DIVERSITY PROFESSIONALS WANT their organizations to view diversity,
equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives not just as boxes to check off
their to-do lists, but as integral, beneficial, and necessary parts of
their strategic plans. That was a sentiment shared by attendees at
AACSB International’s Diversity & Inclusion Summit held in New
Orleans, Louisiana, in November 2019.
For business schools to achieve their DEI objectives, attendees
agreed, they need to set distinct benchmarks for success, measure
progress, and convince their stakeholders to view diversity as a priority.
The biggest obstacle? Getting those stakeholders to acknowledge
that a problem exists—and that they have the ability to solve it.
SET GOALS, MEASURE PROGRESS
David Porter kicked off the summit with
a presentation on what business schools
can learn about DEI from industry.
Porter—who assumed the role of chief
diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at
the Haas School of Business at the University
of California, Berkeley, in August
2019—noted that organizations that are
successful at creating diverse and inclusive
cultures are the ones that set clear
targets and measure their progress toward
achieving them. “If you don’t have
particular goals and objectives, how
does your team know where it should be
going, what it should be working on, how
it should prioritize this issue versus any
other issues?” Porter asked.
Another factor that hinders diversity?
Many people are simply unaware
of how much they are affected by their
own personal biases. In fact, some
faculty might not believe their schools
lack diversity at all. Therefore, raising
awareness of the problem is No. 1 on the
agenda of many diversity professionals—
and, for some schools, one of the best
ways to raise awareness is to collect and
share data on the problem. This not only
allows academic leaders to quantify the
number of underrepresented minorities
on campus, but also highlights any discrepancies
between stakeholder perceptions
of campus diversity and reality.
In a presentation on “building inclusion
with an assessment-based approach,”
educators from the University
of Utah in Salt Lake City described how
the Eccles School of Business recently
gathered data using the Intercultural
Development Inventory (IDI), an online
survey developed by intercultural competence expert Mitchell Hammer.
The IDI shows people where they fall on
the spectrum of “diversity proficiency,”
which identifies five mindsets: denial,
polarization, minimization, acceptance,
and adaptation.
The Eccles School asked incoming
freshmen and transfer students accepted
to its Business Scholars program to
complete the IDI. Faculty then used the
results as a basis for a workshop where
students discovered their unconscious
biases and honed their ability to navigate
difference.
Administrators had assumed students
were coming to the school with
“minimization” mindsets, in which
they supported the need for greater
diversity, but lacked a deep understanding
of what appreciating difference
truly means. The IDI results, however,
showed that incoming students, on
average, still possessed polarization
mindsets, in which they were defensive
about their views of the world.
“Many of our students were coming
into discussions with an ‘us versus them’
mindset,” said Victoria Cabal, director of
the school’s Office for Student Inclusion.
“It was an interesting piece of information
for us [to have] to understand what
was happening in our classrooms.”
Attendees agreed that when people
don’t recognize the problem, they will be
reluctant to fix it. And when barriers to
diversity aren’t just unintentional, but
sometimes invisible, data can help DEI
professionals make a more compelling
case for change. As one attendee noted,
“We have to figure out what is that core
vision that’s compelling enough that it
can bring folks together.”
NINE DEI STRATEGIES
Data collection and analysis are just
the beginning. Over the course of the
summit, attendees shared a number of
other DEI strategies that have proven
successful on their campuses:
Require applicants to submit personal
diversity statements. At Berkeley
Haas, for example, applicants for
faculty positions must submit diversity
statements that outline what they will
do to bring diversity into their research
teams or classrooms.
Make DEI part of the promotion and
tenure process. Many schools now ask
faculty to outline their efforts to promote
diversity, equity, and inclusion as
part of their performance reviews.
Include diversity training in
doctoral programs. With more institutions
requiring candidates to submit
diversity statements, the University of
Nebraska in Lincoln now asks its doctoral
students to prepare them as part of
their curricula vitae.
Create an ecosystem across the
entire institution. Such an ecosystem
includes not just ensuring diverse
student cohorts, but promoting diversity
and inclusion through course content
and the choice of corporate partners,
guest speakers, and vendors. For example,
does the school hire minority-owned
vendors? Does its faculty choose case
studies with underrepresented minorities
as protagonists?
Provide opportunities for students
to work across cultural differences.
For instance, at EM Strasbourg Business
School in France, 300 second-year
students take part in a four-day cooking
competition in which they form teams to
create two original recipes that represent
the cultural diversity of their team members.
In the process, they learn “communication,
collaboration, critical thinking,
and creativity,” explains Fatiha Bouteraa,
head of organization and process at the
school. Students also gain insight into
each other’s cultural differences.
Ensure balanced representation on
committees. Too often, organizations
place the burden of carrying out DEI
efforts onto underrepresented minorities.
This approach is both unfair and
ineffective, said Victoria Parker, an
associate dean at the University of New
Hampshire in Durham. She described a
diversity committee meeting at UNH’s
Peter T. Paul College of Business and
Economics, where a senior faculty member
declared, “We need more white men
[here]. They’re the ones with the power.”
The Paul College now makes sure
that diversity committee members
represent “a microcosm of all the groups
at the college,” from students and faculty
to members of minority and majority
groups, who all share their experiences.
Fix the institution, not the students.
About two years ago, administrators
at the Lancashire School of Business
and Enterprise at the University of
Central Lancashire in England discovered
that international students weren’t
performing as well as other students at
the school. Faculty formed a committee
to address the issue; at the committee’s
recommendation, “we flipped our
approach from trying to ‘fix the students’
to fixing ourselves,” said Pradeep Passi,
director of academic development.
The school revised or removed
modules to better serve the needs of its
international students; it also recruited
international student mentors who
could facilitate better communication
between faculty and students. The
result: The number of international students
earning degrees with honors has
increased from 30 percent to 55 percent.
“Our faculty have changed their mindsets
to teach the students in front of
them, not the students they might want
to have,” said Passi.
Identify “risks for discrimination.”
At the College of Business at California
State University, Stanislaus, faculty
examined every point of interaction the
school has with its community—from
hiring to pedagogy to extracurricular
activities. Through this analysis, the
college found 93 risks for discrimination
across its programs.
For example, administrators discovered
that because many international
students did not have checking accounts
with U.S. banks, it was more difficult
for them to secure housing, explained
Tomas Gomez-Arias, dean of the college.
“What in your day-to-day policies could
be discriminatory?” he asked.
Similarly, officials at the University of
Utah realized that its three-day bereavement
policy did not take into consideration
the fact that individuals from some
cultures might need to observe longer
periods of bereavement after the death
of loved ones. Once administrators
identify such potentially discriminatory
policies, they can implement appropriate
risk mitigation strategies.
Monetize diversity initiatives. A session
on funding DEI initiatives focused
on turning them into self-sustaining
sources of revenue. For example, Tayah
Butler of North Carolina State University’s
Poole College of Management in
Raleigh shared how companies sponsor
DEI-focused events on campus, paying
hundreds of dollars to reserve tables at
career fairs to speak to students about
DEI initiatives in their organizations.
Binnu Palta Hill of the Wisconsin
School of Business at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison explained how
WSB invites companies to sponsor
“lunch and learn” events on topics
related to diversity; it also offers exec ed
programming in inclusive leadership. In
addition, alumni have donated US$10
million for WSB to deliver its Business
Emerging Leaders Program. The threeweek
immersion brings high school students—
most of whom are underrepresented
minorities—to campus to expose
them to the college experience.
Butler and Palta Hill also pointed out
that in the U.S., the 1977 Community
Reinvestment Act encourages banking
institutions to donate funds that support
community development. This means
that many banks often are looking for
ways to distribute this money. “They
have to give this money away,” says
Butler, “so give them a reason.”
Having the diversity and inclusion office
“associated with revenue instead of
cost is key,” says Palta Hill. “Embedding
diversity and inclusion into the curriculum
is where the real impact is. It’s the
story that gets the attention of corporate
donors and foundations.”
DEI IN EVERY DECISION
In one of six short TED Talk-style presentations,
Nakeisha Lewis, an associate
professor of marketing at Opus College of
Business at the University of St. Thomas
in St. Paul, Minnesota, summed up the
scope of the challenge business schools
face in their efforts to achieve diversity.
Companies, she noted, “have spent
millions of dollars” to improve workplace
diversity, “but they’re still not moving the
needle.” That’s why, she says, her school
puts a DEI item on every agenda. Those
items must demonstrate four attributes
that she described using the acronym
PAIL, which stands for purpose, authenticity,
impact, and leadership.
No school can be perfectly inclusive,
admitted Audrey Iffert-Saleem, director
of the Center for the Advancement
of Women in Leadership at Oregon
State University’s College of Business
in Corvallis. But every member
of a business school’s community, she
argued, has “some authority over some
decisions that are made every day.” And
every decision can contribute to greater
diversity on campus.
In the end, the summit highlighted
the factors that still hinder DEI at
many business schools, as well as the
increasingly complex task that academic
diversity officers have before them. But
there is hope in the success stories—and
the new ideas attendees took back to
their home campuses. In the following
pages, we share even more stories from
educators who are promoting DEI efforts
in business education. As they continue
to make progress, they hope their efforts
will foster more inclusive and equitable
learning environments—and, through
greater diversity, lead to more dynamic
and successful business organizations.
This article originally appeared in BizEd's March/April 2020 issue. Please send questions, comments, or letters to the editor to [email protected].
Related Reading
Creating a Sense of Belonging
Committing to Diversity
Creating the All-Inclusive Campus
¿Son Las Mujeres Iguales?
The Inclusive Curriculum
Learning Other Cultures
Diverse Voices, Personal Stories