Rogers Addresses Diversity, Inclusion During College Hour
Dr. Kenita Rogers, executive associate dean and director of diversity and inclusion at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), shared her thoughts on what diversity and inclusion mean to the CVM, ways the CVM has successfully incorporated those ideas into the campus climate, and areas of improvement she and her staff are focused on within the college during her Nov. 9 College Hour presentation.
“When we talk about diversity and inclusion, I really think about starting with a growth mindset, meaning we all have a view of what diversity is and need to be open to new thoughts and ideas. Diversity and inclusion are critical to what we do as a college and whether we are a college of excellence or not,” Rogers said. “We aspire to be excellent in diversity and inclusion, but it is a process that requires continuous improvement over time.”
Because diversity and inclusion permeate everything we do in the college, we each have a role to play in the CVM’s diversity efforts, starting with recognizing that diversity is more than just race, ethnicity, or gender; everyone has a background and characteristics that make them unique and shape their ways of thinking, making decisions, and interacting with others.
“It’s really about self-awareness, how we see the world, how we see others who are different, and knowing what our privileges are,” Rogers said. “I have many, many, many privileges. I have to understand that everybody I’m speaking with does not have all the same privileges that I do.
“But I also must understand my biases. I have many biases,” she said. “Having privileges and having biases does not make me a bad person, but it does mean that I have to be self-aware enough to recognize that in myself and make sure that I understand how that is impeding or helping my decision-making process.”
Remembering this also affects our climate of inclusion—that is, whether students, faculty, and staff feel welcome, engaged, have the ability to be successful, and are heard, despite their differences.
“In everything that we do, we need to make people feel safe, welcome, and included,” Rogers said.
Rogers challenged faculty and staff to consider the culture of their department, the college, and Texas A&M as a whole, and consider our weaknesses. While demographics and each of us having different value systems can be a challenge, evaluating what could be done to ensure that our interactions are respectful and then passing that respect on to others is one way to work toward improvement.
“We all have to know it’s OK—it’s good for us to have these diverse viewpoints and even diverse values,” she said. “But what is not OK is to have a diverse value set from someone else and then condemn, judge, or gossip.”
Another way to work toward improvement, she said, is by being curious.
“Ask the other person their story, understand where they’re coming from, get to know them,” she said. “That works almost 100 percent of the time in starting to solve a conflict.”
Additionally, because “diversity AND inclusion equals excellence” and “we are not truly excellent unless we do good work in this area,” Rogers highlighted areas in which the college has succeeded in the realm of diversity and inclusion. These include the annual diversity accountability awards resulting from an annual report the CVM submits every year, which is assessed by the President’s Council for Climate and Diversity, as well as the resulting financial support awarded by the university, which has totaled almost a million dollars since 2011; and the receipt of the second consecutive Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award, among others.
While faculty and staff have added to the inclusive environment in a host of ways, including professional development, advocating for diverse hiring, and working to instill change on a national level, as the CVM grows and changes, continuous work will be required and more opportunities and challenges will arise.
“While we are quite imperfect, I think the vast majority of us would say we care about the climate and culture here. We have fun and find lots of meaning at work; we feel we’re on a team,” she said. “Through mediation training and other professional development activities, we have been able to have engaging and meaningful conflicts and not just avoid conflicts; it’s actually a huge climate problem when we do that. We don’t just have to debate with one another and try to win; we can have a dialogue, a conversation, try to understand one another, and then have a win-win outcome.”
Ultimately, Rogers said, diversity is important, because non-diverse teams do not function as well as diverse teams.
“Diversity lets us solve complex problems through new ideas, new backgrounds, new training, and I would contend that in our college—whether it be the research labs, the classroom, the clinic, all of the work that we do—everything is a complex problem,” Rogers said.
“So, individually, we all have a role in this. This is not a one-person job. Things that you can do individually contribute positively to this community,” she said. “It makes a difference if you know students by name. It makes a difference if you thank someone for something you saw them do. It makes a difference if you have positive, collaborative relationships with others, and if your first interaction is not good, go back and figure out why and try to make it better. We all can do that. Every single one of us can do that.”
