Prepared October 10, 2002 for President James T. Willerson, M.D. by Gilbert A. Castro, Ph.D., Interim Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs; Judith Booker, Associate Vice President for Planning; Yolanda Davis, Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity.
Our nation is composed of diverse people who have contributed to the richness and strength of our society. Our nation’s workforce is reflecting the diversity of our population and the contribution of all members of society. Increased educational opportunities and new technology present more job opportunities for all. Over half of the workforce in the United States consists of minorities and women. By the middle of the 21st century, the United States will be one of minorities. This national trend will unfold even faster in Texas.
Employers in all sectors of our economy are challenged by competition for the most talented individuals with critical skills, concerns over quality and accountability, and restructuring organizations to adapt to economic changes. Health care organizations and health care education institutions are not immune to the impact of outside forces, such as changing demographics and socioeconomics of the workforce on customary operating procedures. The information explosion and the incredible impact of technology on both health care and education necessitate that we hire individuals with the broadest possible talents. The emerging workforce is more and more demanding of full utilization of their talents while new challenges in the workplace demand team approaches. Many of these challenges test traditional higher education and health professions approaches to teaching and learning and the delivery of health care. These new challenges also test the mettle of leadership.
Like our colleagues in the corporate sector, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) is adapting to changes in external and internal environments. However, in adapting to change, we must continue to fulfill our mission of educating health professionals, meeting challenges to the health of the people, and delivering the highest quality patient care possible. To meet these challenges, UTHSC-H must attract broadly talented individuals from diverse backgrounds to be our students, our faculty, and our staff and inspire them to adapt to change while showing a penchant for teamwork and institutional loyalty.
We believe that the future of UTHSC-H is dependent on the sustenance of an environment where imagination, creativity and differences are celebrated and valued. These values are among those that have traditionally been cherished in institutions of higher education. What was once one of the most traditional environments in the world is undergoing a great transition. While universities must preserve traditional university values, we must guard against stagnation in the name of tradition or custom, homogeneity of thought and of group structure, bureaucratization, and the notion that major problems can be solved only by groups of wise men. This can be accomplished by identifying and preserving core values, simplifying complex operational processes where possible, moving strategically to capture new opportunities, using confidence based on integrity and credibility to guide us, and valuing individuality and the contributions of all individuals in the organization.
At this point in our institution’s development, we at UTHSC-H, must take stock and determine what we must do now to ensure that we are prepared to fulfill our institutional mission in an ever-changing environment. This institutional need must be fulfilled. We believe that in meeting this need our future strength will be in a workforce that reflects our population demographics. Toward this end we have made significant progress in a number of areas. However, until we reach our goal of having a student body, a faculty, and institutional leadership that mirror our diverse society, work remains to be done. The following is a work plan, including a list of past accomplishments, to be used to guide our future efforts in pursuit of our goal.
The vision of the future of this university has been described in our institutional vision statement:
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will continue to lead the way in understanding and conquering the most common diseases of our time. Through the diverse and collective strengths of our six schools and each of our components, we will broaden the frontiers of health science to ensure a better quality of life for humankind. We will seek to fulfill our institutional mission by becoming one of the top academic health centers in the nation in education, research, service, and clinical care. As a world-class institute of scholarship and discovery, we will be the home for visionaries and scholars who will lead the way in defining and creating the future of the health sciences. We will attain national recognition as a service-oriented, community-sensitive, and patient-focused health university.
Accomplishment of this vision is dependent upon the talents, energies, activities and leadership of a university community of over 5,000 students, faculty, staff, and trainees. We are united by a shared mission to advance the health and well-being of our nation and state. In some way or another, the outcomes of each person who studies here, who teaches here, who conducts research here, who treats patients here or who supports those who do these activities are related to this mission.
The individuals who make up the student body and workforce of UTHSC-H more and more reflect changes in society. They increasingly come from different nations, from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, and from widely divergent life experiences. Yet, while change is apparent, UTHSC-H remains challenged to reflect our society in the composition of our student body, our trainees, our faculty, and our cadre of institutional leaders.
We commonly speak of “diversity” to encompass all of these societal and demographic dynamics. Yet, “diversity” is a word that lends itself to a variety of meanings. Diversity at UTHSC-H goes beyond the traditional associations with race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, sex/gender, disability, socioeconomic status, cultural orientation, national origin, or age. Certainly those elements are encompassed in our concept of diversity. But, we also include diversity of health disciplines, diversity of intellectual pursuits, diversity of approaches to creativity, and diversity of institutional cultures. Diversity at UTHSC-H means balancing those characteristics that define us as individuals and discrete groups within the university with those characteristics that we share — our common values, common missions, and shared vision. Only when the appropriate balance is sustained can we fulfill our institutional vision of becoming one of the preeminent academic health centers in the world.
We believe that an organization that recognizes the importance of diversity and appreciates the contributions of all employees is a healthier and more productive organization than one that does not. Understanding and recognizing diversity enables an organization to capitalize on the differing views and contributions that each of its employees brings to the workplace. Such an organization provides a richer work environment and ensures that employees work in harmony to carry out organizational goals and objectives. Understanding and recognizing the contribution of diversity also reflects an understanding of societal changes and needs and enables the preparation and mobilization of individuals who can meet these needs.
Further, we believe that everyone who assumes a management or leadership position in this university is responsible for managing diversity in each of their organizational settings. This means that they must continually assess the appropriate balance among diverse individuals and accomplishment of their organizational goals and objectives. Managers and leaders must be aware of and compliant with laws and regulations related to both Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity, but they must also be in tune with the new institutional imperatives related to sustaining a culture that embraces diversity. Managing diversity is important because of the contribution it can make to effective organizational decision-making. Whatever the diversity, in people or systems, the benefits of factoring myriad experiences, insights and approaches into decision making can only enhance the viability of solutions and our ability to anticipate consequences of decisions. Integrating diversity into an organization’s management practices provides opportunities to facilitate organizational change; harness employee potential; increase efficiency; achieve performance goals; and enhance internal and external stakeholder satisfaction.
The leadership of UTHSC-H must take steps to make students, faculty and staff feel that they are part of a great organization. It is equally important that all feel that they have and are given equal opportunities to become contributors to achieve and advance within the organization.
Our vision for diversity then is:
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) will sustain a climate of diversity, opportunity, and professionalism in balance with achievement, high standards, and a philosophy of continuous improvement. UTHSC-H will become an institution and employer of choice for students, faculty and staff. As a result of attracting the best people from all backgrounds, UTHSC-H will reach its full potential and be strategically positioned to realize its vision of being among the best academic health institutions in the world.
To better enable UTHSC-H to accomplish this vision, UTHSC-H leadership must make diversity and sustaining diversity an imperative for all faculty, executives, and staff throughout the institution. UTHSC-H must commit to being the model employer of a talented, dedicated, effective and successful workforce that reflects the diversity of Texas and the nation.
Pursuing these objectives will require changes in a number of our institutional processes and procedures, especially in the way in which we approach recruitment, retention, empowerment, motivation, and learning or job enrichment for employees. It will require changes in the way we carry out our programmatic responsibilities.
While this will be an expectation of university leaders and managers, it will also be an expectation of all members of the university community. It is important for all individuals to realize that opportunity for success is not synonymous with promise of success. Like the institution, they, too have responsibilities that must be fulfilled. The mutual responsibilities follow.
UTHSC-H is committed to creating an environment that:
Within the created environment, individuals must be treated equitably. Thus, the environment must be one that:
It is important to note that while inclusiveness is meant to give all individuals a fair chance to rise, it should not be used as an excuse by individuals to maintain status quo or keep others from advancing. Therefore, within the created environment, individuals should be expected to contribute to their own success by:
Only by maintaining an open mind can we learn from, value and respect differences. Open mindedness, which is the foundation of the education process, means that all ideas, opinions, and activities are evaluated equally, but are not necessarily valued equally.
Diversity, in the broadest sense, should be recognized and honored because doing so strengthens morale or the spirit in which individuals provide their service to the university. In turn, it should be accepted that personal and institutional strengths derived from being recognized and honored should be directed toward worthy efforts and our common purpose, i.e., to foster the prevention and treatment of illness.
In the end, individual and institutional strengths will be brought to bear in a positive way on scholarly endeavors discovery, teaching, integration, and application of knowledge that relate to disease prevention, patient care and community service. It is scholarship in the health professions, biomedical sciences, and biotechnology and the potential to promote the health of all individuals and populations that make our institution different from others and worthy of support from citizens of Texas and the nation. As a university, this difference must be preserved.
First and foremost, university leadership has embraced a commitment to enhance diversity on our campus. Our president has asked for and supported the development of a diversity plan. The commitment of university leadership is critical to setting the pace, laying out the road map, setting the performance targets, and urging compliance. But, leaders can only do so much. Members of the student body, the faculty, the staff, and key administrators must also embrace the plan and take steps to implement it.
The need for a plan has been echoed by faculty and students as well. Two independent and large-scale planning processes brought together groups of faculty and students that met in the summers of 2000 and 2002. These efforts were part of the ongoing institutional strategic planning process; these planning efforts reinforced both the need to establish a plan for enhancing diversity and a sense of readiness to embrace such a plan.
From this planning process, three clear diversity imperatives for the university have emerged:
These imperatives and specific actions that could be taken to achieve objectives will be detailed in later sections of the Institutional Diversity Plan. Because the actions to be taken were based on four major recommendations with 22 subcomponents made by the two planning groups, their recommendations are summarized as follows:
Establish a coordinated approach to diversity efforts at UTHSC-H by:
Integrate diversity into the University’s mission and vision as a central focus so that the institutional commitment to diversity is unambiguous by:
Further develop Pre K–16 programs as recruiting mechanisms and key community service by:
Make faculty recruitment/retention the centerpiece of a diverse campus environment by:
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