Affirmative action program university of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, Massachusetts

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  The Procurement Department has been committed to working with Small and Minority/Woman Owned Businesses (M/WBE) for over 40 years and continues to look for opportunities to increase M/WBE participation. During FY 13, the Amherst Campus purchased in excess of $6 million in goods and services from small /minority and/or women-owned businesses through the public bid process administered by the Procurement Department.
  
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  The executive area supports the needs of campus community members who have disabilities by insuring that physical accessibility is being addressed in a planned manner and through the support of the Architectural Access Board. During this period, more than twenty projects that improved accessibility in campus buildings, including modifications to building entrances, bathrooms, office doors and elevators, were completed.
  
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  The Controller’s Office supports Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs which encourage and support women and minority students by expediting stipends and reimbursements.
  
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  The Bursar’s Office provides past due balance reports to the Deans Office and ALANA Office so that counselors can assist students with payment and financial aid issues.
  
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  The Physical Plant Division, Design & Construction Mgt., and Administrative Services were involved with twenty-one (21) renovation/maintenance projects for ADA compliance. Issues addressed included (but were not necessarily limited to) life safety upgrades, accessibility improvements, accessibility parking, personal accommodations and signage.
  
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  The Physical Plant Division now sends a weekly email to students, faculty and staff who have mobility disabilities listing elevator disruptions, anticipated times of disruption of services and restoration of services.
  
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  The Work Management area of Administrative Services has partnered with Disability Services to act as a resource to students, faculty and staff who are registered with Disability Services. A Customer Service Representative and the Work Management Coordinator will meet with registered person(s) and will act as a resource to assist with any issues they encounter with regard to the physical entities of where they work/reside.
  
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  For the period September 2012 to August 2013, Special Transportation (ADA Point-to-Point shuttle) provided 14,873 rides for campus members with mobility issues, in addition to 935 passengers who utilized the regular Transit buses wheelchair lifts.  We feel this is an important role that we provide for the university to enable all university community members equal access to the campus and its activities.
  
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  Design & Construction Management’s contractor for the Integrative Learning Center, Barr & Barr, exceeded their goal for employing MBE and WBE sub-contractors as a percent of contract dollar value.
  
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  The Physical Plant Building entrance was made accessible during its 2012/13 renovation.
  
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  The newly developed Women’s Health Clinic in UHS began limited hours in January, 2014. This increased access to care for women provides a quality, respectful and confidential setting for women seeking gynecological care and reproductive health services on campus, with a focus on appreciation of diverse beliefs, experiences, cultural understandings and gender identity issues.
  

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  The Campus Center/Student Union Complex continues to act as a center for multicultural activities on campus, and offers such things as Ramadan programs, Jewish High Holiday events, and Native American, African-American, Cape Verdean, Greek, Haitian and Asian Students cultural nights and dances. Dining Services, in conjunction with the International Programs Office, hosts multicultural programming activities (Flavours of Canada, Brazilian Dinner, Philippines Relief Dinner, Cape Verdean Dinner [Black History Month], Chinese New Year, Indian, Asian, Peruvian, Italian, Vietnamese, Immigration Nation, Flavors of Southeast Asia, Mexican) through ethnic food offerings and related programs.
  
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  In December and May, UMPD collaborated with the Center for Multiculturalism Advancement and Student Success and created the Amazing Race. The Amazing Race is an event that is geared towards all students to promote having fun at the University without alcohol being involved. Student and Faculty/Staff teams race around the campus following clues and completing tasks. Some of the clues bring students to the multicultural facilities on campus where they learn (in a fun way) a little about what these facilities provide. This program has been a huge success and we continue to work with CMASS in creating more Amazing Races.
  
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  Women of the World Talk, November 2012 – This talk was provided to female international students, staff and spouses, to explain differences in laws, cultural differences, the way police interact with citizens, resources for help, and domestic violence issues.
  

The executive area of Administration and Finance remains committed to Affirmative Action goals and to fostering a respectful climate open to diversity. In the coming year, A&F will continue to stress education and training to address the issues of diversity and respect, and to provide employment opportunities for women and minorities.

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  Working with student/alumni groups and campus departments through the Alumni Association’s (AA) partnership program to host various programs and events that target diverse constituents: including the Black Alumni Network, CMASS, Stonewall Center, and Center for Women and Community.
  

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  Networking with select student/alumni groups and campus departments to identify minority and female nominees for the Distinguished Alumni Awards, Bateman Distinguished Alumni Scholar program, and the AA Board of Directors.
  
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  Networking with select student/alumni groups and campus departments that support minority constituents groups to promote scholarship fundraising initiatives and to ensure students are aware of the many scholarships and partnership opportunities offered by the Alumni Association.
  
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  Working with the International Students Office and international alumni networks to coordinate alumni events in Europe and Asia when faculty members travel to those areas.
  
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  Working with Admissions to establish a worldwide network of volunteer contacts, including alumni representatives at college fairs around the world.
  
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  Ongoing incorporation of student and alumni diversity into all print and digital communications and photo galleries.
  
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  Establishing a new AA board committee charged with developing recommendations to incorporate a culture of diversity and inclusion into all alumni outreach, engagement, volunteer leadership development, programming and communication initiatives.
  

The Alumni Relations Office also continues to focus on identifying and cultivating women and alumni of color to participate in leadership and volunteer roles within the Alumni Association through the following initiatives:

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  Ongoing and active recruitment of women and alumni of color to serve on the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors. Fifteen of the thirty-three elected or appointed Alumni Association board members are women and eight are persons of color.
  
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  Ongoing and active recruitment of women and alumni of color to participate in student and alumni programs, to feature in alumni profiles for various communication vehicles, to lead regional Alumni Networks, and to serve on the Alumni Association’s strategic initiative committees.
  
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  Continued partnership with the Women of UMass Amherst group to engage participants as student mentors.
  

In addition, the Alumni Relations Office continues to make aggressive efforts to attract and recruit minority staff through the following initiatives:

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  Ensuring all search advertisements are placed in numerous print and electronic sources, including Northeast Minority News, Hispanic Outlook, National Center for Black Philanthropy and Women in Philanthropy.
  

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  Networking with select student/alumni groups and campus departments to assist with identifying diverse applicants. Of the twenty-five professional and student employees in Alumni Relations, sixteen are women and two are persons of color.
  

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  The Development Office continues to make aggressive efforts to attract and recruit minority professionals by ensuring all search advertisements are placed in numerous print and electronic sources (including Hispanic Outlooks, DiversityInc.com, Women in Philanthropy, Women in Development/Greater Boston, MassachusettsDiversity.com, and Women in Higher Education).
  
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  The Development Office strives to promote diversity within our student employee hires – 95 student callers, five student supervisors, and six student clerical workers in the Annual Fund program this past year were women or of ethnic diversity, representing 71% of the Annual Fund student staff.
  
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  The Development Office continued the Women for UMass Amherst initiative in FY14 in an effort to engage more women in philanthropy and service to the university. Over 100 women – including alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff and friends – were engaged with this network to educate, encourage and inspire women to become avid supporters and philanthropic leaders of UMass Amherst.
  

Information Technology embraces and encourages diversity in its broadest sense, encompassing traditional and non-traditional definitions such as ethnicity, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, nationality, as well as viewpoints, education, background, culture, abilities, and personality styles. We believe that recognizing such a broad definition enhances our capacity to service our diverse clients, fosters greater creativity, and expands our insights into the best way to promote and support the campus goals and mission. Both our ongoing programs and activities and new initiatives support this vision. IT is a relatively new profession, and unlike many areas, IT team members come from many different backgrounds and fields. In addition, our work often involves connecting people across areas of responsibility and borders. We believe our unique environment and the collaborative way we work can allow us to be a role model for what is possible in inclusion and diversity appreciation for the campus.

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  We are conducting a new values initiative, starting with team workshops to define and inform who we are, our aspirations, and how we intend to work as a department. So far, our values conversations have highlighted the importance of inclusion, service, compassion, respect, and communication, as examples. These conversations are a way to celebrate and appreciate our differences while defining and pursuing a shared campus mission.
  
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  We are arranging to host two interns from Tech Foundry. This program seeks to train high school students from underserved areas with technology skills needed by local businesses. Tech Foundry is especially interested in working with promising students who may not have been considering college as an option. This program assists the students, grows our mentoring capabilities, promotes service to the community and allows us to market the goodness of our campus to a group that may not have other opportunities to embrace it.
  
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  We have joined the Anita Borg Institute, which promotes women in STEM disciplines. This will give us new opportunities to post open positions as well as to pursue grant opportunities in support of the campus.
  
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  We started an IT staff creativity project for Lederle Lowrise with IT staff volunteering their art work, completed on their own time, to encourage broader hallway conversations and collaboration among the people in the building and to demonstrate the appreciation for team members and the many different talents they bring to the workplace. We have already received very strong praise for this effort from faculty, staff and students. The additions to what were previously blank walls, added new life and energy to the workplace.
  
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  We started an IT staff involvement project for graduation. Staff started to volunteer new ways they could engage as ambassadors to the University (with IT and beyond) for this important event. This supports the mission and also leverages broad talents that have not been utilized in the past. This year staff designed and posted new student success posters, which were very well received.
  

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  The Assistive Technologies Specialist continues to lead departmental and campus wide efforts in providing direct services to disabled students and faculty, consulting with other departments, and co-chairing the Technology Access Committee (TAC), which addresses University compliance with antidiscrimination laws associated with technology access on an ongoing basis to ensure full access for students, staff, and faculty with disabilities.  This role also promotes campus awareness about changing rules and regulations as well as new opportunities to better leverage assistive technologies. The AT Specialist was the recipient of the Chancellor’ Award, further highlighting the importance of this essential work.
  
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  The Assistive Technology Center continues to provide specialized hardware, software, and workstations, including scanners, optical character recognition software, document and screen reading software, voice recognition software, text enlargers, and other assistive technologies.
  
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  IT Computer Classrooms provide wheel-chair accessible workstations, and workstations have software installed for students with visual impairments. We are also working with our vendors to market and promote their new assistive technology functionalities to the campus community in the products and services we have purchased.
  
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  Instructional support and design consulting provided through the Instructional Media Lab and consulting throughout IT emphasizes Universal Access and Universal Design (the ability of all people to have equal opportunity and access to a service or product regardless of their social class, ethnicity, background or physical disabilities). Universal Access benefits and engages students of different learning styles and abilities.
  
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  New staff, as well as students working in Help Services, attend Diversity and Sexual Harassment Training. If we find employees engaging in behaviors that are not consistent with the training and goals, we direct them to further training and counselling, and proceed to progressive discipline if needed.
  
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  Telecommunications provides nine TTY machines, which allow the hearing or speech-impaired to communicate using text-like message via telephone lines. They are also known as TDD or TT devices.
  

We continually strive to recruit more women and minority staff members, to increase the diversity of search committees, to advertise in publications that are geared to underrepresented groups, and to increase the diversity of the search pools. During the period September 2012 to August 2013 we were successful in hiring ten women and two minority staff members into research administration positions. There are a number of searches in progress that will be completed in the next year. R&E is committed to affirmative action goals and encourages the hiring of protected group members.

R&E supported several Faculty Research Grant/Healey Endowment Grant projects focused on diversity. Topics include:

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  The Big Five Suite: A Jazz Work Inspired by the Traditional Music of Uganda - Incorporating the African Tradition of Uganda Within Contemporary Jazz Improvisation and Composition.
  
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  Taming the Tiger Mother: Asian American Women and the Racial Politics of Mothering.
  
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  Item Variability in Vocabulary Intervention: Do Children with Language Impairments Learn Words from Multiple or Single Referents?
  

Funds from the Public Service Endowment Grant program were allocated to projects that focused on collaborative interactions with community partners in the greater Springfield area. Topics include:

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  Engaging Springfield Youth in Designing a Violence Prevention Program in collaboration with Men of Color Health Awareness (MOCHA) and Springfield youth.
  
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  Intensive Summer School for Beginning English Language Learners Grades K-12 and their teachers in Holyoke Public Schools.
  
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  Pilot for PAVE (Program to Acquire Vietnamese and English) in collaboration with the Springfield Vietnamese-American Civic Association, Inc.
  

R&E contributed funding to University departments in support of diversity initiatives, including staffing support for the Native American Repatriation Compliance effort, support for the ICE IGERT student training grant program which is strongly committed to broadening participation from groups traditionally underrepresented in science and engineering, and conference support for the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project.

A staff position in the Office of Research Development initiates and manages activities and programs in support of faculty-led research proposals and initiatives with an emphasis on maximizing the contributions to campus research of diverse groups, especially women and minorities. This position was created to better integrate the University’s existing diversity and outreach programs into the research programs proposed by faculty researchers. Greater integration and coordination have allowed progress on all of the NSF Broader Impacts criteria, most especially broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields. The Broader Impacts specialist was engaged in the following activities to increase recruitment, retention, and promotion of underrepresented groups and women in science and engineering during the period September 2012 to August 2013.

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  Organized twelve events for a peer-mentoring group that served forty-seven new junior faculty in STEM, of whom twenty-two were women and ten were minorities, and fostered research collaborations across the Five-College consortium.
  
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  As co-PI of a grant-funded program with two STEM faculty, supervised the distribution of twenty-five awards to Five-College faculty and post-docs for expanded childcare funding for professional travel.
  
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  Helped organize and attended the first national Broader Impacts Infrastructure Summit that laid the groundwork for an NSF Research Collaboration Network application (that was subsequently funded) to help campuses share best practices and build out their infrastructure for broadening participation and broadening the impact of their research.
  

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement and the Broader Impacts specialist participated in a new campus web initiative called UMass.edu/worldwide, a searchable worldwide database that has expanded our capacity to document, evaluate, and communicate our activities, and thereby strengthen our ability to diversify our on- and off-campus research and engagement. A number of activities focused on diversity were active on UMass.edu/worldwide from September 2012 to August 2013. Topics include:

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  Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), a recruitment and mentoring program that uses the “rigid pipeline” from the University of Puerto Rico and several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
  
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  STEM Diversity Institute Faculty Exchange, a program that brings faculty from HBCUs to campus with their students for summer research collaboration and student recruitment.
  
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  Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), a recruiting and mentoring program for undergraduate underrepresented minority candidates in STEM disciplines.
  
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  Percept, a smartphone-based electronic navigation system for the blind.
  
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  Mothers And Girls daNcing TogETher (MAGNET), a program of African-centric dancing aimed at evaluating the degree of increase in physical activity.
  

In the coming year, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement is interested in providing funding for training in implicit bias on the campus. We will continue to support the university’s affirmative action initiatives and remain committed to fostering a respectful and diverse workplace.