Strategic Planning

The new comprehensive campus plan is really taking shape

lblouin — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 11:54:50 +0000

The new comprehensive campus plan is really taking shape lblouin Mon, 06/24/2024 - 07:54

In summer 2023, the university announced it was creating a new comprehensive campus plan to help guide the near- and mid-term development of campus grounds and infrastructure in ways that complement its strategic plan. Participants who attended a recent presentation about the CCP saw the effort now has some real meat on the bones. The CCP is filled with dozens of projects that will reshape how we work, learn and power the university, ranging from solar and geothermal systems to a plan to bring all four colleges to the main campus by 2027. In case you weren’t able to attend the presentation, we’ve recapped some of the highlights below. You can also view the slide presentation from Executive Director for Facilities Operations Carol Glick.

Doing more in less space

A campus plan is most fundamentally, of course, about how we use space, and as part of the prep work for the CCP, SmithGroup, the university’s architectural partner on the project, conducted a deep analysis of current space utilization to identify opportunities for using campus spaces more effectively. One of the primary near-term goals of this analysis was to determine whether we had enough space to relocate the College of Business and the College of Education, Health and Human Services from the Fairlane Center to the main campus. SmithGroup found that there is plenty of room to accommodate the move, which will see CEHHS complete its relocation to the Administration Building by 2026 and COB to the Social Sciences Building by 2027. Moreover, there is enough space to accommodate enrollment up to 10,000 students (current enrollment is just over 8,000), as well as increased research activities. Optimizing scheduling for our instructional spaces is a big part of how we’ll be able to do more within a consolidated campus footprint. SmithGroup identified that, on average, classroom spaces are being used only about 60% of their available hours, with lab usage rates ranking a bit higher. Large format classrooms, in particular, are sitting empty much of the time, which is not a surprise given that 96% of ��-Dearborn classes are capped at 60 students or less. Classroom spaces are also, on average, only filled to 55% capacity with a target of 70%. The great news is this underutilization likely gives the university a path to avoid any capital-intensive new construction for some time, while providing ample opportunities to reduce our energy consumption and create a denser, more lively atmosphere on campus. Though staff occupy a smaller footprint, the post-COVID work environment, in which many units are using hybrid and remote work schedules, offers another opportunity to do more within our current physical footprint as buildings are renovated.

A new vision for outdoor (and some indoor) spaces

Some of the most exciting features of the CCP involve renovations of outdoor and indoor spaces, with campus grounds set to get the flashiest overhauls. The main entrance of campus is being reimagined to allow a more aesthetic, wide-open view into a new central quad between the Mardigian Library and Renick University Center. The vision for the quad calls for natural plantings, outdoor seating and an overhead canopy, giving it life as an everyday social space as well as a versatile outdoor event space. The long sidewalk running from HPEC to the CASL Building could also see some upgrades, with new plantings, seating areas and outdoor classrooms along its perimeter. Even the parking lots are being rethought, with new rain gardens that make these spaces both more aesthetically pleasing and transform them into valuable flood management tools. Indoors, the multi-year Renick University Center/Mardigian Library renovation is the flagship project, which will consolidate core student and academic services in the central part of campus. The initial phase — a renovation of the RUC’s first floor — is currently underway with work scheduled to be completed in early 2025. Projects will be completed as funds become available.

The revamped main entrance. (Image courtesy Smith Group)

New spaces, like outdoor classrooms, will border the main campus walkway. (Image courtesy Smith Group)

The CCP calls for rooftop, ground-mounted and parking lot solar arrays. (Image courtesy Smith Group)

Decarbonization takes center stage

We’ve been bringing you stories for a few years about ��-Dearborn’s efforts to minimize its carbon footprint through energy efficiency projects, like the ongoing LED lighting retrofit. But if you’ve been waiting for news of some larger-scale projects that go beyond the lower-hanging fruit, you’ll be pretty jazzed about some of the ideas in the CCP. The plan includes large installations of carport, rooftop and/or ground-mounted solar that could reduce the university’s current climate-warming emissions by 30%. On the heating and cooling side, the parking lots could host wells for new ground-source heat pumps — a highly efficient technology that provides both heating and cooling in a single system. To reach our goal of net-zero carbon emissions, Glick estimates the university can achieve a 40% reduction through improvements to existing buildings, another 20% from the new geothermal system, 30% from solar and the remaining 10% from purchasing renewable-based electricity.

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Want more details from the comprehensive campus plan? Check out Glick’s full CCP presentation. Story by Lou Blouin

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Mon, 06/24/2024 - 10:52

Moving everyone to the main campus, a major overhaul of outdoor spaces and on-site renewable energy are some of the notable features in ��-Dearborn’s comprehensive campus plan.

The 10-year comprehensive campus plan calls for a new central quad between the Renick University Center and Mardigian Library. Image courtesy Smith Group

Takeaways from the 2024 State of the University

lblouin — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:43:39 +0000

Takeaways from the 2024 State of the University lblouin Wed, 02/14/2024 - 12:43

Sports fans — if you did not attend last week’s State of the University event, you missed out! Not to take anything away from the presentations from faculty, staff and students, but the surprise appearance by the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy definitely stole part of the show. Hundreds of members of the ��-Dearborn community scored a photo op, celebrating the first national championship by the Wolverines since 1997. Alas, the trophy is now back home in Ann Arbor, so you’ve missed your chance for a social media brag post. But below, we’ve recreated many of the other highlights from the SOTU, which included remarks from the chancellor, a primer on how the university puts together its budget, updates on new retention and recruitment strategies, and a look at practice-based learning in all four colleges. If you want the full SOTU experience, you can also watch the entire event on the university’s YouTube channel.

Grasso says the university has talent and “horsepower” needed for challenging times

Chancellor Domenico Grasso kicked off the event with a brief address calling out some of the university’s major accomplishments from the past year — as well as its biggest challenges. Among the 2023 highlights: ��-Dearborn passed its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission “with flying colors,” meeting or exceeding all criteria without the need for additional steps. Buoyed by a new state scholarship, the university welcomed its biggest class ever of first-year students. Annual total research expenditures grew by nearly $2.5 million this year compared to the previous year. The university kicked off a new capital campaign that’s already secured three seven-figure gifts, including a $1 million gift from alum Marc Howze and his wife, Paula, part of which is supporting a new “Get to Graduation” fund. And the university ranks in the top 30 nationwide among universities for upward economic mobility. Grasso also announced that Director of Human Resources Rima Berry-Hung, Director of the Center for Social Justice and Inclusion Shareia Carter and CASL Associate Dean Marie Waung will be leading an effort to re-envision the university’s DEI efforts. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is also being renamed the Office of Holistic Excellence.

On the challenges side, Grasso said enrollment and retention still unsurprisingly dominate the conversation. Overall enrollment was down about 2% this year. “Our enrollment decline is [partly] due to students not returning to campus, which is worrisome. They either transfer or drop out for family or financial reasons,” Grasso said. “Last year, we lost 400 students, which first and foremost, is a loss of human potential, but also it is a loss of over $6 million of revenue.”

Chancellor Domenico Grasso addresses the crowd at the 2024 State of the University event.

Why it’s so tricky to put together the university budget

If the university ever gives out an unsung hero award, many might nominate Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Bryan Dadey after watching his 10-minute primer on how the university budget comes together. The university’s chief financial officer and his team have their hands full creating a balance between revenues and expenses — primarily because there’s so little certainty on either side of the ledger for much of the year. There are all kinds of quirks in the process. For example, the state finalizes its budget after the Board of Regents has already approved the ��-Dearborn budget for the year, meaning Dadey and the team have to estimate the size of the state appropriation, which makes up about 21% of the university’s total revenue. Total enrollment numbers — and thus tuition dollars, which account for 78% of revenue — are also a moving target until the fall semester kicks off. So how does the budget ever come together? Basically, Dadey said he and his team keep making adjustments through the year based on the best information they have at the time. But almost anything can change at any moment. For example, Dadey said they were expecting a 10% jump in health insurance costs this year. But the increase ended up being 14%, which prompted a further round of adjustments.

New recruitment and retention efforts show promise

Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Melissa Stone and her team discussed a number of recently debuted strategies focused on recruitment and retention. For example, the university is trying out a new look for dual enrollment for Detroit students, with college courses taught on Saturdays. Similar programs just launched for students in Ferndale and Grosse Ile as well. The EM team is also looking to new online offerings as a way to attract transfer students and the 25% of Michigan adults who have some college experience but no degree — two demographics with strong appetites for online programs. There’s also evidence that key changes to our financial aid strategy are paying off. Stone said the Go Blue Guarantee, a free tuition program for lower-income, high-achieving students which launched in 2021, and the Michigan Achievement Scholarship, a new state program that kicked in in 2023, have boosted enrollment among first-time students. “Of our Pell-eligible population, in Fall 2023, we actually welcomed 472 (students) versus 239 before launching Go Blue,” Stone said. “So I know we’re doing all we can to make sure the incoming Fall ’24 class stays engaged in the college process … because we know how affordable it can be if they take advantage of the programs.” To that end, Stone said the team is working hard to make sure prospective students don’t get discouraged by delays in receiving their financial aid offers this year, which was triggered by the first major changes to the FAFSA program in 40 years.

Student engagement is strong, but looks different post-pandemic

Dean of Students Amy Finley says student engagement has bounced back, though it’s important to look beyond traditional metrics, like involvement in student organizations. That said, participation in student organizations is rebounding. There are now about 150 student orgs on campus, including 21 that started last year. Student org events shot up by 20% in Fall ’23 compared to the previous year, and 87% of events were held in person. Other positive trends Finley is watching: Students are utilizing the extended hours and Zoom appointments now offered by several student-facing units, as well as new social spaces like the Wolverine Commons. Campus employment is another way hundreds of students are connecting with something outside the classroom: The university has 665 student employees, representing 35% of the campus workforce. And though it may feel a little quieter on campus than it used to, nearly half of students now say they’re on campus four or five days a week.

A look at practice-based learning — in practice

Practice-based learning has become a chief priority for the university over the past couple of years, and faculty have responded with lots of interesting applications of PBL in their classrooms. If you want to see what PBL looks like in action, the four short videos featured at the SOTU event are a great place to start. Each highlights a PBL course in one of the four ��-Dearborn colleges. In CASL, students in a criminology and criminal justice course are working with a local sheriff’s office on decades-old cold cases. CEHHS students are collaborating with the City of Dearborn Department of Public Health to develop policies and practices for increasing tree cover in the city. In COB, accounting students team up with a local nonprofit to prepare tax returns for people with lower incomes. In CECS, students are preparing for engineering careers by building robots from scratch.

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We’ll leave you with one more SOTU fun fact: This year’s State of the University and Winter Carnival were zero waste events. In all, we diverted 86% of the waste generated during the Winter Carnival from the landfill. Need more SOTU? You can watch the entire event on the university’s YouTube channel. Story by Lou Blouin

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Why is it so tricky to put together the university’s annual budget? How are some of our new enrollment and retention efforts going so far? This year’s SOTU event featured some candid insights on these and other topics — plus a surprise appearance by the college football national championship trophy.

From left, CASL Associate Dean Marie Waung, Director of Undergraduate Enrollment Management Urana Pridemore and Director of Enrollment Management Communication and Events Kevin Lewtschanyn discuss new recruitment and retention strategies.

Lynn Perry Wooten visits ��-Dearborn for Thought Leaders Series

lblouin — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 15:42:25 +0000

Lynn Perry Wooten visits ��-Dearborn for Thought Leaders Series lblouin Mon, 04/03/2023 - 11:42

Lynn Perry Wooten has been studying the challenges women face in American workplaces for more than two decades. In that time, she’s seen a lot of change, but also many familiar themes. For example, Wooten argues the recent pandemic-prompted “she-cession,” where women, especially younger women and women of color, left the traditional workforce in historic numbers, represents both a new phenomenon and a crisis whose dynamics have been “smoldering” for years. “Even now, business is one of the top majors in the country and when you look at gender parity . . . and you look at entry levels in the corporate suite, 48% [are women], but by the time you get to the C-suite, we’re down to 24%. This is that ‘leaky pipeline.’ For management, we get to 41%. By VP, it’s 30%. So something is happening in addition to the she-cession in the corporate sector,” Wooten says.

Scholars who study the leaky pipeline — the phenomenon where gender (and racial) representation lag the higher you get in an organization’s hierarchy — have identified a huge range of contributing factors, including a childcare crisis and a suite of persistent systemic and structural challenges. But Wooten argues that there are also “best practices” that can guide women seeking leadership positions and organizations looking to cultivate women leaders. Those themes are the subject of her recently co-authored book “Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.” During her Thought Leaders talk on the ��-Dearborn campus, Wooten discussed these practices, which bring together her and her colleagues’ research and advice from 24 women in top leadership positions.

Practice 1: Investing in your best self. Wooten argues you’ll put yourself in the best position to thrive if you have intimate knowledge of your strengths, values and what makes you joyful at work. Then, seek out or create workplace environments that allow these parts of your “best self” to thrive.

Practice 2: Embracing authenticity. In our workplaces, we often edit ourselves down to just the parts we think are work appropriate. Wooten says bringing your social identity, values and unique style to work is what makes you not like everybody else and can give you a “competitive advantage.”

Practice 3: Cultivating courage. Wooten says courage is rooted in introspection. It’s about knowing yourself, confronting your flaws, admitting you don’t know everything and using this to prepare for challenging situations. To do this, Wooten stresses that organizations need to cultivate supportive cultures that encourage innovative thinking and don't penalize people for taking productive risks.

Practice 4: Fostering resilience. Resilience fundamentally involves overcoming the fear, anxiety and selfishness that naturally accompany crisis situations. We can view moments of upheaval as opportunities to examine what skills we may need to develop to succeed in changing times.

Practice 5: Inspiring a bold vision. “Sadly … the research shows that women are not perceived as visionary. A man can say an idea in the room and we see it as brilliant. And when a woman says the same thing, it’s not seen as visionary. We wanted women to have tools to be visionary,” Wooten says. Among other things, this includes identifying what the world or organization needs, coming up with daring solutions and being able to communicate ideas in ways that resonate with people.

Practice 6: Creating a healthy team environment. Wooten says giving women opportunities to lead teams and projects early in their careers is crucial to fixing the leaky pipeline. Culture changes are important too. “Good teamwork is frequent and honest communication . . . it’s making time for the team to learn together, it’s appreciating the team, and it’s ensuring that when the team makes mistakes, the leader owns it, therefore it’s a psychologically safe culture.”

Practice 7: Committing to the work of the inclusive leader. Wooten argues doing the work of the inclusive leader starts with knowing your strengths, which leads to a knowledge of your biases. It’s also about embracing the value of equity and the idea that “everyone is not the same and everyone needs different things.” As a practical tool, she sees a lot of potential for “sponsoring” other people in the workplace. “In the African American community, there is a saying ‘lift as you climb.’ That is what sponsorship is about. It’s when someone else is not in the room, you’re elevating them. You’re looking to see, do we have fair representation across gender roles, and finally making that systems change.”

Missed the Thought Leader Series event and want to watch? Check out the recording.

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Story by Lou Blouin

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The Simmons University president and former Ross School of Business professor shared her insights on the “she-cession” and best practices for supporting women in leadership.

Photo courtesy Simmons University

A practical approach for addressing bias in artificial intelligence

lblouin — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 18:15:58 +0000

A practical approach for addressing bias in artificial intelligence lblouin Mon, 11/14/2022 - 13:15

Over the past decade, there’s been no shortage of examples of human biases creeping into artificial intelligence processes. Back in 2020, Robert Williams, a Black Farmington Hills resident, was arrested and jailed after a police facial recognition algorithm wrongfully identified him as a man shoplifting on security footage — a known weakness such systems have in accurately identifying people with darker skin. In 2019, researchers demonstrated that a software system widely used by hospitals to identify patient risks was preferencing white people for many types of care. A few years ago, Amazon mostly abandoned a system it was using to screen job applicants when it discovered it was consistently favoring men over women.

How human biases get baked into AI algorithms is a complicated phenomenon, one which we covered with ��-Dearborn Computer Science Assistant Professor Birhanu Eshete and then-��-Dearborn Associate Professor Marouane Kessentini in a story last year. As noted in that piece, bias doesn’t just have one source, but bias problems are often rooted in the ways AI systems classify and interpret data. The power of most artificial intelligence systems rests in their ability to recognize patterns and put things into categories, but it’s important to note that process typically starts with a training period when they’re learning from us. For example, consider the image recognition algorithm that lets you find all the photos of cats on your phone. That system's intelligence began with a training period in which the algorithm analyzed known photos of cats that were selected by a human. Once the system had seen enough correct examples of cats, it acquired a new intelligence: an ability to generalize features essential to cat-ness, which allowed it to determine if a photo it had never seen before was a photo of a cat.

The important thing to note about the above example is that the algorithm's intelligence is fundamentally built on a foundation of human judgment calls. In this case, the key human judgment is an initial selection of photos that a person determined to be of cats, and in this way, the machine intelligence is embedded with our “bias” for what a cat looks like. Sorting cat photos is innocuous enough, and if the algorithm makes a mistake and thinks your dog looks more like a cat, it’s no big deal. But when you start asking AI to do more complex tasks, especially ones that are embedded with very consequential human concepts like race, sex and gender, the mistakes algorithms make are no longer harmless. If a facial recognition system has questionable accuracy identifying darker-skinned people because it’s been trained mostly on white faces, and somebody ends up getting wrongfully arrested because of that, it’s obviously a huge problem. Because of this, figuring out how to limit bias in our artificial intelligence tools, which are now used widely in banking, insurance, healthcare, hiring and law enforcement, is seen as one of the most crucial challenges facing AI engineers today.

University of Pennsylvania Professor and U-M School of Social Work alum Desmond Patton has been helping pioneer an interesting approach to tackling AI bias. At his recent lecture in our Thought Leaders speaker series, Patton argued that one of the biggest problems — and one that’s plenty addressable — is that we haven’t had all the relevant voices at the table when these technologies are developed and the key human judgments that shape them are being made. Historically, AI systems have been the domain of tech companies, data scientists and software engineers. And while that community possesses the technical skills needed to create AI systems, it doesn’t typically have the sociological expertise that can help protect systems against bias or call out uses that could harm people. Sociologists, social workers, psychologists, healthcare workers — they’re the experts on people. And since AI’s bias problem is both a technical and a human one, it only makes sense that the human experts and the technology experts should be working together.

Columbia University’s SAFE Lab, which Patton directs, is a fascinating example of what this can look like in practice. Their team is trying to create algorithmic systems that can use social media data to identify indicators of psycho-social phenomena like aggression, substance abuse, loss and grief — with the ultimate goal of being able to positively intervene in people’s lives. It’s an extremely complex artificial intelligence problem, and so they’re throwing a diverse team at it: social workers, computer scientists, computer vision experts, engineers, psychiatrists, nurses, young people and community members. One of the really interesting things they’re doing is using social workers and local residents to qualitatively annotate social media data so that the programmers who are building the algorithms have appropriate interpretations. For example, Patton says, one day, he got a call from one of their programmers over a concern that the system was flagging the N-word as an “aggressive” term. That might be an appropriate classification if they were studying white supremacist groups. But given that their communities of focus are Black and brown neighborhoods in big cities, the word was being used in a different way. Having that kind of knowledge of the context gave them a means to tweak the algorithm and make it better.

Patton says SAFE Lab’s work is also drawing on the hyper-local expertise of community members. “The difference in how we approach this work has been situated in who we name as domain experts,” Patton said. “We [hire] young Black and brown youth from Chicago and New York City as research assistants in the lab, and we pay them like we pay graduate students. They spend time helping us translate and interpret context. For example, street names and institutions have different meanings depending on context. You can’t just look at a street on the South Side of Chicago and be like, ‘that’s just a street.’ That street can also be an invisible boundary between two rival gangs or cliques. We wouldn’t know that unless we talked to folks.”

Patton thinks approaches like this could fundamentally transform artificial intelligence for the better. He also sees today as a pivotal moment of opportunity in AI’s history. If the internet as we know it does morph into something resembling the metaverse — an encompassing virtual reality-based space for work and social life — then we have a chance to learn from past mistakes and create an environment that’s more useful, equitable and joyful. But doing so will mean no longer seeing our technologies strictly as technical, but as human creations that require input from a fuller spectrum of humanity. It’ll mean universities training programmers to think like sociologists in addition to being great coders. It’ll take police departments and social workers finding meaningful ways to collaborate. And we’ll have to create more opportunities for community members to work alongside academic experts like Patton and his SAFE Lab team. “I think social work allows us to have a framework for how we can ask questions to begin processes for building ethical technical systems,” Patton says. “We need hyper-inclusive involvement of all community members — disrupting who gets to be at the table, who’s being educated, and how they’re being educated, if we’re actually going to fight bias.”

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Want to dig deeper into this topic? Check out another recent installment in our Thought Leaders speakers series, where U-M Professor Scott Page explains why diverse teams outperform teams of like-minded experts.

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Mon, 11/14/2022 - 18:15

University of Pennsylvania Professor and U-M alum Desmond Patton says building more ethical technological systems starts with bringing more voices to the table.

Credit: Columbia University/SAFE Lab

Why diversity is the secret to solving complex problems

lblouin — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 19:41:42 +0000

Why diversity is the secret to solving complex problems lblouin Mon, 10/31/2022 - 15:41

The effort to make our workplaces and institutions more diverse is typically framed as a moral issue or an opportunity to make society more just. Given the many aspects of our society that advantage certain groups of people and disadvantage others, this is a worthwhile pursuit — and a fair way of framing the challenge. But what if it wasn’t the only way of establishing a value proposition for diversity and inclusion? For years, Scott Page, the John Seely Brown distinguished university professor of complexity, social science and management at ��-Ann Arbor, has been making a numbers case for diversity. His basic thesis: If you want innovation, or to solve complex 21st-century problems like income inequality or climate change, then groups of experts, at least as we’re accustomed to thinking about them, are going to have a hard time competing with talented teams of people with relevant diverse perspectives.

Page recently laid out his argument in an entertaining lecture in ��-Dearborn’s Thought Leaders series, which brings experts to campus to talk about big ideas relating to our strategic plan priorities. A key point in Page’s case is distinguishing between simple and complex tasks. For example, he says if you’re looking to maximize output for your logging business in northern Michigan in the 1820s, then a straightforward measure of how many trees a person can cut down in a day may be a good hiring metric. By assembling a team of the most productive loggers and aggregating their effort, you reap the most profit — simple as that. But Page says group dynamics work differently for more complex tasks. For example, say you want to make forecasts about the economy, and you ask 40 really good economists to make predictions and then average them. (This, by the way, is a common method for producing economic forecasts in the U.S. and European Union.) Page says when you crunch the numbers, a couple interesting phenomena emerge. One, the group’s average prediction is better than any of the predictions of the individual economists. Even more interesting, the group’s prediction actually has less error than the average error of the individual members, and the size of the extra benefit from this group average actually corresponds to how different their predictions were. In other words, diversity yields a “bonus.”

So why is this the case? “Once you have something that’s really high-dimensional, by definition, people are going to go about it in different ways, and when they go about it in different ways, you get this benefit,” Page said. Stated a little differently, when something is very complex, it’s hard to figure out, which means no one is going to get it exactly right. So “you want people getting it wrong in different ways” so you’re accounting for a greater degree of the complexity. Needless to say, this is a different approach than many institutions take to solving problems. Typically, Page says, our inclination is to assemble a team of the best experts on a particular topic, as measured by an accepted set of credentials. But in doing so, we’re missing an opportunity to reap a diversity bonus. “For example, when I go to the New York Fed, they’ll have 60 people with PhDs in economics and no sociologists and no psychologists,” Page said. “They’re all trained to see the world in the same way, through the exact same categories, the exact same models.” Page is quick to point out, however, that diversity doesn’t mean random difference. If you’re trying to solve a complex physics problem, the solution isn’t to “bring Tony Hawk in to CERN.” The people on your team have to have knowledge or skills that are germane to the task. But if you’re trying to come up with policy solutions to, say, income inequality or inflation, it’s going to help to have economists working alongside sociologists or psychologists, because they’ll all approach the problem a little differently and the group’s solution will capture more complexity.

In addition, Page says we shouldn’t assume that traditional metrics, like what academic discipline a person got their doctorate in, are the only ways to measure or predict this advantageous “cognitive diversity” of the group. The amalgam of someone's life experiences is also very important in what they bring to the table, which is why diversity of identity can also matter. People of different races, genders, social classes, national origins, etc. will inherently have had different life experiences, which inform how they see the world and thus their approach to problems. When this kind of identity diversity contributes to more cognitive diversity, Page says it can boost diversity bonuses.

Page also notes that environmental conditions must be favorable to maximize this benefit you get from diverse teams. Most importantly, institutions have to create environments where people feel trusted and validated, so there’s no holding back when they’re working as a group. Under these conditions, Page says you can often reap even more benefits through “synergy” — moments when ideas combine in unexpected ways to create especially great solutions. Viewed this way, creating an inclusive environment where everyone has a seat at the table becomes an “amazing opportunity” to create solutions for today’s complex problems — in addition to being the right thing to do.

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Want to learn more about Scott Page’s work on diversity and innovation? Check out his book "The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy." Also, look out for the next installment in our Thought Leaders series on Nov 10 : “How Technology Developers and Social Scientists Can Work Together to Combat Bias in the Metaverse” with the University of Pennsylvania’s Desmond Patton. Register for the event.

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U-M Professor Scott Page explains why diverse groups consistently outperform teams of like-minded experts.

Credit: Narissa Escanlar/U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Takeaways from Chancellor Grasso’s Oct. 19 town hall

lblouin — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 16:19:51 +0000

Takeaways from Chancellor Grasso’s Oct. 19 town hall lblouin Mon, 10/24/2022 - 12:19

If you feel like it’s “been years” since our last Conversation with the Chancellor event — you’re right! Due to the pandemic, the last time Chancellor Domenico Grasso had a chance to dialogue in-person with the campus community about big issues shaping the university was back in early 2020. Now that we’re in the midst of a more normal semester, the Conversation events are back, and last Wednesday’s covered a lot of ground. In case you missed it, we’ve summarized some of the main takeaways. You can also view the entire one-hour recording on the university’s YouTube channel.

Enrollment is mostly a good news story

With the exception of one area, which we’ll get into below, there is a lot to feel good about in the Fall 2022 enrollment numbers. Growth in graduate education is one of the biggest bright spots: Compared to Fall 2021, master’s enrollment jumped more than 20%, bolstered by our largest ever incoming class of international students. One other pleasant surprise: After being down for the past several years, transfer student enrollment shot back up more than 6%. That’s our first increase since 2017. The one not-so-great number was among FTIAC students (First Time In Any College), where enrollment dropped 7.3%. As you probably know, this isn’t totally surprising: Michigan has an aging population, and there are simply fewer high school seniors than there used to be. Overall, enrollment decreased by just 1 percent compared to last year, and new students were up 1.2 percent. Two other positive data points: Our four-year graduation rate increased by 3 points to 33%; and due to some changes in our financial aid strategy, net tuition revenue increased by 9%.

The university’s financial standing is strong

That net tuition increase is important because tuition makes up roughly 80% of university revenue. But other numbers also demonstrate ��-Dearborn’s increasingly strong financial footing. University reserves have more than doubled since 2018 and now stand at $38 million. “This is still less than where we should be for a university of our size and budget,” Grasso said. “But we’re on the right track. We’ve never had this level of reserves in the past, and now, if we do encounter downturns, we won’t be as negatively affected.” Earlier this year, our endowment also reached an all-time high of $86 million, though Grasso noted that because of the recent slide in the stock market, that number is a bit less now. External research awards also reached a historic high, topping $11 million. That is more than double 2018’s number, and the percentage of federal awards has risen from 35% to 65%. Internal awards to support faculty research climbed to $400,000 — double 2021’s total. There is good news on the development side as well. Our current capital campaign has already raised $16.5 million; this year’s Giving Blue Day was the biggest ever, raising $130,000; and the total number of donors giving to ��-Dearborn increased by 35% compared to last year.

We’re making steady progress on our strategic plan

��-Dearborn is continuing to implement initiatives from our Go Blueprint for Success strategic plan. On the academic side, the provost is working on an effort to transition many courses to a 4-credit format. This would allow faculty to teach fewer courses overall and devote more time to scholarly work — and give students fewer courses to focus on each semester. On the business side, Business Affairs began implementing its responsibility-centered management (RCM) budget model for fiscal year ‘23. “This model moves the responsibility to the units, so the deans will have more financial management control over their units,” Grasso said. “They’ll be responsible for revenue generation, and they’ll also be responsible for expenses. They’ll have much more control over their destiny with this new model.” In the area of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), we appointed two inaugural Inclusive Excellence Fellows; completed a DEI Climate Survey, with results expected this fall; and are hosting several guest lecturers and Thought Leader sessions relating to DEI.

In-person campus life is perking up

With the worst of the pandemic apparently behind us, it’s fascinating to watch which aspects of our lives are returning to normal and which may have undergone a paradigm shift. There are still lots of questions when it comes to the nature of work and campus life. But regarding the latter, Dean of Students Amy Finley said students are showing a lot of enthusiasm for a return to in-person activities. “For example, on Victors Link, where our student organizations go to submit their events, between now and the end of the term, we have 286 events and 80-85% are in-person events,” Finley said. Foot traffic at the University Center and Campus Involvement Hub have also ticked up — as have checkouts of the free lawn games. Participation at events, including the Homecoming dance, Cardboard Boat Race and the Homecoming tailgate, has also been strong. When it comes to work, Grasso said the university continues to provide a lot of flexibility and hybrid opportunities. The new Common Days policy has brought more faculty and staff to campus on Mondays and Thursdays, restoring the lively feel many missed during the height of the pandemic. A Future of Work Task Force is also developing a more comprehensive set of recommendations and will be holding focus groups so faculty, staff and students can share their ideas.

Best of the rest

Chancellor Grasso got a chance to meet with new U-M President Santa Ono, who has expressed interest in a tighter relationship with the regional campuses. Ono will visit ��-Dearborn on Friday, Dec. 9.
External Relations is working on a brand refresh and new recruitment and advertising campaigns for 2023.
The University Center will be officially renamed the James C. Renick University Center in a ceremony on Nov. 17. ��-Dearborn is also commissioning an oil painting in honor of the accomplished ��-Dearborn chancellor, which will be on display at the UC.
��-Dearborn student-athletes are on a tear! The volleyball team’s Brooke Wetherill currently leads the nation in blocks per set. The men's cross country team has two second-place finishes this year and the women's team has two third-place finishes. In a new Big 10 regional campus rivalry, the men's and women's basketball teams are set to take on Penn State-Schuylkill at the Crisler Center on Dec. 20
Apparently the donuts at the Conversation with the Chancellor event were very good. Chancellor Grasso has promised donuts at every event — if it will help encourage people to turn out. We don’t think he was kidding.

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Want more details from the Oct. 19 Conversation with the Chancellor? You can watch the full one-hour event on the ��-Dearborn YouTube channel.

Administration & Governance

University-wide

Chancellor

Strategic Planning

Off

Mon, 10/24/2022 - 16:19

Couldn’t make last week’s Conversation with the Chancellor event? We’ve broken down the big news on enrollment, strategic plan progress, hybrid work policies and more.

How ��-Dearborn’s new strategic plan is reshaping the university

lblouin — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 19:01:02 +0000

How ��-Dearborn’s new strategic plan is reshaping the university lblouin Mon, 11/22/2021 - 14:01

One of the welcomed new qualities of the conversation around ��-Dearborn’s strategic plan is that we no longer have to talk about it in the future tense. Core parts of the plan were finalized and released back in April, and though it may have flown somewhat under the radar due to the pandemic, implementation of many of the plan's core initiatives is now well underway. At a recent virtual strategic planning update, university leaders shared details on the progress of some current and future initiatives. We’ve summarized some of the takeaways from the event below in case you missed it. Or you can watch the full 90-minute update on the university YouTube channel.

Who is ��-Dearborn in 2021?

One of the outcomes you hope for in any strategic planning process is to give folks a clearer sense of an institution's contemporary identity and purpose. During the course of the strategic planning process, dozens of faculty, staff and students contributed to rich conversations around that topic, coalescing in an exciting new way to think about ��-Dearborn. Chancellor Grasso summarized it by sharing a short narrative statement that was unanimously approved by 18 members of senior leadership.

University of Michigan-Dearborn is a diverse and welcoming 21st-century commuter-based campus that opens the door to an accessible American dream for students of all socioeconomic levels, and is above all committed to the success of each individual student. Harkening back to the roots of our founding, we are a practice-based university that focuses on positively impacting Southeastern Michigan and beyond by creating and applying knowledge to address our most compelling problems. We do this by: connecting students with extramural opportunities to enhance their classroom studies and create opportunities for professional careers; supporting faculty with community and corporate engagement opportunities; and holistically driving economic vibrancy. Our faculty and programs differ from those of our progenitor in substance but not in quality. Our practice-based programs are of equal quality to programs in Ann Arbor. Finally but not least, ��-Dearborn is a unique, caring, close-knit community where we place the mission first but always take care of all of our people.

Student experience and success

��-Dearborn’s strategic plan is animated by four guiding principles: student experience and success; diversity, equity and inclusion; faculty and staff excellence; and economic sustainability. In the area of student experience and success, there have already been some important developments, one of the most exciting being a reorientation of the student aid strategy toward students with the greatest financial needs. For sure, the most headline grabbing part of that effort is an extension of the Go Blue Guarantee to the Dearborn campus, which provides free tuition to high achieving new and transfer students whose annual family incomes are under $65,000. But Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Melissa Stone says ��-Dearborn has also greatly expanded its aid for students who don’t meet the GPA or income requirements of the Go Blue Guarantee. In short, because need is a sliding scale, we’ve adjusted our aid to make sure anyone can afford an education at ��-Dearborn. If you want to see how that works, check out this really great breakdown of how ��-Dearborn’s new aid strategies are serving students with the most financial need.

Other things to watch in the student experience and success area:

The university launched a new online student service portal that connects students to advisors, financial aid, and other key university services from a single page. Enrollment Services is also staffing a new “One Stop” in the University Center for students who want in-person help.
The university has been expanding its use of Salesforce, our customer relationship management (CRM) software. This helps fine-tune student communications so they’re extra relevant and has a growing set of applications for both recruitment and retention.
Experience+ was launched in January 2021 to coordinate and enhance opportunities for student professional development, research, intercultural awareness and digital literacy.
A new peer-to-peer mentoring service has been heavily used by students. In its first semester, 137 upper-level students are mentoring 500 first- and second-year students, exchanging more than 9,000 messages.
Some areas of the University Center are getting a makeover to provide the spaces and services commuter students need most. Renovations include a new lounge area on the second floor for hanging out and studying between classes, as well as easier ways for students to access student life opportunities, like student organizations.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Work centered on advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) touches nearly every aspect of university life. The DEI strategic planning working group produced over 60 recommendations in all, some of which are already being implemented. Initial steps include some notable changes to human resources practices and policy. The university is now requiring an unconscious bias mitigation training for anyone participating on search committees, and is being more intentional about the language used in job descriptions to attract a wider diversity of applicants. Other changes include offer letters that set expectations for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and new Human Resources “equity reviews” of position compensation and job classifications.

Other initiatives in the works: An expansion of the MLK Day of Service and Learning, featuring an enhanced partnership with neighboring Henry Ford College; the creation of a new Chancellor’s DEI Fellowship; and the continued implementation of flexible and remote work opportunities that help promote diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

Faculty and staff excellence

Teams working on faculty-related issues haven’t wasted time diving into meaningful territory. One of the first initiatives focuses on broadening the criteria by which faculty are evaluated for tenure and promotions. In particular, this would include new ways of valuing community-based work, pedagogical research, and exceptional teaching or support for students, in addition to faculty contributions to their respective scholarly communities. Another big theme: promoting interdisciplinary research. On that front, campus has launched a new thematic research grant program, which provides funding for projects featuring researchers from at least two colleges. (The initial themes are sustainability, mobility and infrastructure, and diversity, equity and inclusion.) In addition, faculty have launched three interdisciplinary research groups so far, giving researchers from different disciplines a new platform for sharing ideas and partnering on bigger grants. Over the past year, the Office of Research has also expanded its support, including retaining a firm that specializes in helping faculty write and copyedit federal grants. Next up, the office hopes to build out its post-award support, which faculty have identified as a key need.

On the staff front, highlights include new professional development opportunities and leadership training.

Economic sustainability

When it comes to the university’s finances, one of the biggest changes is a new model called zero-based budgeting. As we’ve explained in past town hall recaps, this involves building a base budget for each campus unit based on exactly what it needs to accomplish its present mission, rather than, say, what its budget has been historically. This model, which emphasizes a balance between revenues and expenses at the unit level, provides an impetus for entrepreneurial projects. For example, if a college created revenue-generating research, it could also keep and invest that money within the college.

As you know, ��-Dearborn’s budget is powered mostly by tuition revenues, and it’s been a challenging time for universities across the country when it comes to enrollment. Pandemic-related issues and a significant decline in transfer students have been the main sources of recent enrollment declines at ��-Dearborn. The uncertainty of the pandemic has also made it difficult to pursue strategic enrollment management plans, but Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Melissa Stone says that work is now moving back to the front burner. Because enrollment declines in a particular year have multi-year impacts, Stone says the goal is to get back to 2017-2018 enrollment levels within a few years. The strategy will be centered around recruitment of multiple student populations, including international graduate students and students who’ve started but not finished a degree. The other key part of enrollment growth: boosting retention. Stone says the teams working on these issues will spend the next few months developing enrollment strategies, with a goal of having a fully developed Strategic Enrollment Management Plan ready to go by May 2022.

Another key piece of our economic sustainability is environmental sustainability. To reach the U-M system’s goal for carbon neutrality, meaningful investments will have to be made in energy efficiency and weaning our university off fossil fuels in the coming decades. To achieve those objectives, the university has so far created a campus Energy and Sustainability Team, developed a campuswide energy efficiency plan, and completed a lighting audit of most major buildings. Future plans include bringing Ann Arbor’s Planet Blue Ambassador program to the Dearborn campus, building an energy and sustainability website to track progress, and developing sustainability-focused teaching modules for faculty.

Finally, ��-Dearborn is now preparing for another major capital campaign, so stay tuned for details on that in the coming year.

###

Still want to learn more about ��-Dearborn’s strategic plan? Check out the full 90-minute video of the Nov. 18 update or visit the strategic planning website.

Enrollment

Inclusion or Diversity

Off

Mon, 11/22/2021 - 18:59

Changing times in higher education call for new approaches. We break down how ideas from our strategic planning process are creating a new chapter at ��-Dearborn.

One of the new lounge areas in the state-of-the-art Engineering Lab Building.

��-Dearborn faculty are hauling in big grants at a ‘record’ pace

lblouin — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 17:10:10 +0000

��-Dearborn faculty are hauling in big grants at a ‘record’ pace lblouin Mon, 09/13/2021 - 13:10

A photo of a brick building featuring the university's seal on the ��-Dearborn campus, set against a blue sky.

Any way you look at it, it's been a stunning couple of months for ��-Dearborn researchers. In terms of sheer grant dollars awarded, the total now stands at more than $4 million for the first two months of this fiscal year. For some context, that’s already more than half of last fiscal year's grand total. Moreover, none of the big awards so far have come from industry, typically the largest funder of ��-Dearborn research. Instead, the dollars are coming from federal funders, primarily the National Science Foundation.

“The federal grants our faculty are getting are extremely competitive; the likelihood of getting an NSF grant in some of the programs that our faculty are competing for is often less than 10 percent,” says Vice Provost for Research Armen Zakarian. “So to be getting this many in two months is an all-time record for us — by far.”

So what’s behind the recent surge of success? Zakarian says, in his view, the overarching factor is faculty research talent — something ��-Dearborn has prioritized in its recent recruitment efforts. But as you can see in the list of grants below, one of the things that Zakarian finds very promising is the slew of recent awards actually stretches through the faculty ranks, from established veterans down through early-career assistant professors.

Federal awards, July-August 2022

Joan Remski (PI), Daniel Lawson and Marilee Benore (Co-PIs), “Retaining Students in STEM on a Commuter Campus with Efficient High Impact Practices,” National Science Foundation, $1,439,824
DeLean Tolbert, “CAREER: No Trees Without Roots: An Investigation of Black Families Engaging in Engineering, Innovation, and Design in Informal Spaces,” National Science Foundation, $721,479
Marouane Kessentini (PI) and Birhanu Eshete (Co-PI), “Elements: An Infrastructure for Software Quality and Security Issues Detection and Correction,” National Science Foundation, $599,999
Sven Morgan, “Collaborative Research: The role of Grain Boundary Migration in Water Weakening of Naturally Deformed Quartz,” National Science Foundation, $433,254
Marouane Kessentini, “PFI-TT: Intelligent Software Refactoring Bot for Continuous Integration,” National Science Foundation, $250,000
Zheng Song, “CRII: CNS: With Uncertainty Comes Opportunity: Providing Best-Effort Edge Services with Uncertain and Limited Resources,” National Science Foundation, $174,443
Lei Chen, “Collaborative Research: Engineering Gradient Nano-grained Metals by Multi-pass Plastic Wave Deformation,” National Science Foundation, $154,992
Marouane Kessentini (PI) and Wencong Su (Co-PI), "IUCRC Planning Grant University of Michigan Dearborn: Center for Pervasive Personalized Intelligence Center," National Science Foundation, $20,000

Another promising trendline: There’s strong representation from various colleges. Zakarian says the haul from the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters is particularly impressive, with about half of the entire dollar volume coming from CASL faculty.

As exciting as the past two months have been, Zakarian says the bigger payoff could be a future one. NSF awards tend to beget more NSF awards, and the fact that so many of our faculty are breaking through means we’re building a foundation for sustained success. Zakarian says their mentorship will also be invaluable for colleagues seeking the same milestone funding opportunities — and for attracting the next generation of talented researchers. “People who are thinking about coming here and want to be successful in research, they’re going to look and see what the university is successful at,” Zakarian. “So if they see their colleagues who were hired before them able to build a successful career on the national stage, that’s huge in terms of attracting even more talent.”

To keep the momentum going, Zakarian says the Office of Research is also increasing its support for faculty. Growing the research enterprise is a big part of ��-Dearborn’s strategic planning effort, and the office plans to augment the services it already offers for writing and copyediting proposals with grant administration support. This will allow faculty to stay focused on their work rather than paperwork. Another thing that’s gaining a foothold on campus: interdisciplinary faculty research groups. That could be a particularly crucial culture shift, since larger national grants typically require teams of researchers from different disciplines. On that front, Zakarian says he has his eye on several areas, including additive manufacturing technologies, sustainability, mobility and educational research. “I think if you look at areas like this, we have the right talent across all four units to be national leaders.”

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Interested in reading more about Zakarian’s work in the Office of Research? Check out our recent interview with him, where he talks about why interdisciplinary research is becoming the norm in higher education.

Off

Mon, 09/13/2021 - 17:09

Vice Provost for Research Armen Zakarian breaks down why we may look back at this as a turning-point year for ��-Dearborn’s research enterprise.

How strategic planning could reshape the student experience at ��-Dearborn

lblouin — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:09:02 +0000

How strategic planning could reshape the student experience at ��-Dearborn lblouin Wed, 03/24/2021 - 09:09

An aerial view of students gathering around a table to collaborate in the breezy atrium of the CASL building.

Being a commuter campus comes with plenty of well-documented plusses and minuses. One of the biggest general challenges, of course, is creating a sense of community that transcends the academic experience. Many first-year students say it’s hard to make friends when you don’t have the opportunity to live in a residence hall. Family and work obligations outside of school, which a majority of our students report having, can make it difficult to stick around campus for non-class activities. Even the commute itself, if you do it solo, can be an isolating experience.

For the past few months, a couple of ��-Dearborn’s strategic planning teams have been busy exploring solutions for these types of challenges, which could ultimately reshape the student experience in some significant ways. Dean of Students Amy Finley, who’s chairing a team focused on commuter issues, says there’s a lot of excitement about utilizing space on campus differently in the future. In particular, Finley says it’s important to have enough places for students to hang out or work so they don’t feel the need to go elsewhere during non-class time. “We’re thinking about designing spaces so campus can really be a home away from home,” Finley says. “If you have a couple hours between classes, there have to be places for students to sit and study and socialize — and that are equipped with the right amenities, like charging infrastructure and food service. And we really think outdoor space can play a big role too. We have this beautiful campus, but some of it is underutilized.”

Another interesting idea: Rethinking the commute itself. Finley says tools like podcasts could deliver critical student information while folks are en route to campus. Easy-to-use rideshare and carpool programs could make the commute more social — and chip away at campus’ carbon footprint. In addition, her group is exploring how more flexible schedules for services could help students avoid some unnecessary driving altogether. “Let’s say you were going to come in on Wednesday just for an academic advising appointment. Now that we’re all experienced with Zoom, though, maybe that appointment can be handled remotely. Likewise, we think many more students could attend evening talks or events if they had the option to stream them online.”

Professor of Psychology Marie Waung says that emphasis on connectivity jibes with the thinking on their team, which is exploring ways to build out the first-year experience for both new students and transfers. Their recent survey of 350-plus current students revealed some major themes about first-year challenges. First and foremost, students say the attend-class-go-home rhythm of commuter life makes it difficult to build friendships and other social connections. Beyond that, many students report having challenges adjusting to college-level academic expectations, as well as difficulty navigating college logistics like registration, financial aid and Canvas, the campus’ learning management system.

Waung says their team is developing a set of overlapping solutions for these very issues, many of which build on successful programs we already have on campus. For example, connecting first-year students with peer mentors could be helpful both for answering typical new student questions and for forging early social connections. Another idea: Building out the Community Read program, where the campus collectively reads and discusses a topical book, into a broader first-year slate of themed activities. Similarly, Waung says there’s interest in exploring whether the College of Arts, Sciences, & Letters’ “foundations” model could be expanded campuswide. Under this approach, academic courses with catchy names like “Democratizing Democracy” or “Real Housewives of Crime: Crime, Law, & Reality TV” are embedded with activities designed to help students build the core academic and collaborative skills they’ll use during their student careers.

Next up, Waung and Finley say they're excited to get feedback from students, faculty and staff about some of these proposed solutions. Look for an opportunity to do that in the coming months. In the meantime, you can check out the top ideas from all four main strategic planning working groups: student experience and success, DEI, faculty and staff excellence and economic stability. University leadership is also exploring holding a strategic planning town hall to update the campus on implementation progress in April.

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Story by Lou Blouin. As always, you can stay up to date on the latest strategic planning news on the main Strategic Planning website.

Off

Wed, 03/24/2021 - 13:06

Fully embracing our identity as a commuter campus could be the key to creating services and programs that today’s students need most.

Turning ideas into intentional, actionable steps

stuxbury — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 22:32:03 +0000

Turning ideas into intentional, actionable steps stuxbury Wed, 02/03/2021 - 17:32

Ideas are collected for ��-Dearborn's DEI initiatives

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are a popular topic — but are they actually implemented? The campus DEI working group is collaborating with leadership and campus colleagues to ensure that ��-Dearborn is an institution that follows through.

Photo Keisha Blevins, ��-Dearborn chief of staff

��-Dearborn Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser to the Chancellor Keisha Blevins, who serves as a co-chair of the campus’ Diversity Equity and Inclusion working group, says it’s important to ensure ��-Dearborn’s policies, practices and decisions reflect the campus’ stated commitment to DEI. Chancellor Domenico Grasso’s inaugural address highlighted the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion and Blevins says the Chancellor has emphasized this commitment by ensuring it’s a thread throughout the university’s strategic planning process.

“We have a diverse group of students, faculty and staff engaged in the strategic planning efforts. When we collected campus input, all areas — student experience and success, economic sustainability, and faculty and staff excellence — had suggestions for building upon our current efforts to foster an inclusive campus culture,” Blevins says. “DEI must be a component of everything we do — curriculum, student support, recruitment, how we interact with each other, everything — and our campus community gets that. Our leaders, faculty, staff and students care deeply about our campus and when you care about something, you’re not only willing to put in the work to improve it, you are accountable for following through. We all have a role in this, individually and collectively."

Photo of Ann Lampkin-Williams

The DEI working group — which, in addition to Blevins, is led by English Literature and Humanities Professor Deborah Smith Pollard, and College of Education, Health, and Human Services Dean Ann Lampkin-Williams — has reviewed the ideas generated by the campus community during early 2020 Town Hall brainstorming sessions and other campus engagement opportunities such as the call for “big ideas,”and listening sessions. The group is also holding regular meetings to discuss campus needs. Recommendations from the working group will be shared later this semester, in the meantime, Blevins and Smith Pollard gave us a preview of some of the themes that have emerged.

Members of the campus community are creative — and would like more ways to collaborate and learn from each other.

Smith Pollard says there were a lot of DEI-related ideas submitted centered around student support — one that emerged is the idea of doing a better job, as a campus, of showcasing curricular efforts currently happening on campus, that are working, so that others might become inspired and implement something cross-discipline.

Among the ways the DEI working group recommends helping foster this type of collaboration: recognition programs, awards, grants, presentations and workshops.

Photo of Deborah Smith Pollard

Smith Pollard shared an example of the African and African American Studies (AAAS) annual event The Power Mixer, where students meet one another, members of the Black Student Union and AAAS faculty members. It facilitates connections despite their being in different colleges, disciplines and programs. She says experiences like this could serve as a model for other communities across campus.

In addition, Smith Pollard talks about how unlikely partnerships cultivate diversity of thought and better prepare students for a global marketplace. She said there are lessons that can be learned by talking with people who have created or organized successful DEI-focused experiences. “When thinking about the future, it’s important to recognize the work done well that is happening right here, right now. We want to make sure we uplift what we are doing right and don’t have valuable or relevant expertise, perspective or connections go underutilized.”

For example, campus’ Human-Centered Engineering Design degree program includes art courses in the engineering-based curriculum. She says it may seem like an unusual pairing academically — but those areas complement each other well and an understanding of both will benefit students and industry. Smith Pollard says highlighting successful examples where people cultivated diversity of thought may encourage others to create more diverse — academic and cultural — partnerships across campus.

The ��-Dearborn community wants to increase understanding and take action.

Blevins says the ��-Dearborn campus is proud of its diversity — but more intentional steps can be taken by defining DEI and demonstrating ��-Dearborn’s values through specific action.

She says increasing educational opportunities related to DEI is a good place to start. Training and development programs are priorities, with topics that could include unconscious bias training and how to have conversations around DEI. Blevins says, “when you have a better understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion, you are more comfortable and equipped to talk about it, which leads to a better experience for everyone involved.”

Blevins says another topic of training and development may be ��-Dearborn’s behavior expectations and campus values. She says those training sessions could take place at orientation — for both students and employees — and continue throughout a person’s time on campus.

“It shouldn't be a one and done approach,” she says. “The conversation around DEI needs to be continuous. We have to set goals, develop a plan, take action, incorporate accountability measures and maintain an unwavering commitment to our goals. And, from what we’ve heard and read from the community feedback, people are eager to learn, share their expertise and to act.”

Community partnerships can be strengthened by using a DEI lens.

The DEI working group is looking to build upon the established connections ��-Dearborn has in metro Detroit. Ideas they are pursuing include offering more in-person classes — when it is COVID-safe to do so — at the ��-Detroit Center, which is located in the heart of downtown Detroit.

Looking at mobility concerns, the working group is exploring ways to bring a SMART bus stop to campus so people with unreliable transportation can access campus through a service with several routes. “We want to remove education and employment barriers. And not having a way to get to class or work is definitely a barrier,” Smith Pollard says. “It’s important to provide opportunities and give ways to access the opportunities.”

A number of faculty members do research beyond campus borders and Smith Pollard says it’s important to continue this work. She attended the Halal Metropolis exhibit — created by the Center for Arab American Studies led by Director Sally Howell — in Detroit. The exhibit was showcased at several locations in Wayne, Washtenaw, Livingston and Macomb counties. “We have wonderful research on campus. But it’s good to take what we are doing and bring it into our communities.”

Smith Pollard says the working group is also exploring ways to create a space for those interested in community research to get answers from experienced faculty members to learn what went right and what can be done better.

“We want to know if there are processes that encourage collaboration — and what can ��-Dearborn do to enhance those? Or is there someone in another department of college who is working in a related research area? We need to learn from each other,” Smith Pollard says. “We are a small university that does great things — and further collaboration and diversity of thought will only improve what we do.”

Initial draft recommendations will be shared with campus by the end of March.

Do you have an idea for the DEI working group? If so, please email dei-dearborn@umich.edu.

Inclusion or Diversity

Strategic Planning

Off

Wed, 02/03/2021 - 22:28

The ��-Dearborn DEI working group continues to meet, generate ideas and review campus community suggestions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.

Strategic Planning

The new comprehensive campus plan is really taking shape

Doing more in less space

A new vision for outdoor (and some indoor) spaces

Decarbonization takes center stage

Takeaways from the 2024 State of the University

Grasso says the university has talent and “horsepower” needed for challenging times

Why it’s so tricky to put together the university budget

New recruitment and retention efforts show promise

Student engagement is strong, but looks different post-pandemic

A look at practice-based learning — in practice

Lynn Perry Wooten visits ������-Dearborn for Thought Leaders Series

A practical approach for addressing bias in artificial intelligence

Why diversity is the secret to solving complex problems

Takeaways from Chancellor Grasso’s Oct. 19 town hall

Enrollment is mostly a good news story

The university’s financial standing is strong

We’re making steady progress on our strategic plan

In-person campus life is perking up

Best of the rest

How ������-Dearborn’s new strategic plan is reshaping the university

Who is ������-Dearborn in 2021?

Student experience and success

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Faculty and staff excellence

Economic sustainability

������-Dearborn faculty are hauling in big grants at a ‘record’ pace

How strategic planning could reshape the student experience at ������-Dearborn

Turning ideas into intentional, actionable steps

Members of the campus community are creative — and would like more ways to collaborate and learn from each other.

The ������-Dearborn community wants to increase understanding and take action.

Community partnerships can be strengthened by using a DEI lens.

Lynn Perry Wooten visits ��-Dearborn for Thought Leaders Series

How ��-Dearborn’s new strategic plan is reshaping the university

Who is ��-Dearborn in 2021?

��-Dearborn faculty are hauling in big grants at a ‘record’ pace

How strategic planning could reshape the student experience at ��-Dearborn

The ��-Dearborn community wants to increase understanding and take action.