Dear UMS Community,
When I address a message like this to all UMS students, faculty, and staff, I very intentionally use the word "community." We are a community because we come together with the common purpose of seeking and expanding knowledge. We want to learn about the world. And we learn even more if we are willing to learn about each other as individuals -- learning about and respecting the differences and similarities we each bring to our community, making the community as a whole stronger because of the unique journeys and paths we have each taken to come together.
Because we'd like to know more about your experiences, I'm writing today to encourage you to complete an important climate survey that's accessible here.
The survey seeks information about your experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). It was developed by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS), a national partnership of colleges and universities committed to using data in the service of inclusive excellence. Leadership within our campus DEI Councils and Shared Services DEI practitioners, a representative group who comprise the UMS DEI Steering Committee, selected this survey to use across UMS.
The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and will be open until the end of March. Please note, you will also receive direct communications from HEDS with a link to the survey. Your responses will only be recorded once. The aggregated results should be available by sometime in May. Your collective input -- the UMS community's input -- will be carefully reviewed and help to guide the efforts of our internal DEI focus groups, leading in turn to concrete actions and improvements at the campus and System levels.
There's an extra incentive for students: two $200 bookstore vouchers for each of our Universities will be randomly drawn from among all students who complete the survey. After you complete it, you'll be provided a link where you can enter your contact information, which will be used for the drawings to be held on April 1st, 2022.
I'm proud of the work behind this survey, and I hope you'll share your experiences as an important member of the UMS community. I look forward to the improvements we can make to help advance all of our DEI goals.
