Focus Areas

The President's Advisory Council on Race identified four key focus areas for their university-wide assessment and recommendations: Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention (faculty & staff); Recruitment and Retention (students); Curriculum and Teaching; and Community.

Using this structure, the President's Advisory Council on Race members worked in four subgroups to address each focus area in detail. 

Thematic Structure

Organizational Structure of Focus Areas. Under the heading of the President's Advisory Council on Race, there are four categories: recruitment, hiring, and retention (faculty and staff), recruitment and retention (students), curriculum and teaching, and community. Under recruitment, hiring, and retention (faculty and staff), the priorities are mentoring and collaboration, landscapes of opportunities, research and scholarship, promotion and tenure. Under recruitment and retention (students), the priorities are mentoring and collaboration and landscapes of opportunity. Under curriculum and teaching, the priorities are curricula, programs, UB curriculum, inclusive pedagogy, and instructor/advisory evaluations. Under community, the priorities are engagement (research, education, service), community relations, and programs. Embedded in each focus area is social justice and university culture.

Subgroups

Faculty and Staff Recruitment, Hiring and Retention:
 Mark Alnutt
Luis Colón
Margarita Dubocovich
Raechele Pope

Student Recruitment, Admissions, Retention and Graduation:
 Margarita Dubocovich
Lee Melvin
Sharon Mitchell

Curriculum and Teaching:
Ndubueze Mbah
Temara Cross
Chazz Robinson

Community:
 Ellen Grant
Dante Hayes
Dexter Johnson
Tolu Odunsi

Process

Subgroup members used the following approach to guide their work:

  1. Reviewed and analyzed the applicable data.
  2. Used the data to identify and explain the problem/areas for improvement.
  3. Identified and reviewed best practices in the focus area.
  4. Determined benchmarks for the thematic area, positioning them relative to other AAU public research universities.
  5. Developed recommendations on how UB can achieve these benchmarks.
  6. Shared recommendations with the President and Provost.

Implementation

To guide the university's implementation efforts of the President's Advisory Council on Race's recommendations, a steering committee and seven subcommittees were formed and charged with:

  • reviewing and discussing the recommendations to determine how best to implement them,
  • developing a timeline for the implementation process, and
  • establishing specific quantitative and/or qualitative milestones for anticipated progress.

On June 1, 2022, the Implementation Committee released their final report—a pathway to supporting and amplifying equity in UB's research, teaching, education and engagement with the broader region. 

Learn more about UB's implementation efforts
Read the Implementation Committee's Final Report