015 to suggest ways to best recognize Abele’s contributions. Led by Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, the committee included students, faculty and staff.
Among the alternatives considered was renaming Chapel Drive after Abele and placing a statue of him on the West Campus traffic circle. Although the committee favored this option, the Board of Truestes decided to rename the main quadrangle on West Campus to Abele Quadrangle—a measure that was not recommended by the University committee—in a February meeting.
The Board also voted to adopt other recommendations which included creating a plaque to honor Abele in the Chapel, publishing a biography of Abele, purchasing the rights to a mural about Abele and engraving Abele’s name into the Chapel cornerstone.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.