Stanford University
PA-6: Support for Underrepresented Groups

Stanford’s non-discrimination policy prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Stanford’s non-discrimination policy can be found at the following link: http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/nonacademicregulations/#text

FROM THE STANFORD ACTS OF INTOLERANCE PROTOCOL (https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/policies/acts-intolerance-protocol):

The University is committed to providing a safe living and learning environment in which every person is valued and respected, inclusion is assured and free expression and debate are encouraged.

The University accepts the task of educating the next generation of leaders to understand and appreciate the ideas and opinions generated by an increasingly global community. The Acts of Intolerance Protocol establishes a mechanism for addressing situations involving a real or perceived act of intolerance. In such an instance we wish to proceed thoughtfully, providing support to all of those affected, while also affirming that we value differences, free expression and debate as sources of strength for our community.

All reported acts of intolerance are to be responded to in an efficient and professional manner, taking into account the impact on the target and the Stanford community. Incident response will incorporate, to the extent appropriate, input from the target on his/her needs and thoughts on how to best address the matter.

A. Addressing the Needs of the Target(s)
The Associate Dean of Students will take the primary responsibility for addressing the needs of the target. She/he will make referrals to helpful University resources.

B. Addressing the Needs of the Perpetrator or Alleged Perpetrator
The Associate Vice Provost’s AOI team will address the needs of the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator. She/he will make referrals to appropriate University resources.

C. Addressing the Needs of the Stanford Community
The Associate Vice Provost’s AOI team will work closely with the residential staff and relevant staff throughout the university to assess the needs of the community affected most directly by the act of intolerance. If appropriate, she/he will work closely with the community center directors to respond to community concerns. Determination of what educational response is appropriate (e.g., engaging students in peer dialogue and reflection on issues regarding inclusiveness and civility) will be addressed.

D. Notification of University Administration
University staff who have been made aware of an act of intolerance are to notify the Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Students for incidents that occur in any undergraduate residence, graduate residence or involve undergraduate or graduate students outside of their residences.

The Associate Vice Provost will then notify the Vice Provost for Student Affairs. The Associate Vice Provost will work with the Associate Dean of Students and other Student Affairs staff to assess the situation and make sure the Acts of Intolerance Protocol has been followed and the appropriate steps are being taken to address the incident.

The Associate Vice Provost has ultimate responsibility to insure that the Acts of Intolerance Protocol is being followed and will keep the Vice Provost for Student Affairs informed. The Associate Vice Provost will also follow up with any outside agencies if an investigation is launched.

STUDENTS:
Stanford’s Office of Undergraduate Admission uses a multifaceted outreach strategy aimed at encouraging qualified students from low-income backgrounds to apply, which include the following:
1) Early College Outreach: Admissions staff developed a brochure outlining the path to college for middle school students to motivate middle school students to attend college.
2) Counselor Fly-In Program: In 2014, an annual summer program was initiated for secondary school counselors and community-based organization staff to learn about opportunities at Stanford and other highly selective universities and engage in conversations about outreach to qualified students. Stanford seeks out counselors from under-resourced areas across the nation and pays for all travel and program expenses for the participants, currently 25 to 35 per year.
3) Counselor Programs: Admissions staff regularly present and connect with school counselors and leaders who work with low-income youth; most recently at the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) Annual Conference and in Rio Grande Valley, TX, and Riverside County, CA.
4) Community-Based Organization (CBO) outreach: Stanford maintains a database of CBOs across the country. Admissions staff send biannual mailings and travel to CBOs to meet with community leaders and students. During their visits, they conduct information sessions and college application and essay writing workshops. CBO examples include the Crimson Summer Academy at Harvard, the Steppingstone Foundation, and Bottom Line.
5) Summer outreach: Admissions staff conduct outreach to students participating in summer enrichment programs. Examples of program visits include:
o Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship Program
o Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project summer program in Sacramento
o College Horizons at Bowdoin and Stanford
o Illinois Institute of Technology Boeing Scholars and University of Chicago College Scholars
o Jack Kent Cooke Scholars’ Fair
o Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA) summer institute at Princeton University
o Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES), Research Science Institute (RSI), Women in Technology (WIT), and Mathematics and Science for Minority Students (MS)2
o National Urban League
o QuestBridge Conferences – Stanford, Yale, Emory
o Sutton Trust
6) Travel Grant Program: Stanford provides travel grants for admitted low-income students to attend Admit Weekend, a three-day program that provides an introduction to academic options, residential life, and campus resources. Admit Weekend also features a panel for first-generation and low-income students with campus partners and the Financial Aid Office.

Stanford also runs a significant number of recruitment programs for graduate students from underrepresented groups, as described below.

1) Summer Research Programs: Hosted by Schools of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Humanities & Sciences, and Medicine (Biosciences) for promising diverse undergraduates from other institutions; students spend 8 to 9 weeks performing research with Stanford faculty and graduate students; and participate in GRE and graduate school preparation courses. Special partnerships include The Leadership Alliance (multiple fields) and City College of New York program in the Humanities.

2) The Leadership Alliance: The Leadership Alliance is a consortium of 36 leading teaching and research colleges, universities, and private industry. The mission of the Leadership Alliance is to develop underrepresented students into outstanding leaders and role models in academia, business and the public sector. Stanford is an institutional member and brings diverse undergraduate students from other institutions to participate in summer research programs through the Leadership Alliance Summer Research – Early Identification Program (SR-EIP).

3) City College of New York Partnership: CCNY undergraduates from underrepresented and first-generation college backgrounds are given the opportunity to conduct graduate level humanities research. Undergraduates live in residence at Stanford for eight weeks, are advised by faculty and graduate student mentors, and then present their work at a concluding symposium. The teaching exchange sends up to six Stanford humanities graduate students to teach at the City College of New York in the fall.

4) Stanford Diversity Outreach for Doctoral Education (STANDOUT) Center of Influence Recruitment Retreat: two-day program that brings together program directors, faculty, and administrators who work with diverse undergraduates in preparation for doctoral studies from institutions across the nation; the goal is to better equip them to help their students prepare more competitive graduate school applications.

5) Graduate Recruitment and Diversity Day: Event for diverse admits and top prospects for graduate programs in the Schools of Business, Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Humanities and Sciences, Education, and Engineering. Prospective students have the opportunity to see that Stanford offers a combination of commitment, resources, and community to allow diverse students to thrive.

6) Fee waivers: Stanford offers a myriad institution- and school-based fee waivers to assist students from diverse backgrounds with the expense of applying to graduate school.

7) Recruiting events: Stanford University diversity officers actively attend and engage with national organizations and conferences that support diverse undergraduates interested in pursuing research and graduate study.

8) Prestigious Doctoral Fellowships: many of Stanford’s seven schools have a variety of diversity-focused funding to support graduate education. Recruitment fellowships supported by the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education include the following:
--The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Doctoral Fellowship Program supports the recruitment and academic success of outstanding doctoral students who have the potential to enhance the diversity of their academic disciplines and fields.
--The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) offers a three-year Graduate Fellowship for outstanding doctoral students newly admitted to a department at Stanford who are interested in the study of the meanings, processes, and consequences of race, ethnicity, and inequality.

9) Support Applicants’ Travel to Stanford: Faculty members and departments may request up to $500 from the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education to defray the cost of bringing prospective graduate students for campus visits. Requests may include students of an ethnicity that is underrepresented in an academic field; women who are underrepresented in a field; or people who would be the first members of their family to attend graduate school.

STAFF:
The university conducts an annual analysis of the workforce and identifies job groups that are under-represented with respect to women and minorities. A plan is then developed to address the under-represented groups, which includes increased recruiting and recruiting support, improved onboarding of new staff, and participation in veteran and disability-related community activities. Stanford's Diversity & Access Office is responsible for providing resources and assistance to all departments in recruitment of a diverse staff. To that end, the Diversity & Access Office compiles a Diversity Recruitment Resources toolkit with links and information from various external organizations and associations, arranged by job category, that can assist departments in expanding their targeted searches for qualified and diverse candidates. The tookit is availble here: https://diversityandaccess.stanford.edu/diversity/diversity-recruitment-resources

FACULTY:
Stanford has two separate initiatives on campus that offer financial and intellectual resources to departments to recruit faculty from underrepresented groups: the Faculty Development Initiative and the Faculty Incentive Fund/Faculty Incentive Fund+.

To contribute to Stanford’s ongoing commitment to promoting the comparative study of race and ethnicity and to promoting faculty diversity, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), in collaboration with the Provost, launched the Faculty Development Initiative (FDI). Announced by the Provost in spring 2007, the FDI’s primary goal is to facilitate the appointment of at least ten outstanding new faculty across the university that will help expand the research and teaching mission of the CCSRE as it enters its second decade. Over the next five years the CCSRE’s Faculty Development Initiative will create a collaborative environment where schools and departments will participate in a multifaceted recruitment and appointment project to hire junior and senior faculty in subject areas focusing on issues of race and ethnicity.

The Faculty Incentive Fund helps make it possible for departments and schools to make incremental appointments of qualified individuals who would bring diversity to the faculty; this can include minority scholars and (in disciplines in which they are underrepresented) women scholars, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university’s research and teaching programs. In some cases these individuals are not in the precise field in which the department is searching but are in fields that are appropriate for Stanford.

The need for the fund stems from two aspects of Stanford’s faculty appointments situation. First, the rates of faculty growth and turnover are very low; as a result, the university has very few openings, which must by necessity be defined relatively narrowly in order to fulfill the particular academic needs of the departments and schools with these openings. Second, the distribution of minority and women scholars does not map evenly onto the academic disciplines. This means that, particularly with respect to minority scholars, there may be little overlap in any given year between the set of disciplines in which there are hiring opportunities and those in which there are qualified candidates who would increase faculty diversity. The Faculty Incentive Fund resources provided by the Provost, together with support supplied by the school, become a tool that facilitates optimum use of the availabilities of scholars who would bring diversity.

More information on both of these programs is available here: https://facultydevelopment.stanford.edu/recruitment/recruitment-programs

STUDENTS
The Diversity and First-Gen Office (DGEN) at Stanford is the hub of support for first-generation and low-income students and the nucleus for inclusion and diversity programs. The office is playing a key role in Stanford's yearlong OpenXChange initiative. The DGEN office runs the Opportunity Fund, which is designed to financially assist undergraduate students who are experiencing a temporary financial challenge from a hardship or who are seeking funds for an opportunity related to their academic, professional, and/or social development. Requests for financial assistance are considered on the basis of what is recognized as a hardship or an opportunity that may not be funded through other means. For instance, a Stanford News article featured the inspiring use of the Opportunity Fund by Stanford student Alejandro Ruizesparza to purchase a suit for an interview to become a Marshall Scholar. Ruizesparza won the scholarship and will begin a sociology master’s program in Fall 2016 at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. The article can be found here: https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/12/stanford-inclusion-lifelong-learning-process/.

The DGEN office also operates the First-Gen Community Mentor Program, with a focus on connecting first-generation undergraduate students with graduate student mentors to build a sense of community and develop opportunities for first-generation and low-income students by creating connections across campus. The program has formal and informal events to elevate campus-wide conversations about class and privilege. https://diversityandfirstgen.stanford.edu/resources

Finally, the DGEN office has designed a series of trainings and workshops with the purpose of supporting underrepresented groups on campus. For instance, through a collaboration with Stanford Queer and/or Trans students of color, DGEN designed a 90 minute workshop session to engage participants with topics impacting transgender students on campus today. The workshop addresses: pronouns, gender identity, sex assigned at birth, gender expression and best practices to further support transgender students on campus.

Another support mechanism for underrepresented students are student affinity groups and community centers. The community centers available to students include:
Asian American Activities Center
https://a3c.stanford.edu/
Bechtel International Center
https://bechtel.stanford.edu/
Black Community Services Center
https://bcsc.stanford.edu/
Office of Accessible Education
https://oae.stanford.edu/
El Centro Chicano
http://elcentro.stanford.edu/
Native American (American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Program) Cultural Center
https://nacc.stanford.edu/
Women’s Center
https://wcc.stanford.edu/
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) Community Resource Center
https://lgbt.stanford.edu/

In addition to these community centers, a list of the hundreds of student-organized affinity groups and clubs can be found online.
http://admission.stanford.edu/student/organizations/

STAFF
Stanford also has staff affinity groups that act as a resource for underrepresented employees. The eight staff affinity groups on campus are overseen by the Diversity and Access Office and include the Asian Staff Forum, Black Staff Alliance, Filipino American Community at Stanford, Disability Staff Forum, La Raza Staff Association, Stanford Staffers, Queer University Employees at Stanford and American Indian Staff Forum. These groups help employees meet new people and provide opportunities for professional, social and personal support. For a complete listing of staff affinity groups, please visit:
https://diversityandaccess.stanford.edu/diversity/staff-groups

FACULTY
The Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity hosts regular events that focus on both diversity and inclusion. The diversity events are meant to encourage campus-wide learning and discussion opportunities that tackle dimensions and implications of diversity in Stanford's academic life. A recent example of an event is "The Courage to Escape," presented by geoscientist Dawn J. Wright, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), and Adjunct Professor of Geography and Oceanography, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University. The office also holds a regular series called Diversity&Inclusion@Stanford, which brings one to two high-profile events to campus each year. A recent event held through this series was titled "Implicit Bias and Microaggressions: the Macro Impact of Small Acts," presented by Derald Wing Sue, Teachers College, Columbia University. There are also many other internal efforts to provide additional support for underrepresented groups, as discussed below.

At the request of Provost Etchemendy, the Task Force on Women and Leadership recently developed recommendations to help improve the leadership climate on campus and move Stanford towards fully inclusive leadership. The report can be read at the Office of Provost's website: https://provost.stanford.edu/.

Additionally, the Faculty Women's Forum (FWF) provides training and organizes events to promote the success of women faculty at Stanford, with opportunities for women faculty across the University to discuss shared interests and concerns.

With support from the Stanford Provost, The Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity organized a national professional development and networking conference in March 2017 that brought to campus 50 accomplished and ambitious academic women who are advanced graduate students, postdocs and early career faculty. The conference was a tremendous success with the selection of participants across disciplines from a pool of nearly a 1000 applicants. The conference aims were to promote practices for the success of academic women of color, provide research-based findings and practical skills to advance individual capacity to appreciate challenges and opportunities that face academic women of color, cultivate self-awareness and skill-building within a supportive and safe spaces for dialogue and discussion, expand networks, and learn from colleagues – peers, near-peers, advisors from Stanford and other institutions, and support opportunities to develop and implement action plans for academic career success.

The Gabilan Fund for the Recruitment and Retention of Women in Science and Engineering, and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Ventures provide resources to promote the success of women faculty in science and engineering fields.

The Presidential Awards for Excellence Through Diversity provide annual recognition by the Stanford Diversity Cabinet and the Stanford President for individuals and programs that have made a significant contribution to diversity on campus.

Stanford has a number of strong, well-established, programs to prepare students from underrepresented groups for academic careers. The programs are run out of our offices of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and of Graduate Education. Examples of these programs are:

• El Centro Chicano y Latino Graduate Scholars in Residence Program fosters academic success and inspires interest from undergraduates in faculty careers.
• Stanford Undergraduate STEM Fellows Program (SU-STEM) supports students who will promote the diversity (broadly defined) of the future professoriate. The program addresses the educational consequences of gender, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in higher education, and aims to increase the number of PhDs earned by underrepresented groups in STEM. The program offers a stipend, faculty mentorship, paid summer research positions, and two years of funding for honors theses. For more information, visit https://undergrad.stanford.edu/opportunities-research/fellowships/fellowships-listing/stanford-undergraduate-stem-fellows-program.
• DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) Doctoral Fellowship Program supports advanced PhD students whose presence will diversify their academic fields. More than 80% of DARE alumni currently work in the academic sector. DARE has supported 144 fellows since 2008.
• Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) is a Doctoral Fellowship Program for new PhD students that provides mentoring by advanced PhD students and faculty, interdisciplinary workshops, professional development, and research funding. Rapidly scaled up from social sciences and education, to STEM, humanities, and business.

Gender neutral bathroom locations:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/lgbtcrc/gn-restrooms-map.png