The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee has five priority areas. This section includes selected works of our efforts in these five priority areas. The full report can be found here.
A. Priority Area 1: Further Diversify our Faculty and Staff
Hiring: The Marxe School hired a faculty member to teach the new required course in Race, Inequality and Public Policies. Our faculty has low turnover, making the process of diversifying difficult. For this reason, every hire at the Marxe school is an opportunity to change our demographics. The DEIC is working with the Dean to explore best practices in hiring to make our faculty more representative of the city and the students we serve.
To develop a definitional statement on diversity, equity and inclusion for Marxe: In Fall 2017, the Learning Assessment Committee approached the DEIC with the need to define DEI for the Marxe School in order to evaluate our efforts in this area and assess student learning on DEI. The IDEA Statement (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in Academia Statement) was circulated, with feedback solicited from all Marxe School staff and faculty, and was approved and adopted by faculty at the February 11, 2021 faculty meeting.
Pay Equity Study: The DEIC has filed three official requests for a College-wide pay equity study with Baruch’s Chief Legal Officer (November 2020), President, via the Chief of Staff (March 2021), and Executive Chief Diversity Officer (November 3, 2021). Going forward, ODCEI will incorporate the specific requests for an Equity Study from the Marxe School DEI Committee into the College’s evolving DEI Strategic Plan. The Dean’s office at Marxe has also been working on consistency in offering packages to new hires and has begun reconnaissance to determine what a pay equity study might look like.
B. Priority Area 2: Reduce Barriers for Students of Color
Remove barriers to entry at Marxe for graduate students/GRE. Admissions no longer requires the GRE for applying to the Marxe School and instead focuses on alternative ways of assessing applicant strength.
Creating an inclusive environment and prioritizing DEI in Advisement: Part of removing barriers to inclusion is setting a culture among students about the priority of DEI at Marxe. To this end, Marxe Advisement has advertised for students to participate in DEI Fridays in its newsletters and other venues, offered the first student-only DEI Friday event (March 11, 2022), and incorporated discussion on the importance of DEI in Orientation events.
Transparency on internship process: Students asked for more clarity in the decision-making process for internships (which we extend to include GA assignments). We also would like transparency about the demographics of who gets GA assignments and internships. The DEIC has checked with our internship director and it is our understanding that there is no formal record of the demographics of the students who receive internships. We will work with the internship director and the GA coordinator to design a way to get demographic data and to clarify the process of qualification
C. Priority Area 3: Inclusive Curricula and Programming
Research and Analysis core courses in the MPA/MIA curriculum: Faculty have focused on revising the research and analysis sequence of the core courses, based in part from learning assessment results, to better align the core methods courses with students’ strengths and wide-ranging professional interests. With support from Marxe faculty of various disciplines, a differentiated research methods core was developed to better address the quantitative needs and interests of Marxe students.
Revise BSPA curriculum to address social and racial equity: BSPA Director a led faculty efforts to revise core course 3010. At the December 10, 2020 Faculty Meeting, the Marxe faculty voted to approve changes to the course, which will now be named “Race, Inequality, and Public Policy” and has revised learning objectives to refocus the course on these issues. Further, two new BSPA Courses, “Immigrant Cities” (3018) and “Advocacy and Protest in Social Movements”, both focus on issues of social justice.
Identifying a learning gap: In 2021, the MPA director initiated research on whether a student outcomes gap (measured by GPA, graduation rate, etc.) exists between students based on racial/ethnic identity. The Learning Assessment Committee, in conjunction with the DEIC, has begun the process of measuring potential learning gaps in order to identify strategies to reduce learning disparities.
D. Priority Area 4: Community Engagement for Justice
Leadership Fellows New York: In 2015, the Marxe School, in partnership with the New York Community Trust, established the NY Community Trust Fellowship, a leadership program that equips and empowers mid-career nonprofit practitioners in the metropolitan New York City region, with a particular focus on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) nonprofit leaders, through applied learning, direct mentorship, and a lifelong community of practice. The fellowship program represents a diverse, inclusive, and talented community of nonprofit leaders who are advancing social justice missions in New York and beyond. As of Spring 2022, we have launched 14 cohorts, and our community consists of 379 alumni, 250 nonprofits, 60 mentors, and 17 Baruch faculty members (several of whom are from the Marxe School) who help us cultivate the future leaders of the New York nonprofit sector. In Fall 2022, the program changed its name from the NY Community Trust Fellowship to Leadership Fellows New York to signal the program’s broader impact on the NY nonprofit community.
Land and Labor Acknowledgement: On the request of faculty, we have created a land acknowledgement that is available to all on our website for use in their syllabi and events. We are currently researching the labor history of CUNY – with particular focus on the history of enslaved labor – to create a labor acknowledgment.
E. Priority Area 5: Using a DEI Lens
Schwartz Communication Institute Inclusive Pedagogy Workshop: In 2016 the Marxe Diversity Committee asked the Schwartz Institute to create and implement an inclusive pedagogy workshop for our faculty. They created a 2-day workshop with follow-up meetings once per month for the rest of the semester. By summer 2021, it had been offered four times to our faculty (17 trained participants) Since then, we have worked with Schwartz to create a process for this to be offered regularly to faculty at Baruch. To demonstrate the importance of these workshops, faculty are paid for their participation. These workshops are co-facilitated in order to offer diverse perspectives on the issues, from different axes of inclusion and different disciplinary lenses.