Valuing and engaging a variety of perspectives to create and sustain a pluralistic, diverse and mutually inclusive workforce.
Awareness
K-State has continued to show improvement in efforts to recruit a quality, diverse workforce — a key outcome of the K-State 2025 Visionary Plan. Led by the Division of Human Capital Services, K-State routinely advertises job vacancies with affinity networking organizations such as Insight to Diversity magazine, higheredjobs.com and DiversityJobs.com. We recently added Job Elephant as a recruitment advertising agency that will help Talent Acquisition and all of K-State ensure that the best adverting resources are being utilized. The 2014-2019 snapshot of faculty and staff demographics shows that the representation of each underrepresented demographic increased for faculty, except Native American. All underrepresented staff demographics, except for Asian, also increased in representation. The following are the percentages of increase for faculty(f) and staff(s): African American – 6.3%(f), 11%(s); Asian – 11.3%(f), -1.5%(s); Hawaiian – 100%(f), 100%(s); Hispanic – 52.3%(f), 18.7%(s); Multiracial – 27.3%(f), 53.3%(s); Native American – 0%(f), 26.7%(s); and White – 3.7%(f); 4.9%(s).
Women faculty increased 2% during the same period. During this period, women staff increased 0.9% from 57.4% in 2014 to 58.3% in 2019. The total representation of veterans and individuals with disabilities is unknown.
While efforts to improve the diversity of our faculty and staff are readily apparent, the fact remains that the diversification of our workforce does not mirror the student body nor the availability of qualified individuals in the state and national labor markets. In the faculty ranks for example, the 2014-2019 snapshot shows that each faculty and staff demographic reflecting a historically underrepresented and underserved population experienced significant attrition from the base point for 2014: faculty(f) and staff(s) – African American – -22%(f), -49%(s); Asian – -30.5%(f), -71%(s); Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – 0%(f), -50%(s); Hispanic – -34%(f), -55%(s); Multiracial – -36%(f), -33%(s); Native American – -29%(f), -33%(s); White – -23.3%(f), -41.4%(s).
These data indicate that K-State is experiencing a revolving-door phenomenon. Moreover, due to budget cuts since 2015, particularly for staff, K-State has seen its largest employee departure from the university. Finally, in preparation for the 2020 University Climate Survey, the Vice President for HCS and the CDIO held numerous listening sessions with various employee and affinity groups throughout the university landscape. Among the recurring thematic concerns was a demand for enhancing professional development — educational workshops, training, etc., that help employees do their jobs better (Action Plan Step 11) — and career development — educational workshops, training, etc., that support employees with lateral and/or upwardly mobile career advancement — opportunities. These concerns were also prevalent in the university climate survey data.
Alignment
K-State is a public land-grant research university committed to teaching and learning, research and service to the people of Kansas, the nation and the world. We strive to foster a work environment that values diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We affirm our commitment to the Principles of Community. K-State is committed to fostering an intellectually diverse faculty and staff workforce that is rooted in respect and fair practices (K-State 2025 Visionary Plan: Theme 5). The 2025 theme goal: Foster a work environment that encourages creativity, excellence, and high morale in faculty and staff, responds to changing needs, embraces diversity, values communication, and collaboration, and is respectful, trusting, fair, and collegial for all.
Aim 4A
Talented, high-performing, and diverse workforce recognized for excellence and award-winning faculty and researchers.
4a.1 Increase the hiring and retention efforts for faculty and staff of color to meet or exceed relevant local, state and national labor market for faculty and staff from historically underrepresented and underserved populations (Action Plan Step 9: For a More Inclusive K-State).
4a.2 Create initiatives to support the success and retention of diverse faculty (mentoring, career watch, professional development, conference attendance, research support, teaching and learning, etc.).
4a.3 Incorporate diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as an institutional value and priority in the messaging and budgeting of the university.
4a.4 Create a centralized budget managed by the CDIO for retention of diverse faculty and staff, training, climate, mentoring, professional development, research initiatives and programming.
4a.5 Develop mechanisms for utilizing and valuing contributions to diversity and inclusion efforts as well as attendance, engagement and participation in diversity education and allyship activities as a performance dimension within the annual employee performance and evaluation process for faculty, staff and administrators.
4a.6 Develop and utilize holistic feedback channels, such as 360 evaluations, to identify opportunities to enhance employees’ sense of belonging and inclusiveness.
4a.7 Create and earmark funds for strategic diversity leadership apparatus to support employees from historically underrepresented and underserved populations with career advancement and upwardly mobile opportunities.
4a.8 Professional conduct could be expanded to include diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging contributions.
4a.9 Create a task force for tracking and assessing faculty and staff engaged in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
4a.1 Increase the diversity of institutional committees and task forces that lead the work of the university.
4a.2 Utilize institutional diversity and inclusion educational apparatus/training to raise K-State’s consciousness of issues across the diversity continuum.
4a.3 Evaluate tools to assist faculty and staff with identifying and preparing for career development opportunities.
4a.4 Reward faculty and staff for excellent contributions to diversity and inclusion in the performance of their duties.
4a.5 Strategize ways to address the taxation of women and historically underrepresented and underserved populations in terms of service, career development, navigating tenure and promotion, and ensuring an equitable and mutually inclusive climate.
4a.6 Evaluate previous campus climate surveys to obtain a baseline for assessing faculty and staff perceptions of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Aim 4B
Achieve representation parity in hiring and promotion of underrepresented populations across the university at all levels, including senior leadership roles.
4b.1 Showcase K-State’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging by including a diversity statement in all position announcements.
4b.2 Require demonstrable commitment to diversity as part of the tenure and promotion process.
4b.3 Update hiring practices, training and guidelines to reflect best practices and data-informed decisions/ processes.
4b.4 Create a mutually inclusive and comprehensive onboarding process for new faculty and staff, including specific resources to assist with the acclimation and retention of our diverse faculty and staff.
4b.5 Utilize national best practices in diversity recruitment, including but not limited to future faculty, dual-career hires, grow-your-own and target-of-opportunity hires to increase the representation of diverse employees across all levels.
4b.6 Enhance outreach and engagement with affinity groups and networks (e.g., SREB, NEREB, AAHE, Ph.D. Project, etc.) to attract members of historically underrepresented and underserved populations to our university.
4b.7 When opportunities present themselves, create partnerships in each college in the name of prominent diverse K-State alumni.
4b.8 Develop a pipeline initiative to identify and move talented, diverse prospects from K-State graduate and undergraduate programs into K-State careers.
4b.9 Sustain a comprehensive dashboard created to display current applicants and hire demographic information for all faculty and staff hiring at K-State (Action Plan Step 9: For a More Inclusive K-State).
4b.10 Increase participation and attendance at national recruitment conferences for diverse and underrepresented prospective employees.
4b.1 Quantitative change/growth (K-State will substantially improve the representation of quality, diverse faculty, staff and administrators to mirror or surpass the traditional model in the student body and the relevant labor markets).
4b.2 Increase representation of diverse faculty, staff and administrators.
4b.3 Close, where it exists, the gender incumbency gap across all faculty, staff and administrative levels.
4b.4 An endowment has been established for the Inclusive Excellence Fund to support faculty and staff recruitment, retention and professional development in colleges and departments.
4b.5 Utilize the institutional diversity and inclusion profile in all job announcements.
4b.6 Utilize a demonstrable commitment to diversity and inclusion statement for all applicants for faculty and administrative staff positions.