Members of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Diversity are in the process of developing surveys that will shed light on the current state of diversity at UNC — an endeavor that has been in the works since August.
The task force’s three subcommittees have various surveys that they also are planning to distribute and are conducting focus groups and interviews to tackle the problem holistically.
Data collection will begin Monday in the form of student interviews.
Lynn Williford, director of the Office of Institutional Research, and Larry Mayes, director of assessment at the office, are putting the subcommittees’ research questions into survey form.
Williford said she and Mayes are working to make sure the survey includes everything the subcommittees wish to address.
The faculty subcommittee spent time during its Thursday meeting parsing down the semantics of the survey to be distributed to the UNC faculty.
Members deliberately selected phrases such as “unfairly treated” instead of “discriminated against,” and “concept” instead of “definition” in order to avoid potential problems with negative connotations.
“We’ve eschewed trying to form a definition of diversity,” said Charles Daye, a professor in the School of Law.
“It’s more of a concept, a framework.”
