Charged with examining and addressing diversity at UB, the Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Diversity has spent nearly two years reviewing the collective attitude toward the issues of race and ethnicity through university policies, procedures-and the people.

And after months of comprehensive document analyses and focus groups that encouraged dialogue on these issues, the task force is ready to implement a third method to help assess the campus climate.

The final piece is a survey, which is scheduled for release to faculty, staff and students by the semester's end. The most quantitative measure put to use in gauging diversity on campus, the task force hopes the survey will confirm the qualitative results of its earlier work, said Henry Durand, director of the Center for Academic Development Services in the Educational Opportunity Program and chair of the task force's writing committee.

"They tell you different things, but hopefully, they will coincide, and if, in fact, that's the case, then you can make fairly strong statements about how the campus community feels, and also what recommendations you might come up with," Durand said.

All faculty and staff members will be issued the survey, as will a 10 percent random sample of majority (white) students and all of the racial and ethnic minority students on campus. Students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels will be included. The confidential survey will take between 15 and 20 minutes to complete and will use the Likert scale method to elicit answers to questions of intensity, such as "strongly agree," "disagree," "strongly agree" and the like.

"The survey will provide us with a critical piece of information about the university community and where it stands with respect to feelings about diversity," Durand said.

"We've heard from other constituents, but not from the field directly itself," he said, referring to the initial discussion groups that included faculty and staff members, many of whom held roles of advocacy or leadership.

"Without this (survey results), the task force will be severely lacking because we'll have opinions from selected groups," he added.

Durand said the task force feels a sense of urgency in issuing the survey in a time frame relative to other data already gathered.

UB's survey is in part modeled after other institutions that have implemented similar measures, such as Ohio State University, University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland. Durand said the task force worked to adapt some of those survey styles, while tailoring questions to UB.

But while UB is taking proactive-and progressive-measures to study and improve conditions on campus, Durand said, he also sees disparity in the way diversity is approached, given that talk sometimes exceeds the effecting of change. Diversity at UB, he emphasized, is not just about race and ethnicity-it's about bringing value to the institution.

"Everybody says diversity is important," he said. "Now, how that gets followed up with action is what we're trying to find out. That's the whole point of the study."

Durand said he likes to think of the task force as running a quality-control operation.

"We're constantly doing assessment and review in order to make sure we're offering the best service that we can offer," he said. "It only makes sense to do that with respect to climate and issues around diversity because that's become such a central part of the world that we're going to have live, work and recreate in.

"You look around this campus, you begin to see what the future looks like," he said.

Durand said the task force is negotiating a release date for the survey with the Office of Institutional Analysis.