Student Assembly Diversity Affairs Coalition

SA Diversity Affairs Coalition Committee Meeting Minutes
February 15, 2013
Physical Science Building 401
8:30–9:30 PM

I. Call to Order

II. Introductions

III. Discuss Mission of the Group

• 1. Venue for students and staff to talk about initiatives (emphasis on academia and diversity)
• 2. Coalition formed to involve students in discussions that affected their college experience
• 3. Academic initiatives are outside the jurisdiction of the SA but they would like to be involved
• 4. Looking for methods to create a form of consistency across all the Colleges
• 5. Looking for measurable progress
• 6. Big question: How can we better incorporate diversity into the academic curriculum?

IV. Set Semester Goals

V. Overview of Initiatives

• 1. P. Nguyen: Institutional Research and Planning (a diversity dashboard) — diversity.cornell.edu “Who We Are” holds a lot of data regarding demographics of the university
• 2. P. Nguyen: Does the SA also have its own diversity initiatives?
  • i. Yes, it models Towards New Destinations
• 3. N. Porter: In Engineering, the Diversity office gathered input across the college before submitting their initiatives to the Provost
• 4. E. Rodriguez: The Hotel School is in the infancy stages of this movement — still working on how best to incorporate diversity
• 5. Dean Corazon: Dean LaPage (?) has been spearheading this process in A&S. Most TND initiatives have to do with the faculty. Initiatives:
  • i. Development of a post-doc program
  • ii. Support of Africana studies
  • iii. Posse(?) Program: 10 students (this round from Chicago) to work with OADI and A&S for leadership training
  • iv. Bolstering involvement in Melon Maze: getting more underrepresented people in the faculty of US Universities to focus on humanities and social sciences

VI. Social Justice/Diversity Requirement

• 1. Overview of report
• 2. Recent coverage
• 3. Next steps for student engagement
• 4. P. Nguyen: Per the President’s White Paper, a university-wide blanket internationalization requirement is being discussed — this diversity requirement can potentially be discussed in tandem as it will affect the whole university

VII. Questions

• 1. When is the next meeting? Doodle poll will be sent out for next month’s meeting, but everyone must fill it out based on availability and not personal preference.

VIII. Adjournment

• 1. U. Smith adjourned the meeting at 9:30am

Respectfully submitted,

Chelsea Cheng