By Harry Mok

The University of California must develop innovative policies to offset the effect deep budget cuts may have on efforts to foster diversity among UC's students, faculty and staff.

That is the one of the most pressing conclusions of an annual report on diversity prepared for the September meeting of the UC Regents. The report will be formally presented in November and is a subset of UC's 2009 Accountability Report, which tracks the university's progress in meeting key performance and policy measures. The Regents made achieving diversity a policy goal in 2007 and require the UC president to report yearly on the status of the university's efforts.

California is a diverse state, and because the core mission of the University of California is to serve Californians, it must seek to achieve diversity among its faculty, staff and students, according to the 2007 UC statement on diversity.

"The excellence of our university depends on our ability to recruit and retain a highly qualified and diverse faculty, staff and student body," said UC Interim Provost Larry Pitts.

	Source: University of California 2009 Accountability Report

The report analyzed data from October 2008 and earlier on the race, ethnicity and gender of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff across all 10 UC campuses. The results show only small changes over time, with the greatest diversity among students and the least among faculty (see charts at right).

Where UC stands

Because UC often defines its aspirations in terms of reflecting the diversity of California, the report notes that the university's demographics have clearly not kept pace with the state's growing Chicano/Latino population.

However, both the state's and UC's racial and ethnic profile continue to exceed the diversity of other universities and of the nation as a whole.

To illustrate that, the report cites U.S. News and World Report's Diversity Index, which in essence ranks campuses on the likelihood that an undergraduate student will see a student from another racial or ethnic group on campus. UC Riverside ranks fifth nationally, UCLA 11th, UC Berkeley 16th and UC Davis 17th out of the 262 universities in the magazine's national category.

"The opportunity to be surrounded by a culturally rich environment is part of the experience of going to college," said Alejandro Delgadillo, associate director of admissions at UC Merced, which has one of the more diverse campuses in the system. "It's part of the learning that happens outside the classroom."

Among UC staff, the report notes the greatest diversity is among professional and support staff and the least among senior management, with UCLA and Riverside having the highest percentage of underrepresented staff. Women, meanwhile, comprise more than 50 percent of the workforce on every campus.

In looking at ladder rank faculty systemwide, the report found that UC is more diverse than the public and private universities that make up the elite Association of American Universities and, in a few disciplines, hiring of underrepresented faculty exceeded the estimated availability from the national pool of candidates. Yet white men still account for the majority of faculty at all UC campuses.

Budget crisis threatens diversity

Improving the university's diversity becomes more difficult as student enrollment is cut and faculty and staff hiring is reduced to cope with the dramatic loss of state funding, the report acknowledges. But the Staff Diversity Council and the Study Group on University Diversity, which provided the basis for the report, emphasize that this means the impacts on diversity must be integrated into all planning efforts to maximize scarce resources.

"It is a terrible problem," said Marlene Zuk, associate vice provost for faculty equity and diversity at UC Riverside, which has faculty that are among the most diverse in the system. "The inability to hire is going to compromise excellence for a number of reasons and diversity is one of them."

Students from low-income families, many of whom are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, may be the most affected by budget cuts, according to Merced's Delgadillo. "If we lose Cal Grants, it would be a financial factor for students and force them to not continue school," he said.

Cal Grants for students from low-income families were on the state's chopping block this summer but funding was restored in the final budget.

Moving forward

The report makes a number of recommendations to continue to encourage diversity at the university, within the legal limitations established by Proposition 209 and its elimination of the consideration of race in admissions and hiring.

For undergraduates, the report recommends improving efforts to create an education pipeline that prepares students for UC, recognizes transfers a key part of this process and ensures that financial aid and scholarships are competitive and can attract underrepresented groups.

While budget cuts may reduce faculty hiring, the report says campuses should redouble efforts to recruit and adhere to existing university policies that promote diversity. These include:

• Factoring in contributions to diversity made by faculty in awarding promotions and holding department chairs, deans and provosts accountable for supporting diversity.
• Family-friendly policies, such as "stopping the clock," to ensure that taking leave to have children doesn't adversely impact the time allotted to complete the tenure process.

For staff, the report says job structures and career paths need to be clarified so that employees can more easily navigate the system.

Encouraging diversity

Though measurable progress has been slow, there are a number of existing programs throughout UC that encourage diversity in staff and faculty hiring, student admissions and campus climate, the report said. Among them:

• UC Berkeley plans to release a Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion this fall, a 13-month effort that will establish an action plan and roadmap to engender change, improve dialogue and collaboration and set up a system of accountability.
• Construction began in August on UC Davis' West Village, which will combine student and faculty housing with the first community college center on a UC campus. The village, education center and programs for high school students, run in a partnership with the Los Rios Community College District, is expected to enhance efforts to attract underrepresented transfers to UC.
• UC Santa Cruz' Dining University provides opportunities for campus dining service employees to develop skills to help them advance their careers, which could enhance diversity in other job classifications. The Dining University curriculum includes training in university policies and resources, customer service, and team-building and motivational activities, including culinary competitions and cooking workshops, English as a Second Language and Spanish as a Second Language classes.
• The UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program encourages doctorate recipients whose teaching, research and service contribute to diversity to pursue academic careers. Participants receive research fellowships, professional development and faculty mentoring. The program also gives an incentive to UC campuses if they hire current or former fellows into ladder-rank faculty appointments. The program accepts 15 to 20 fellows a year. From 2001 through 2006, more than 75 percent of fellows have received tenure-track positions and more than 40 percent have been hired by a UC campus.

Provost Pitts also noted that future versions of the diversity report must be broadened to include more indicators beyond race, ethnicity and gender to give a more complete sense of the university's progress in realizing the vision set out by the 2007 diversity statement.

Harry Mok is a principal editor in the UC Office of the President's Integrated Communications group.