The Diversity Committee leads the College’s pursuit of diversity through short and long term planning and action. The team consists of faculty and staff who work together to meet the challenge of increasing diversity in all areas of the college.

Members of the committee include:

Diane Barlow
John Bertot
Beverly Brown
Paul Jaeger - Co-chair
Cassandra Jones - Co-chair
Jenny Preece

The committee meets virtually and in person. In-person meetings are advertised on the College’s event calendar and are open to the entire iSchool community. The Diversity Committee is focusing its efforts in three areas - operations, programs, and outreach and recruiting. In 2009, the short-term actions include:

• creating specific enrollment goals for various underrepresented populations
• identifying ways to make diversity a larger part of the curriculum
• pursuing scholarship opportunities for under-represented groups
• developing diversity in teaching workshops
• collaborating with university diversity leaders
• reviewing college syllabi and other forms of communication to ensure language is inclusive and sensitive to diverse cultural, racial, gender, and ability perspectives
• inviting speakers of diverse backgrounds to the college for speaking engagements, focus groups and round-table discussion

The Committee has identified a number of longer-term activities that involve the entire college community. Some of the longer-term activities targeted for 2009 include:

• partner with campus and community programs that are exemplars of diversity to learn from their approaches and reasons for success
• work with other Library Information Science organizations to address the lack of diversity in the LIS field
• encourage studies of under-represented populations in research efforts