University Partners: How a Community Helps Students
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs focuses on providing enriching opportunities for students, faculty, and staff and building a college culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many individuals, departments, schools, and organizations support this work, including collaborations with university partners and external groups.
Yearly Highlights:
- Launching a new Diverse Supplier Search tool by the IU Office of Procurement Services to help purchasers find diverse suppliers.
- Linking to over 1,600 State of Indiana certified minority, women, and veteran business enterprises.
- Tracking 1,230 page views by day.
- Creating “Using Inclusive Language in IT,” an inclusive language document by IU’s Research and Education Networks Information Sharing and Analysis Center for the IU community that addresses complex technical jargon and terms of inequality.
- Continuing investment in the Indiana University Racial Justice Research Fund, an effort created in 2020 to further advance faculty efforts concerning racial injustice. Jointly supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, initiative highlights include: • Investigating skin color and skin tone diversity in anatomical diagrams within contemporary human sexuality textbooks through the research work of Yael R. Rosenstock Gonzalez, Deana Williams and Debby Herbenick. Findings were published online in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.
- Analyzing large-scale quantitative data from social media, public opinion surveys, and publicly available datasets to develop a comprehensive understanding of how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has changed American society. As a result, Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences, wrote a book about the movement, including the impact of BLM protests.
- Supporting veterans pursuing higher education through a one-year fellowship held by Jose Aponte, a veteran of 24 years in the U.S. Air Force and Army, alumnus, and graduate student of IU Southeast. Aponte went through leadership training and worked on setting up the program.
- Conducting a three-year needs assessment by the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community’s Resource Center for Autism. The purpose of the survey is to identify: (A) the status of services provided to individuals with autism and their families; and (B) the need for additional or alternative services for individuals with autism and their families.
Learn more about the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs and contributors to the annual report at diversity.iu.edu.