Toledo to require diversity training, 'supplement' minority faculty salaries

The University of Toledo (UT) will soon be requiring diversity training for all students and staff, as well as increasing salaries for minority professors.

UT recently released the 2016 Strategic Plan for Diversity and Inclusion, which includes mandatory training and salary bumps among 44 strategies aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion on campus.

At least three of the strategies are dedicated to the required diversity training and education for all students and staff, which will begin with the 2017 school year. Mandatory freshman orientation courses will include segments titled “Discovering Diversity and Inclusion at UT,” and all staff will have to attend a course of the same name.

Additionally, each discipline of study (including STEM) will have to include a course, or at least a segment within a course, that “highlights the rich diversity of that discipline.”

Another listed strategy is to “establish [a] graduate student recruitment strategy that includes a focus on women, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups.” As of 2013, approximately 56 percent of graduate students at UT were women, which tracks closely with the 57 percent share of total postsecondary enrollment occupied by females that year.

The diversity plan also expresses intentions to “supplement salaries to attract and retain faculty who are minorities, women, people with disabilities, and protected veterans,” and to establish a grant that provides extra funding to groups that advance diversity.

While UT president Sharon Gable expressed plans to address diversity in November, campus tensions were elevated when a fraternity was accused of racism just two months later. In January, six fraternity members allegedly assaulted a black student and called him racial slurs. Toledo police did not find enough evidence of the assault to file charges, but the fraternity was still put on probation by the university.

In the following months, UT sent out a campus-wide diversity survey and held multiple open-forum sessions to gain community feedback on issues of inclusiveness. Administrators ultimately used the information collected from the survey and forums to develop the Strategic Plan for Diversity and Inclusion.

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