Institutional Climate Committee Charge and Successes

Charge

To assess current efforts or recommend new initiatives designed to improve the climate of the Medical Center. This includes reviewing institutional policies or practices impacting the climate and culture of the organization, enhancing plans to advance diversity and inclusion, and responding to queries and suggestions from the Vice Chancellor’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion.

Efforts of this committee resulted in the adoption of a strategic framework for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. This framework included 70 action items and metrics under three broad goals - Inclusive Excellence, Cultural Competency and Education, and Organizational Culture. Since 2016, successes have included: 

Inclusive Excellence

Institutional Equity

• Promoting integrating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and related goals across all three mission areas
• Improving incentives to motivate and enable departments, faculty, staff, and students to develop programming
• Conducting research integral to sustaining a diverse and inclusive culture
• Introducing UMMC’s commitment to DEI at new employee and new student orientation
• Promoting non-discrimination policies widely

Workforce Development

• Increasing knowledge of DEI and culturally effective health care among all employees and learners
• Increasing DEI education, training, and professional development using online platforms

Students and Faculty

• Increasing awareness on holistic admission processes
• Promoting strategies to increase recruitment and retention of diverse and underrepresented faculty

Sustainability

• Improving understanding of terminology aligned with DEI goals for consistent messaging
• Promoting internal and external DEI-related educational events and activities
• Maintaining support for employee and student affinity groups
• Increasing funding to support DEI goals

Cultural Competency and Education

• Enhancing curricula for improved understanding and knowledge on issues involving race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, sensitivity and other culturally-relevant topics impacting health and healthcare across all Schools (e.g., basic science, pre-clinical, clinical, graduate medical education)
• Increasing training and continuing education on unconscious bias
• Increasing education and training to develop culturally competent research study coordinators and principal investigators

Organizational Culture

• Promoting the office as an internal resource and service area
• Increasing compositional diversity and institutional climate reporting using interactive dashboards
• Optimizing support for UMMC’s health professional schools and academic programs, hospitals, and departments undergoing accreditation
• Completing annual assessments and reports for national and state organizations