What Can Be Done to Diversify Executive Suites?

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Diversity in Academe
From the issue dated September 28, 2007

Although the American population is growing more diverse, and colleges are seeking to enroll students and hire faculty members from many different backgrounds, the top leadership at most higher-education institutions remains quite homogeneous. For example, a 2005 Chronicle survey of about 1,300 presidents at four-year institutions, of whom 764 responded, found that nearly 89 percent were white and almost 81 percent were male.
At The Chronicle's second annual Presidents Forum, held in Washington in June, Mickey L. Burnim, president of Bowie State University; Patricia Digh, co-founder of the Global Diversity Roundtable and the Circle Project; and Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Pitzer College, discussed the issue and what can be done to diversify colleges' executive suites. Following is an excerpt of their answers to questions from the session's moderator, Sara Hebel, a senior reporter at The Chronicle, and from members of the audience.
Hebel: How much attention should institutions be paying to the issue of diversity among their top administrators? What can colleges do to hire and promote a wider range of top officials?
Trombley: Diversity has to be a goal of the board of trustees and viewed as a core value of the institution; otherwise, it will always remain on the margins. No one group should serve as an institution's symbol of diversity. It cannot be students; it cannot be staff; it cannot be faculty. Efforts to increase diversity have to involve everyone.
Trustees must support diversity initiatives, do outreach, and emphasize when they are conducting presidential searches that not only are they interested in a diverse pool of candidates, but also that the institution is ready for that diverse pool of candidates. I have been a candidate where it was clear that I was the "diversity candidate," and everyone was thrilled that their institution was so forward-thinking. But, in my view, if I was such a big surprise, that indicated that more foundational work needed to take place at that institution. Colleges can accomplish that by asking diversity experts to come in and help educate various groups on their campuses.
It is also important to have good institutional data. At Pitzer College, we know, for example, that 45 percent of the faculty members are women and 36 percent are people of color, and that 32 percent of the students are students of color. We have an institutional-research Web site that provides all that information, and that forms the basis for our discussions.
Hebel: What steps do leaders need to take to make sure that diversity is something that their campuses focus on?
Burnim: I agree that trustee leadership is critically important on campuses, that board members set a tone. To create the right climate or culture, a president must first articulate the value and the importance of having a diverse campus — of having diversity not just within the student body and the faculty ranks, but within the administration as well. Second, the president must walk the walk and make sure that the cabinet and senior leadership are diverse. What one does speaks a lot louder than what one says.
For example, at Bowie State University, we have spent a lot of time refining the strategic plan. Before we finalize that process, I want to make sure that we explicitly address the notion of diversity and what that means for our campus, and that we have some measurable objectives against which to gauge our progress. We need to put the right accountability measures and standards in place. We must also provide adequate resources, and recognize and reward behaviors that help us reach the outcomes that we want.
Hebel: Ms. Digh, you have described the lack of diversity in university leadership as a "wicked problem" for which simplistic or short-term solutions will not work.
Digh: The phrase "wicked problems and tame solutions" has come out of looking at diversity issues for about two decades and recognizing lately that I have made the mistake of proposing easy solutions to very complex problems. Racism in this country is a wicked problem. It is attached to a lot of other societal problems, so it is very difficult to say, "If I do A and B, then racism will disappear."
Americans like short-term, quick, linear solutions to issues like diversity or racism, which are long-term, complex issues that don't necessarily have solutions. Every wicked problem is unique. The lessons learned dealing with a wicked problem at one institution are not necessarily ones that can be easily transferred to others. What's more, wicked problems are often solved as well as they can be through group efforts. So you must constantly ask yourselves when you are in a strategic-planning process, for example, who else should be at this table? Are all the people in the room thinking just like me? Do we need different voices?
The easy way of trying to tame a wicked problem is to simply construct a definition of the problem that obscures its wicked nature and then apply linear methods to solve it. For example, a human-resources person called me to say, "We had some white employees put nooses on black employees' lockers. Could you come help us with this issue? We are wondering if you could conduct a two-hour workshop."
But such tame solutions, when they are imposed on wicked problems, exacerbate the situation by hiding the fact that it was wicked to begin with. If you have an issue on your campus and do a two-hour workshop on it, you might keep the trustees happy but actually make the situation worse.
Instead, we should make ourselves step back from our innate impulse to tidiness and ask, "Have I engaged fully in what the problem is? Do I understand the complexity of it?" And, like a Rubik's Cube, "if I change one thing or solve one part of it, will the other parts change?"
Hebel: How can colleges effectively set benchmarks and move forward in a concrete way?
Trombley: When we went through our strategic-planning process, we talked about what we wanted to see happen at the institution in five years and the areas where we had the greatest concern. Because Pitzer is a small college, we were able to come together and have an enormous amount of discussion — among large and small groups, in residence halls and elsewhere — and come up with common goals that we adopted as part of a strategic plan. I cannot overemphasize the importance of having a dialogue on a continuing basis; it cannot occur only during times of crisis. A lot of the best work happens when you are building relationships and channels of communication so that, if an issue does arise, you can work through it constructively.
Hebel: How do you foster discussions when people hold different views about diversifying the top ranks of the institution?
Burnim: It is not hard to engage in a discussion on campuses. We are intellectual communities, so whether it is a forum, a convocation at the beginning of an academic term, or commencement, I take the opportunity to teach a lesson or raise a question or issue. That continuing dialogue can take place throughout the campus and the academic year.

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