SIF181 UVA Racial Equity Taskforce Support

Project Manager: Kevin McDonald

Approved: Summer 2021

The purpose of this award is to support the UVA Racial Equity Taskforce recommendations and to ensure that the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has sufficient resources to do its work. This funding is repurposed from the SIF156 Bridges award.

Project Dates: 5/1/2021 – 4/30/2022

Total Funding: $350,000

Executive Summary:

In September of 2020, the Board of Visitors endorsed many of the goals articulated by UVA’s Racial Equity Task Force in its August 2020 report. One of these goals advocated that the University ensure that the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion had sufficient resources to do its work, with seed funding essential to the success of the implementation. As an outcome of conversations between President Jim Ryan and Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships Kevin McDonald, it was agreed that SIF would provide seed funding to launch the initiative.

Current Status: Completed

Achievements:

In September of 2020, the Board of Visitors endorsed many of the goals articulated by UVA’s Racial Equity Task Force in its August 2020 report. One of these goals advocated that the University ensuring that the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion had sufficient resources to do its work, including establishing staff positions essential to the success of the division. As an outcome of conversations between President James E. Ryan and Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships Kevin G. McDonald, it was agreed that three new staff positions would be funded and supported in part by SIF funding. Thus, the goal related to this round of funding was to hire new employees in these three positions during 2021.

The goal of this SIF funding award was achieved, and all three searches were successful. Specifically, a Director of Communications, an Assistant Director of Assessment and Data Analytics, and a Director of Diversity Education were hired between May and July of 2021.

The hiring of these three FTEs has allowed the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DDEI) to accomplish and/or make progress on a number of strategic objectives. These include:

• Increased communication with stakeholders – including faculty, staff, students, alumni, and local community members – about the events, programs, resources, news, and other offerings of the Division and of the DEI work that is happening across Grounds in other areas. This includes through Amplify, a newly-established biannual e-publication, enhanced websites, and a more robust social media presence.
• Creation of dashboards and data sets to increase transparency and availability of data related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at UVA, including student lifecycle dashboards, a faculty pipeline dashboard, and a workforce analytics dashboard.
• Building a set of educational workshops/session and resources for the purpose of increasing knowledge, skills, and capacity on topics related to advancing UVA’s goals for Inclusive Excellence.