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Report to the Corporation

Memorandum

To: Members of the MIT Corporation

From: L. Rafael Reif

Re: Annual Report on Diversity

Date: November 21, 2008

For many years, MIT has sought to expand its efforts to guarantee equality of opportunity in employment and in education and to increase the representation of women and minorities in the faculty, staff, and student body. The Institute is committed to this priority and engaging the Corporation as an integral partner in our efforts.

President Susan Hockfield, Chancellor Phillip L. Clay, Executive Vice President and Treasurer Theresa M. Stone, and I continue to work closely with a team of senior faculty and administrators to strengthen our commitment to issues of race, diversity, and inclusion. Among our key leaders are: Professors Wesley L. Harris and Barbara Liskov, Associate Provosts for Faculty Equity; Daniel L. Hastings, Dean for Undergraduate Education; Steven R. Lerman, Vice Chancellor and Dean for Graduate Education; and Alison Alden, Vice President for Human Resources.

Although there remains much work to be done, I wanted to highlight select activity and progress of the past year.

Associate Provosts for Faculty Equity

During the past year, Associate Provost Barbara Liskov primarily focused her efforts on faculty search and retention. She worked with the school deans and other groups to strengthen the search process. As a result, the Schools of Engineering and Science modified their search procedures and the School of Science hired several women and minorities last year. Professor Liskov also met with most department heads to discuss junior women and underrepresented minority (URM) faculty to ensure that their teaching schedule, committee load, and access to laboratory space and equipment were conducive to long-term success. In addition, she has been meeting with groups of junior women faculty and has been working on modifications to MIT's tenure extension and parental leave policies.

Associate Provost Wesley Harris has continued his work with administrators throughout the Institute to respond to a range of diversity challenges and opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. He has been consulting closely with the Schools of Engineering, Science, and Architecture & Planning to develop processes to identify and recruit underrepresented minority faculty members. He has also been consulting with URM professors to provide career support and guidance, and working with the steering group of the Initiative on Race and Diversity to advance their study of URM experiences (see further details below). Professor Harris is also managing the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor and Scholar Program to advance the contributions of URM intellectuals on campus.

Committee on Race and Diversity

The Committee on Race and Diversity is composed of students, faculty, and staff who seek to promote communication on issues of diversity and inclusion. The Committee organized the February 26, 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast Celebration which was attended by hundreds of MIT faculty, students, and staff. The program can be viewed at: techtv.mit.edu/collections/mlkcelebration2008. Last spring, the Committee approved 7 grants for cultural activities and speakers related to diversity. They will soon launch a campus-wide competition for promoting discussion and reflection on diversity issues and will establish a monthly speaker series to bring outside leaders to the campus to focus on this topic.

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Corporation

Over the past two years, the Corporation itself has made a concerted effort to strengthen its own membership ranks with leaders who are women or from international backgrounds. In their role on Visiting Committees, Corporation members are critical to keeping the importance of diversity as an explicit topic in your meetings and reports. We urge all Visiting Committees to continually focus on this issue.

Diversity Leadership Congress

More than 300 academic, administrative, and student leaders gathered for the Diversity Leadership Congress on November 18, 2008. Held at the Back Bay Events Center, the day was designed to give participants practical tools and strategies to help lead diversity efforts in their local areas to foster a culture of inclusion at MIT. President Hockfield opened the Congress by acknowledging the important ongoing efforts to address diversity challenges at the Institute and encouraged participants to further raise the bar to accelerate progress diversifying the MIT student, faculty, and staff communities. The Congress featured a keynote address by former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, the first African-American to lead the U.S. Department of Labor, and a panel moderated by MIT's Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management. Participants then broke into small groups to discuss how MIT's leaders could apply the day's information to amplify their efforts at MIT. The Congress can be viewed online at web.mit.edu/diversityleaders/webcast.html.

Graduate Education

The work of the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education (ODGE) and MIT's academic units resulted in an increase from 105 underrepresented minority students entering as first year graduate students in 2007 to 150 in 2008, a 42.9% increase. This increased the overall population of underrepresented graduate minority students by 17% in a single year. The number of women entering MIT increased from 580 in 2007 to 706 in 2008, a 21.7% increase.

One of the key strategic priorities of the ODGE is to work with academic departments towards the goal set by the 2004 resolution of the MIT Faculty to increase the number of underrepresented minority and women graduate students. The ODGE's work in this area includes:

  1. increasing the number of graduate fellowships targeted to improve student diversity by 60% last year,
  2. expanding the MIT Summer Research Opportunities Program that brings underrepresented minority undergraduates to MIT to work with faculty in their labs,
  3. forming the Recruitment and Retention Council to coordinate the ODGE's efforts with those of the schools and departments, and
  4. running the Path of Professorship Program, a weekend retreat for women doctoral students and post docs to prepare them for careers as faculty.

Human Resources

The Human Resources Department remains committed to cultivating a workplace where the best talent in the world wants to join MIT. To meet this goal, the Department seeks to build a balanced workforce, nurture a campus climate of inclusion and respect for differences, leverage MIT's diverse talent, and build commitment among the Institute's leaders for achieving our diversity goals. This year, the Department completed initiatives that included developing campus-wide Affirmative Action Plans, building stronger recruiting pipelines of diverse candidates, and re-establishing the Staff Diversity Council (a Presidential Advisory Group). Significant amongst their accomplishments was the hiring of Director of Staff Diversity, Matt Thompson. Currently, the Department is working on further fortifying a commitment to diversity in the Departments, Labs, and Centers, developing a Staff Diversity website, ensuring diversity is embedded in all leadership programs, and training staff on issues of bias inclusion and cultural competence. MIT is trending positively with its minority staff population increasing over 5% in the last 10 years and rates 2nd largest in the percentage of minority staff overall amongst our Ivy peers.

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Initiative on Race and Diversity

Established at the end of 2007, the Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity is undertaking research designed to provide key information needed for developing recommendations and implementation plans to address recruitment and retention of URM faculty. This research consists of the following elements:

  1. quality of life survey—taken by the general faculty in January 2008—to compare URMs' perceptions and attitudes with those of the dominant group,
  2. cohort analysis of all faculty coming to MIT from 1991-2008 to compare promotion and tenure rates and timing,
  3. quantitative indicators to compare factors such as salaries and lab space, appropriately controlled, and
  4. in-depth qualitative interviews of all URM faculty, including a reasonably-sized sample of those who have left, to understand their experiences at MIT and the role of race/ethnicity in those experiences. The Initiative has completed a great deal of the survey analysis. The results indicate meaningful differences in the experiences and satisfaction levels between junior and senior minority faculty that may indicate a need to examine the advancement of minority faculty not only to tenure, but also in their professional experiences beyond tenure. The cohort analysis has also indicated a significant difference in the number of minority faculty that are retained at MIT, particularly at the junior faculty level. Complete analysis of the data is anticipated to take place over the next several months.

In conjunction with these studies, the Initiative has been engaged with the minority faculty community through a series of open forums this Spring with junior and senior minority faculty; suggestions and themes from these discussions will be used to implement short- and long-term recommendations. The Initiative will also be meeting with each of the Academic Deans and the School Councils to generate discussion about its findings and potential solutions. They anticipate completing their report by the end of summer, 2009.

Undergraduate Education

The Admissions Office continued its success in recruiting and admitting an accomplished and diverse class, with an increase in applications from women (up 12%), underrepresented minorities (up 13%), and international students (up 12%.), for the class entering in 2008. Quantitative measures of achievement indicate that, once again, MIT enrolled a scholastically outstanding class. In terms of diversity, the class of 2012 consists of 25% underrepresented minorities, which is the same as the percentage of underrepresented minorities in the college bound population in the United States. On other measures of inclusion—gender, geographic diversity, etc.—the Admissions Office achieved outstanding results as well.

The Office of Minority Education has developed new programs focused on URM and students who are the first in their families to attend college. These programs include an initiative to increase the number of our minority undergraduates who consider and are prepared to matriculate to graduate school. Through the work of OME and DUE, including an increase in UROP funding for students receiving financial aid, the percentage of minority students participating in UROPs has increased substantially over recent years and now approaches the percentage of majority students taking UROPs.

In addition to these activities, MIT is pleased to welcome Professor Beverly Moran for an academic year appointment as an American Council on Education Fellow. In this role, she will work closely with the offices of the President, Provost, and Chancellor on projects related to diversity and inclusion. Professor Moran is currently a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, where she is a Professor of Law and Sociology. In addition to issues of diversity, Professor Moran's interests include law and development, interdisciplinary scholarship, and comparative law. We are delighted to have the benefit of Professor Moran's expertise as we work together on this important priority.

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