In 2005, the Board of Trustees adopted a statement articulating the goal of “creating a dynamically diverse community.” That same year, President Emeritus David Oxtoby convened the President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity (PACD) with a two-fold charge: to review and monitor, quantitatively, the diversity of the Pomona faculty, staff and students, and to propose new approaches to increasing diversity in all areas and ways of strengthening the sense of community on campus for all groups.
This focus on diversity continued in our 2007 Strategic Plan, our 2015 Strategic Plan on diversity, “Lighting the Path to 2025,” and actions the College has taken every year to meet the goals of creating a dynamically diverse and supportive campus community.
Access & Inclusion
Our guiding principle on the hiring, admissions, and financial aid process is to develop a campus community that includes the fullest possible range of diverse perspectives and backgrounds essential to a rigorous learning environment.
Key Strategies
Students
- Sustain and expand admissions recruiting efforts of underrepresented students domestically, including the addition of another Posse (STEM-focused from Miami)
- Sustain and expand admissions recruiting efforts internationally
- Develop relationships with local community colleges
- Maintain Pomona's commitment to need-blind financial aid
Faculty
- Explore and support post-doctoral programs that enhance faculty diversity across the College
- Leverage the TOP hiring process to introduce more flexibility with regard to faculty hires that further Pomona’s commitment to diversity
- Address diversity at the point of position creation
- Develop and support robust and effective search and recruitment procedures, resources, and structures
Staff
- Prioritize search firms and consultants with a demonstrated record of success in shaping diverse candidate pools
- Ensure the consistent use of best practices in tapping exceptional talent from local and national pools
- Develop strong and consistent processes and structures for staff development and a culture that facilitates staff promotion within the College
- Ensure training for managers and staff to promote job satisfaction, hiring, and retention
Climate & Community
Pomona strives to create healthy environments in which individuals feel welcomed, respected, valued, supported, and fully able to achieve and contribute.
Key Strategies
Culture of dignity and respect
- Promote social spaces of interaction between faculty, staff, and students. Continue and support programs such as the Staff Council-Faculty Executive Committee lunch series
Support resources/mentoring
- Provide for necessary staffing and coordination of support for Pomona’s White House commitments and other academic initiatives
- Ensure viability and success of POSSE, HHMI summer bridge, and other matriculation/support programs
- Ensure viability and success of Qualitative Skills Center, Writing Center, Institute of Inclusive Excellence, and other academic support services and structures
- Ensure viability and effectiveness of Pomona/5C resource centers
Campus life and accessibility
- Support Pomona College annual Community Building program (Student Affairs-led development of student leaders, with particular attention to facilitating difficult dialogues and identity development)
- Promote College sporting, academic, and artistic events among the wider Pomona Valley community
- Understand the environment for ADA and disability challenges on our campus, and articulate a strategy for ensuring accessibility and support for all members of a thriving community
- Continue efforts to promote healthy work/life balance and wellness among students, staff, and faculty
Professional development
- Support professional development opportunities for staff and faculty
Scholarship & Learning
A diverse student body and a globally and locally attuned curriculum offer Pomona students unique and important opportunities for intellectual, emotional and ethical growth. Pomona wants to prepare students for lives of leadership, achievement and fulfillment in a pluralistic society.
Key Strategies
Curriculum & co-curricular
- Develop and incentivize effective faculty advising
- Prioritize hiring of faculty who can increase our interdisciplinary offerings and bridge across departments
- Continue processes of internationalization
- Promote Community Partnership (CP) courses and other community-based initiatives supported by the Draper Center
- Strengthen and promote courses that focus on diversity issues such as the current Analyzing Difference courses, and our ethnic studies programs, both intercollegiate and at Pomona
Student learning
- Expand community building programs and activities (Student Affairs)
- Create spaces where diversity enhances creativity and innovation in the liberal arts
- Ensure that our staffing, structures, and programs are appropriate to the goal of student wellbeing, success and achievement
- Inventory and assess high impact practices at the College: off-campus study, internships, research with faculty, community-based initiatives, etc.
Faculty development
- Expand opportunities for coordinated faculty development around inclusive pedagogies/classrooms (e.g., Inclusive Excellent initiative, CTL/TLC events, Napier and Draper Center initiatives, etc.)
- Promote diversity in the major and design of inclusive classrooms
- Encourage holistic advising at faculty advising workshops and for all cohort programs such as POSSE, Questbridge, Pomona Science Scholars, etc.
Academic achievement
- Continue to provide academic support services and structures (various)
- Support student mentors by developing training programs focused on interactions with a diverse student population
Institutional Commitment & Capacity
As an institution, Pomona strives to develop the capacity of the College to leverage diversity as a critical resource in accomplishing its mission.
Key Strategies
Alignment of policies and practices with diversity work
- Identify and implement appropriate mechanisms for encouraging and rewarding contributions to Pomona’s diversity goals
Analytical capacity and planning
- Meaningfully assess progress on diversity goals (e.g., diversity benchmarks, embedding assessments in diversity initiatives, etc.)
- Encourage departmental ownership and continuous refinement of diversity goals and practices (e.g., via robust planning and assessment practices)