Valuing Diversity

The mission of the office and the assistant dean for diversity is to provide leadership to the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the areas of recruitment, retention and professional development, and to increase graduation rates of diverse student populations. The mission also includes the promotion of faculty diversity and research/scholarship that impacts ethnic minority communities. The assistant dean also provides leadership, guidance and support in these areas to departments and other academic and research units in the college and assists recruitment efforts on behalf of departments and academic units.

The assistant dean plays a leadership role in the administration and programming related to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Atlantic Coast-Social, Behavioral, and Economic (AC-SBE) Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) diversity grant. The college's centerpiece training activity aimed at increasing diversity is the annual Summer Research Initiative—a program the assistant dean develops, leads and oversees.

The office and assistant dean maintain a relationship with the Graduate School's Office of Graduate Recruitment, Retention and Diversity and its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics PROMISES AGEP and they work to facilitate student access to PROMISE programs. PROMISE is an organization aimed at increasing the number of domestic students receiving doctoral degrees in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics, with special emphasis on those population groups underrepresented in these fields. Moreover, the assistant dean for diversity serves as the college's liaison to other University of Maryland administrative and academic units on issues pertaining to the promotion of diversity.

For information on the importance and benefits of promoting diversity in education, please check out the following links:

1. http://www.diversityweb.org
2. http://www.ncsu.edu/diversity/benefits
3. http://www.umd.edu/diversity

Organizing Principle

The recruitment, retention and graduation of diverse students are important goals and should be supported whole-heartedly; however, many people have found that focusing solely on students in this narrow manner (recruitment, retention and graduation) is insufficient. Excellent diversity strategies reach far beyond the students and seek to better prepare the institutions to sustain diversity at all levels. Embedding the recruitment, retention and graduation of students into a broader strategy tends to be more effective, lead to better results, and to be more sustainable in the long term.

Guiding Principles

• Excellence: The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences' Diversity Initiative should strive to prepare students for successful long-term careers and successes regardless of their terminal degree level or the vocational endeavor selected (academia or the private sector).
• Exposure: The diversity initiative should strive to provide students with early and meaningful exposure to not only research and ideas, but to the research and academic or private sector enterprises that promote future success (internships, externships, work study, etc).
• Comprehensiveness: The diversity initiative should be comprehensive in scope. Successful diversity initiatives address not only the diversity of students, but also the diversity among the faculty and diversity in the areas of scholarship and research.
• Multi-disciplinary: The diversity initiative should be multi-disciplinary. It should seek to build collaboration across departments within the college, but also across other academic units at University of Maryland and beyond.
• Responsive: The diversity initiative should incorporate solid tracking and evaluation into a process that will provide direction for the initiative and guideposts for course corrections. The evaluation should be both formative and outcome-focused.