University of Louisville
PA-4: Diversity and Equity Coordination

The University of Louisville‘s diversity equity committee is the Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality (CODRE). CODRE serves as the primary policy advisory group on issues of diversity and racial equality for students and employees at the University of Louisville and reports to the President. CODRE stays abreast of relevant issues including, but not limited to: recruitment, retention, and promotion of faculty and professional/ administrative staff from diverse populations; group-based inequalities and inequities; the academic success of a diverse racial and ethnic student body including retention, curriculum, and campus climate concerns; addressing sexist and racist conduct that impedes the educational mission of the university; and strategies and praxis that support “education that is multicultural.”

The CODRE commissioners for 2018-2019 are:

First Last Name Term Expires Representing Department
J. P. Mohsen (Chair) 2020 Speed School of Engineering
Cecilie Ashanta 2021 Office of the EVPHA
Rhonda Buchanan 2020 A&S Latin American Studies
Karan Chavis 2021 School of Medicine
Dwayne Compton 2019 School of Medicine
Gail DePuy 2019 Speed School of Engineering
Muriel Harris 2021 Health Promotion & Behavioral Science
Meg Peavy 2018 Athletics (Assoc. Dir./Tennis) Staff Senate
Selene Phillips 2020 A&S Communication
Aleeta Powe 2020 College of Arts & Sciences
Charles Sharp 2021 College of Business
Maria Tinnell 2020 Communication & Marketing
Marian Vasser 2021 Diversity Education & Inclusive Excellence
Fannie Cox associate University Libraries
Brian Bigelow collaborative Title IX / ADA Compliance
Craig Blakely collaborative School of Public Health and Information Sciences
Valerie Casey collaborative Women’s Center
Aaron Graham collaborative Department of Public Safety/Campus police
Dawn Heinecken collaborative Women & Gender Studies
Ricky Jones collaborative Pan African Studies
Tish Pletcher collaborative PEACC Center
Brian Buford ex-officio LGBT Services, Director
Sherry Duffy ex-officio Commission on the Status of Women
John Elliott ex-officio Human Resources, Associate Vice President
Felix Garza ex-officio Hispanic/Latino Faculty & Staff Association, co-President
Bob Goldstein ex-officio Vice Provost for Institutional Research, Effectiveness and Analytics
Leondra Gully ex-officio Cultural Center, Director
Mariana Juarez ex-officio Student Government Association (SGA), President
X'Zashea Lawson-Mayes ex-officio Black Student Union (BSU), President
Colleen Martin ex-officio Disability Resource Center, Director
Connie Martinez ex-officio International Student & Scholar Services
Leo Salinas ex-officio Latin American Student Organization (LASO), President
Mordean Taylor-Archer ex-officio Vice Provost Diversity and International Affairs
Amy Shoemaker ex-officio Interim Vice President of Athletics (Rep. Vincent Tyra)
Sherri Wallace ex-officio Black Faculty and Staff Association, President
Cecilia Yappert ex-officio Hispanic/Latino Faculty & Staff Asso. Co-Pres
Cathy Elliott support staff Commissions Office

Information on CODRE can be found at https://louisville.edu/codre.

Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and International Affairs:
Mordean Taylor-Archer, PhD, is the University of Louisville Vice Provost for Diversity and International Affairs. She is responsible for providing leadership and working collaboratively with administrators, faculty, staff and students to advance diversity on campus. Offices under her administrative purview are the Cultural Center, Women’s Center, International Center, Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice, LGBT Center and the Office of Diversity Education and Inclusive Excellence. Dr. Taylor-Archer serves on various committees including the Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality, the Commission on the Status of Women, the University Community Partnership Board, and chairs CODRE’s Campus Environment Team and the International Affairs Advisory Committee. She is the institutional representative for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) Committee on Equal Opportunities (CEO) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Commission on Access, Diversity and Excellence (CADE). The office employs an Assistant to the Vice Provost in addition to the employees in those offices reporting to the Vice Provost. Additional information about the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and International Affairs can be found at https://louisville.edu/diversity.

Health Sciences Center (HSC) Office for Diversity and Inclusion:
The HSC Office of Diversity and Inclusion's goal is to enhance partnership across the schools on the Health Sciences Campus (Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Information Sciences, Dentistry) and to promote an environment of inclusiveness through the understanding and celebration of the many differences in perspectives, thoughts, experiences, belief systems and cultures of students, faculty and staff. It places a major emphasis on increasing the number of students from racial/ethnic groups designated as underrepresented into the health professions system. Emphasis is also given to recruiting, retaining and promoting a diverse workforce. There are ten employees in the office with a total 8.8 FTE.

Additional information about the office can be found at: https://louisville.edu/hsc/diversity/hsc-diversity-committees-1/hsc-diversity-committee-chairs/.

Office of Diversity Education and Inclusive Excellence:
In summer of 2016, UofL created and appointed a director of the Office of Diversity Education and Inclusive Excellence. The primary focus of that office is to provide diversity education and training in the areas of privilege, unconscious and implicit bias, micro and macroaggressions, cultural competency, cultural appropriations and race and social justice issues.

The Office of Diversity Education and Inclusive Excellence has conducted approximately 600 trainings around diversity, inclusion and equity since its inception in July 2016. Examples of these trainings include Preventing Implicit Bias; Engaging in Difficult Dialogue in the Classroom; Privilege and Power; Colorism; That’s Not What I Meant – Intent vs Impact; When Silence Isn’t Golden – Interrupting Offensive Language and Behavior. Unconscious Bias Training sessions use trained facilitators to deliver evidence-based findings and teachings to students, faculty, and staff. Participants are given the opportunity to:
• Explore the science and research of unconscious bias
• Identify how bias and the processes of the unconscious mind can impact decisions and results
• Become aware of their background, and its impact on perceptions so they are better able to advocate for inclusion within the organization and apply new strategies for practicing more conscious awareness individually and organizationally.

Additionally, the Cultural Competency Research Project is the work of a transdisciplinary team of research faculty assessing content and the operationalization of cultural competency across curriculums. Their research examines the ways in which faculty and administrators serve as role models of cultural competency.
Cultural competency training was implemented on the HSC campus using three different venues: the Cultural Humility Academy, Unconscious Bias Training, and CECS (Culturally Effective Care Symposium). Prior to implementation, dedicated staff are responsible for development of timelines, facilitator guides and curriculum development. The Cultural Humility Academy’s goal is to give participants knowledge and skills to practice cultural humility in their daily professional and personal lives. Participants explore topics centered around 1) Critical Self Reflection and Life-Long Learning, 2) Power Imbalances, and 3) Accountability. Each session uses trained facilitators with a variety of perspectives, identities and expertise. Employee participants are given periodic readings, short video clips, and reflective writing tasks to complete between sessions in preparation for the next session. Journals are provided to each participant, and by the end of the academy each participant has developed an individual and departmental plan to detail how they hope to implement cultural humility into their professions. The Culturally Effective Care Symposium (CECS) is a 1-day symposium centered on diversity, cultural competency, and equity in healthcare for health professional students in the UofL schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Information Sciences and Social Work, and Sullivan University College of Pharmacy. Faculty, staff and community members undergo a 2-hour training session to help students:
• Address hierarchical issues in inter-professional groups,
• Explore health disparities, barriers to care, and social determinates of health with students through patient simulation.
• Identify health and health care disparities in diverse populations
• Define social determinants of health
• Recognize strategies for culturally effective care with families in a diverse society
• Provide examples of resources that support culturally effective care
• Distinguish the role and responsibilities of other health professionals in an inter-professional treatment team
• Demonstrate inter-professional shared problem solving in culturally diverse case scenarios

Belknap Campus:
One major and consistent way to provide cultural competency for students is through the curriculum. Since the 1990s, all undergraduate students have been required to take two cultural diversity courses as a part of the general education requirements. In 2014, a task force was appointed to revise the general education requirements. The revisions were approved in January of 2017. General Education is now called the Cardinal Core Program and it requires all students to take two diversity courses as described below:
Courses in U.S. Diversity (D1) will broaden students’ understanding of how the experiences and opportunities of individuals and groups in the United States are shaped by the various historical, cultural and social structures and processes of stratifications. These courses will center on race, socio-economic status and gender, and/or their interactions with other social demographics.
Courses in Global Diversity (D2) will broaden students’ understanding of how the experiences and opportunities of individuals and/or groups in non-U.S. societies are shaped by the various historical, cultural and social structures and of stratification locally or globally.
Students must take one course in U.S. Diversity (D1) and one in Global Diversity (D2). These courses will meet and exceed the components of the definition of cultural competency by providing learning outcomes and assessment of the knowledge students have gained in the courses.
It should be noted that diversity content is infused throughout the curricula in many of the academic units. However, there are two degree-granting units that provide content that enhance students’ understanding of race, culture and gender: Pan African Studies (PAS) and Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS).

PAS occupies an important place within the larger mission of the university’s quest for advancing knowledge and understand of problems of the 21st century. The goals of the department include the advancement of scholarship, research, and knowledge that contribute to the understanding of social inequality and cultural diversity, particularly as it eschews racial and ethnic bigotry and the intersectionality with other forms of oppression. PAS offers bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees. The rich breadth and depth of the multidisciplinary field of Pan-African Studies are reflected in the curriculum and programs of the department. The PAS core curriculum focuses on Africa and the African Diaspora. In addition, PAS offers field of study and internships experiences, and special courses on research methods, race, gender, diversity and inter-cultural education.

Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) is the interdisciplinary examination of women and gender across cultures and epochs. WGS addresses significant omissions in traditional scholarship by examining the history, contributions and accomplishments of women by studying the ways gender has structured intellectual and social life. WGS calls attention to how issues of gender intersect with other structures of power such as race, class and sexualities. WGS offers bachelors; dual majors with Law and Social Work (MA and MSW); and MA and graduate certificates.

In addition to the courses within the academic units, the director of the Muhammad Ali Institute (MAI) and Professor of Law, Enid Trucios-Haynes and the faculty resource group of MAI developed a cultural competency research project that will conduct an Integrative/Comprehensive Literature Review of the Definitions of Cultural Competency [CC] and determine to what extent do faculty, student affairs and the university infuse cultural competencies into their teaching, work and operations, respectively.

Intercultural Knowledge and Competence Value Rubric:
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) Intercultural Competence Rubrics will also be used to assess cultural competency. The VALUE rubrics were developed by teams of faculty experts representing colleges and universities across the United States through a process that examined many existing campus rubrics and related documents for each learning outcome and incorporated additional feedback from faculty. The rubrics articulate fundamental criteria for each learning outcome, with performance descriptors demonstrating progressively more sophisticated levels of attainment. The rubrics are intended for institutional-level use in evaluating and discussing student learning, not for grading. The core expectations articulated in all 15 of the VALUE rubrics can and should be translated into the language of individual campuses, disciplines, and even courses. The utility of the VALUE rubrics is to position learning at all undergraduate levels within a basic framework of expectations such that evidence of learning can by shared nationally through a common dialog and understanding of student success (see rubric in Appendix C).
Cultural Competency training for faculty and staff will continue to be provided by the Office of Diversity Education and Inclusive Excellence. However, the long-range plan is to develop online training modules, and, although it will not be mandatory, it is expected that all faculty and staff will participate in the training.

Sexual Harassment Prevention Training:

The Affirmative Action/Employee Relations Office offers training regarding sexual harassment. The course includes:
• Defining and identifying sexual harassment
• University policy and accompanying laws
• Course of action for victims or accused
• Reporting responsibilities
• Complaint resolution

On-line Training Supplement:
Preventing Sexual Harassment is an interactive web-based training program that provides an innovative way for employees to gain a basic understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment as well as what is and what is not acceptable in today's environment. The program provides a means to evaluate understanding and answers common questions. The program is used as a point of reference and does not replace training provided by the Affirmative Action/Employee Relations Office.

The LGBT Center:
The university’s Safe Zone Project is a workshop designed to give faculty and staff the tools and resources they need to understand LGBT students and create a welcoming, affirming campus environment for all. Participants attending this fun and informative half-day session are not required to be an expert in sexuality or gender identity/expression to attend, but rather someone who is interested in helping all members of the campus community succeed. Workshop participants receive a comprehensive resource manual and a poster or sticker to display somewhere in the office. Displaying a Safe Zone poster or sticker sends the message to others that you are comfortable talking about LGBT issues, and that you are supportive and willing to listen. Safe Zone training overview is here: http://louisville.edu/lgbt/programs-1/safe-zones-project-1
The Center also hosts Trans Inclusion training for departments and organizations that want to learn strategies for welcoming transgender and gender nonconforming students, faculty and staff. With a focus on examining business practice, forms, and procedures, the workshop includes helpful tips for talking with transgender people and using inclusive language.

Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning:
The university’s Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning offers conferences, workshops, symposiums and training through the Faculty Instructional and Development Program. Examples of these programs include:
• Facilitating Difficult Discussions - faculty receive training on strategies to successfully manage difficult topics that can come up in any class.
http://louisville.edu/artsandsciences/idep/diversity-programs/previous-programs
• Using Newspapers and Online Media to Enhance Student Learning in a Multicultural World – faculty learn how to integrate course content and current events from diverse perspectives to can foster students’ multicultural awareness and understanding.