Carnegie Mellon University
PA-6: Support for Underrepresented Groups

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/administrative-and-governance/statement-of-assurance.html

Policy Statement
Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate in admission, employment, or administration of its programs or activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, handicap or disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, ancestry, belief, veteran status, or genetic information. Furthermore, Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate and is required not to discriminate in violation of federal, state, or local laws or executive orders.

The university has a multi-faceted protocol in order to respond to the range of university community members.

When an incident of bias is reported reported through University Police, Office of Title IX Initiatives, Student Affairs, or Human Resources, a team is convened to appropriately address the nature of the report and support of reporting parties. This is described on the University Ethics Hotline at:
https://www.cmu.edu/hr/resources/ethics-hotline.html

In addition, there is now a Bias Reporting and Response webpage that offers 6 different reporting options and describes follow-up activity. See https://www.cmu.edu/diversity/resources/bias-reporting.html

The Office of Undergraduate Admissions has particular staff members that focus on recruiting students from underrepresented groups and provides programs for such.
https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/diversity-at-carnegie-mellon

Furthermore, the Undergraduate Admissions office networks with university members to create a network to review their recruitment efforts and to get more support.
https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/build-a-network-of-diversity-bond-form

For Graduate Students
Fusion Forum seeks to introduce Carnegie Mellon University to faculty and advisors across the nation working with underrepresented students who might be a good fit for our graduate programs and to also introduce prospective graduate students from those institutions to opportunities at Carnegie Mellon. Faculty and advisors from other institutions are invited to participate in Fusion Forum and to nominate their students to come with them to Carnegie Mellon for a two-day visitation program. All expenses related to the program including travel and lodging are covered by Carnegie Mellon University.
https://www.cmu.edu/student-diversity/programs/fusion-forum.html

Diversity in Faculty Recruitment and Hiring
For the past three years, VP for Faculty Kathryn Roeder has been leading a university committee to increase diversity in faculty hiring. One of the committee’s initiatives was to develop guidelines for faculty search committees grounded in the scientific research on increasing diversity in hiring and including guidance for each step in the process. As evidence for the effectiveness of these procedures, the percentage of female faculty tenure-track hires increased from 21% (2013-14) and 17%, (2014-15) to 31% (2015-16, when the practices were first provided) and 30% (2016-17).

2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the Carnegie Mellon Action Project (CMAP), which supported CMU students of color in finding community and resources to thrive on campus, and was the inaugural year for the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion. As discussed in Question AC-2, diversity and inclusion are core values within the CMU Strategic Plan. The 10-person staff of the new Center expands CMU's ability to support communities of color; students who are first in their families to attend college; low-income, LGBTQIA students and women; and any others on this richly diverse campus who seek a safe and supportive space to navigate the terrain of under-representation and societal, systemic inequality during their college years. Team members are available to meet with students about their experiences and interests in advancing a vibrant, inclusive, and equitable campus environment. Their approach is student focused and built on developing strong one-on-one relationships in a mentoring and advising position. https://www.cmu.edu/student-diversity/about-us/index.html

For faculty, CMU recently introduced two types of guidelines to address the inclusion of faculty from under-represented groups in campus activities. The INDICATOR guidelines, Guidelines for INcreasing DIverse CandidATes for OppoRtunities, addresses the nomination/inclusion of such faculty as keynote speakers, members of influential campus committees and panels, or award recipients. The Guidelines for More Equitable Service Loads are intended to complement the INDICATOR Guidelines by ensuring a more even distribution of service work, particularly for women and
underrepresented faculty. Information about these guidelines can be found at https://www.cmu.edu/faculty-office/

In addition, for faculty and staff, the CMU Leadership and Negotiation Academy for Women has sought to advance the careers of women, from organizations all over the country. This program has increasingly trained participants from CMU, with some of the most accomplished department heads and administrators participating in the program. The second initiative is the CMU Leadership Development Academy, which trained its first class of CMU faculty during the summer of 2018. It addition to training in skills like negotiation and leadership, participants learned about important aspects of CMU operations, effectively creating CMU’s next line of leaders. Moreover, by asking faculty and staff to participate in these programs, CMU signals its commitment to the men and women who attend, likely increasing their commitment to CMU.

A recent and direct example is the Presidential Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program, introduced in 2017. This two-year fellowship program is particularly interested in scholars with the potential to bring to their research and other academic pursuits the critical perspective that comes from their non-traditional educational background or understanding of the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education. The anticipated outcome of the two-year post-doctoral fellowship is that some recipients will be offered faculty positions at CMU. Recipients for the inaugural year of this fellowship program are listed at https://www.cmu.edu/faculty-office/ppfp/recipients.html

In addition, CMU provides a wide variety of mentoring and programmatic activities to support students in preparation for the professoriate. Students are mentored to participate in the Future Faculty Program through the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation and also through the Office of the Assistant Vice Provost for Graduate Education. Financial and mentoring support are also provided for student groups such as the Society for Women Engineers, Women @ School of Computer Science (Women@SCS), Women in Science, Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (WinECE), Women @ Information Networking Institute (Women@INI), Women in Tepper, Graduate Women's Gatherings (GWG), Black Business Association, Black Graduate Student Organization, Latino/a Graduate Student Association, Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, Students of Color Dinners- joint with the University of Pittsburgh, PhD Students of Color Network. These are examples of the student organizations which provide supported programming to encourage underrepresented students at Carnegie Mellon University to consider academic careers as part of their programmatic activities.

Additional URLs

https://www.cmu.edu/faculty-office/faculty-recruitment/index.html

https://www.cmu.edu/hr/work-life/support/lgbtq.html

Publicly accessible list of gender-inclusive restrooms: https://www.cmu.edu/title-ix/

Gender Inclusive Housing: https://www.cmu.edu/housing/roomselection/housing-options.html

https://www.cmu.edu/student-affairs/theword/statement/index.html

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/administrative-and-governance/statement-of-assurance.html

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/administrative-and-governance/equal-opportunity-affirmative-action-ada.html

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/administrative-and-governance/sexual-harassment-and-sexual-assault.html

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/administrative-and-governance/whistleblower.html