The Work Ahead—Division of Student Affairs

Assessment of Our January 2022–June 2023 Initiatives

Student Leadership Training and The First-Year Experience are two programs that contribute to student belonging in ways that we can measure, namely:
- These are programs that represent large swaths of the student population at critical inflection points, i.e., they represent our biggest opportunities for scale and impact.
- They allow us to blend a universal approach for students around DEI education while also implementing targeted interventions to improve the experience for students of color.
- They enable us to take the student experience and make it more central for colleagues around the institution.
Program on Nonviolence on Conflict Resolution can be a critical experience for students to learn, grow, listen, and understand how their behavior and that of others may be different. Engaging with students who have participated in these efforts allows for critical understanding around how this program aims to achieve these goals.
Professional Development aims to continue to build and implement intentional community-building (including the continuation of Project Connect), internal Spotlight Series to foster information sharing beyond specific offices (e.g., around DEI efforts), and targeted training (e.g., program on nonviolence and conflict resolution practices in student affairs, survey design and assessment methods, Social Justice Institute). With these approaches we hope to build on staff connections and find ways to further elicit data on how staff approach their work, their relationships, and their place at the College.

Plan for the Division of Student Affairs

At its core, the work of student affairs is to operationalize the ideal that every Bowdoin student can experience a sense of belonging beyond the classroom into the residence and dining halls, onto the playing fields and performance stages, into student and local community organizations, and in the Maine outdoors. This goal means that we are all accountable for the barriers that prevent student belonging, opportunities, and access within our campus—whether they relate to specific issues of race and racial justice or other more general issues that impact campus culture and the student experience.

Over the last year the Divisional DEI work can be organized into two categories: one office-specific, the other division-wide. A cross-section of programs/initiatives is highlighted below.

Athletics Department

Developed a monthly theme calendar to guide team diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations during the 2021–2022 academic year
Created a video highlighting and defining allyship within our athletic community
Created a framework for DEI engagement expectations for staff and teams and a process for coaches and staff to reflect on their DEI work at the conclusion of the academic year
Administered a DEI survey for student-athletes, developed in conjunction with IRAC
Recruited the most diverse class of athletes in the history of the department, with an increase of thirteen percent and six percent, respectively, of matriculating athletes of color and students from outside of New England from the prior year
Signed a partnership agreement with Depth Chart Database, a firm specializing in assisting athletic departments with diversifying their coaching and administrative staff candidate pools

Career Exploration and Development (CXD)

Partnered with student affinity groups to offer career panels for each heritage month
Continued commitment to track and improve the diversity of career role models of success held up "at the front of the room"—for instance, at least one of three panelists being a person of color for any CXD event
Continued to leverage Sophomore Bootcamp as an intervention for equitable access to knowledge and resources
Updated DEI resources around selecting for a workplace that values DEI and selecting for workplace culture in general and guidance for LGBTQ+ job seekers
Engaged in systematic inquiry around hidden biases or barriers to access in the way we have structured any offering out of our offices—for instance, this approach has led us to eliminate letters of recommendation for funded internships and to explicitly note in marketing materials that aided students are prioritized.
Continued to develop a professional development series for CXD to establish best practices for DEI in working with employers and students

Inclusion and Diversity Team (including SWAG, Multicultural Center, and Religious and Spiritual Life)

Implemented the following programs and practices to better address and aid community issues:

Orientation Program-Intersectional Approach in order to build an inclusive community.
Created the new Social Justice Leadership Institute
Continued Bowdoin Dialogue’s and IGD work. This year, multisession programs include Exploring Racial Justice: An Intragroup Dialogue; Race, Power, and Liberation; and Intergroup Dialogue on Class. 
One-session programs include Real Talk on Class for All College Houses and Real Talk on Race for teams and clubs when requested.

Student Life Team (including ResLife, McKeen Center, Outing Club, and Student Activities)

Continued racial caucus work through white allyship working group among white-identified residential life students and BIPOC support and community-building group for BIPOC students (ResLife)
Conducted an all-program audit this summer with a focus on antiracism (McKeen Center)
Maintained and continues to build collaborative programming throughout the academic year with THRIVE, MCC, NASA, ASA, LASO, SWAG, WOCC, and other groups/departments to encourage historically underrepresented (BIPOC, low-income, first-gen) students to participate and explore opportunities available through the BOC—these include dinners, day trips, hiking, canoeing, rafting, and skiing trips, as well as overnight trips to the Bowdoin Outing Club cabin, Merritt Island, the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, and Maine Huts and Trails.
Waived all Craft Center costs to allow all students easy access to that space (student activities)

Student Support Team (Dean of Students Office, Accessibility, Health Services, and Counseling and Wellness)

Conducted continual reexamination of values and mission when it comes to multiculturally competent/conscious care, support, and advocacy
Continued review and evaluation of policies such as medical leaves to examine issues of inequity
Continued and enhanced mechanisms for tracking students who utilize services to ensure access and services in equitable ways
Created a working group on libert arts academic advising

Reflections on Division-Wide DEI Work: ODSA DEI Programming Audit

Taking onto consideration the examples above, as well as a host of other programs and approaches, we completed an inventory of all student affairs events and initiatives filtered through a taxonomy of DEI programming—aka, the ODSA DEI Programming Audit. We built a taxonomy based on ways in which the many offices across the division engage in DEI work.

The DEI Programming Audit taxonomy is categorized in the following ways:

Affinity: differentiated programming offered to students based on individual, group, and social identities
Community-building: student programming that builds and enhances connection to community, broadly defined
Cornerstone: student programming that is required for all students at various stages of their Bowdoin experience (Orientation, Bootcamp, Senior Week, etc.)
Education and Training: student programming that is explicitly oriented around DEI learning objectives, including skill-building and active practice
Leadership Development: differentiated programming offered to students based on positional leadership roles
Professional Development: programming that supports ODSA staff learning about DEI theory and practice
Representation: student programming that furthers or showcases equitable participation of different identities
Student Support: individualized social, emotional, financial, professional, environmental, physical, intellectual, and spiritual support as it relates to student agency and belonging.

The DEI Plan

The ODSA DEI Programming Audit surfaced the fact that, while our division does a lot of work around DEI with students, this programming is often fragmented and decentralized to the detriment of its potential impact on student culture. We have a clear opportunity for collaboration and alignment within the division. With this in mind, the next eighteen months will prioritize the following initiatives:

Student Leadership Training: There is consensus that leadership training must include some education around DEI. Leadership training offers a concrete opportunity to implement a common knowledge base with students and assess student learning.
First-Year Orientation/ The First-Year Experience: Most of our DEI programming is opt-in, so we must consider the developmental trajectory for students at Bowdoin around DEI education. Cornerstone programming such as First-Year Orientation and Sophomore Bootcamp may offer opportunities to layer in more intentional and integrated DEI education for all students and to assess student learning and progression into more advanced layers. The effort will be focused on the first-year experience over the next academic year and consider ways to further develop this work within Sophomore Bootcamp moving forward.
Program on Nonviolence and Conflict Resolution: Three of the four codirectors of Bowdoin’s new Program on Nonviolence and Conflict Resolution are staff from the Division of Student Affairs. We view the approach and services of this group—designed to strengthen and support an inclusive community that respects and celebrates differences on our campus—as integral to our continued divisional DEI efforts. Further building on these initiatives over the next eighteen months will benefit the continual efforts of creating an atmosphere of community, belonging, and inclusion.
Professional Development: One of the drivers for this approach is workplace research that has demonstrated that mentorship, intentional community-building, and robust personal networks at work are positively correlated with attracting, developing, and retaining staff of color.