Objectives

This web module along with a commitment to diversity is designed to enable Extension professionals to:

• Use the most inclusive, most effective hiring practices possible at all levels, while complying with OSU policy & procedure.
• Act in a way that is mindful of climate, culture, and diversity, and affirms the unique qualities of each individual throughout the hiring process and subsequent employment relationship.
• Recruit, hire and retain more members of historically underrepresented groups

Diversity in Your Workplace

What might a more diverse faculty make possible for your Extension office or unit?

Teaching

New/different focus in teaching strategies

Students exposed to diverse communication styles

Non-dominant students have teachers who look like them

Advising & volunteer mentoring

Diverse role models and experience for both dominant and non-dominant culture volunteers and clientele

Mentors and advisors who have personal understanding of and empathy for the experiences of volunteers of color and women

Scholarship

Non-traditional scholarship; new/emerging research areas

Possibility of different thinking in choices of problems to study, experimental designs and data interpretation

Broaden the discipline’s scholarly paradigms

Collegial Relationships

Different cultural views and coping strategies can strengthen departmental problem-solving and planning processes

Intellectual and cultural richness resulting from different world views and multiple perspectives

Add different cultural values and assumptions into our thinking

Services

Enhanced service to cultural communities, strengthening multicultural ties to the college/department

Lighten the service load for individual women faculty and faculty of color by spreading it out

By Anne Gillies, Affirmative Action Associate, Angelo Gomez, Director, Prudence Miles, Equal Opportunity Associate, OSU Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, January, 2002.