Team 2.2 Strategic Planning
Notes
October 3, 2014 Initial meeting
Core Theme 2: Inclusivenss and Diversity
Objective 2.2: Increase faculty, staff, and student diversity by active programs of recruitment
and retention for members of underrepresented groups.
 Outcome 2.2.1: Increase the number of and seniority of faculty and staff from
underrepresented groups.
 Outcome 2.2.2: Increase diversity of students by active program recruitment and
retention of underrepresented groups.
 Outcome 2.2.3: Increase the number of students who have served in the military of the
United States by active recruitment and retention programs.
 Outcome 2.2.4: Increase the number of international students by active recruitment and
retention programs.
This group is asked to:
 Determine "aspirant groups" toward which CWU will grow in these specific areas.
 Develop strategies to meet outcomes.
 Encourage participation of the CWU community to share ideas on how to move
forward.
In layman terms, translates to: Where are we? Where do we want to be? How do we get
there?
 Where are we? Where do we want to be?
The team discussed the variety of data what might be available to support where we are. In the
end, we decided that while data is important, we all understand that increasing the diversity of
our employees and students is important. And it will happen regardless of whether we take a
proactive approach or not. We will collect current data on faculty, staff and students to provide
a baseline.
 How do we get there?
Most of the conversation after a while centered on how to use the new budget model,
Responsibility Centered Management (RCM), to make a business case for more diversity. We
need to answer the question: Why should I care? Why should I care if the student body and/or
workforce is diverse?
Some of the ideas that were presented include:
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Many faculty talk about the fact that the quality of students declined? Has it? Is there
an incentive on the part of faculty to get and keep students engaged and successful?
Provide data that explores this issue.
The communication process used to get information to faculty needs to be examined.
o Make the investment to communicate in more effective ways.
o Discover interest leaders and build champions. How can we utilize them to fill
the information pipeline?
o Improve New Faculty Orientation.
o Think about “right information, just in time” (example: TRIO. Why should faculty
care if they have a TRIO student?)
o How can we effectively triage the need to know things that improve retention?
o Why should I care?
Roz Moes distributed article: Retaining International Students
International Educator, Sept-Oct.14
Staci’s notes on this article:
This article tries to answer several questions:
“Why should HE institutions care about retaining international students?”

The number of US high school students is declining. Need for international students is
increasing.

Tuition for international students is higher.

A bad experience at a US HE institution, translates to bad experience in the US. May
have a detrimental effect on the ability of the US to attract talent from around the
world.
“What retention strategies work?”

Special workshops that strive to improve reading and writing skills, how to write a
research paper, the meaning of academic integrity.

Learning style training.

High staff-to-student ratio. “Cheaper to retain students than to recruit them.”

Career planning classes for larger population including international students and firstgeneration students: how grading is done, ho to hold oneself and the school
accountable, how to communicate with professors, what’s the goal, and how the
student will get there.

Holistic department advising: One-stop shop for academic advising, housing medical
and immigration issues, and an English language institute coordinator.

Joint efforts to uncover and address international student needs: At Kent State, 3 times
each semester about 30 people from various offices get together to share information,
head off potential problems, etc.

Education on needs of students:
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o Institutions say international students leave because of school reputation,
finances, and academics.
o Students say they leave because of financial factors including access to jobs or
internships, affordability, and availability of scholarships.
Helping students to meet financial needs and ensuring their expectations about finances
are accurate.
Beefing up internships and campus job opportunities.
Dealing with plagiarism.
Adapting successful programs for one group to international students and/or other
groups.
Make adjustments to classes and services that aren’t working well for the international
populations. (Example: Asking faculty to be more specific about course expectations for
all classes.)
For next meeting:
Come with ideas about how to incentivize caring about diversity into the CWU community.
The following people committed to providing, at our next meeting, recruitment/retention
numbers for the following groups:
Ruben Cardenas: Veteran students
Diana Fishel-Hall: General students population by race/ethnicity
Roz Moes: International student
Staci Sleigh-Layman: employees