Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says Missouri’s First Chief Diversity Officer

As the University of Missouri system’s first chief diversity officer, Kevin G. McDonald faces a daunting task: setting the diversity agenda at an institution that has recently faced stinging criticism from minority students for what they see as a systemic failure to adequately support them.

With the hiring of Mr. McDonald on Wednesday, the Missouri system took one of its most significant steps since protests and racial tensions erupted last fall on its flagship campus, in Columbia.

For the past six years, Mr. McDonald has been vice president and associate provost for diversity and inclusion at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York. He previously spent five years in a similar role at Virginia Tech and has worked on college campuses for nearly two decades. He holds a doctorate in higher-education leadership from the University of Rochester and a law degree from Ohio State University.

Turmoil at Mizzou

In 2015, student protests over race relations rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, in Columbia, and spawned a wave of similar unrest at colleges across the country. Read more Chronicle coverage of the turmoil in Missouri and its aftermath.

• Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says New Diversity Officer
• Melissa Click, Professor Who Riled Free-Speech Advocates, Is Fired
• What It’s Like to Be Black at the U. of Missouri
• Thrust Into a National Debate on Race, 2 Missouri Chiefs Resign

The new diversity chief, who takes office on June 1, will be under immense pressure to be visible and transparent, and to bring about change quickly in a setting — academe — where change is often slow. But Mr. McDonald says he’s looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Conflict resolution, consensus-building, and interpersonal communication, he says, are some of his biggest strengths. He also hopes to use his system-level position to spur substantive conversations about race on each of the four Missouri campuses. That might include supporting faculty members who want to make their curricula more inclusive or to tackle diversity-related research projects, he says.

The Chronicle spoke with Mr. McDonald about how he’ll approach race relations, faculty diversity, and other issues at Missouri. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. When you observed the protests at Missouri and elsewhere last fall, what was your reaction?

A. I wasn’t surprised. One thing that was interesting in the aftermath — a survey came out suggesting that one in every 10 high-school graduates believes that they’re going to be involved in activism when they go to college. So this is not something that is a one and done.

Much of our history and our nation is defined by levels of social movements. I think Missouri students feel very empowered and had gotten to a point — as they relayed to me during my visit there — where they’d really been trying to have these conversations for a long period of time. So dialogue is important, but then not being mired in rhetoric and identifying important action items moving forward is going to be critical for us as a system.

Q. You mentioned that you’d already gotten a chance to meet with Missouri students. What did you hear from them?

A. There’s a level of skepticism. This role represents a part of an administration, a system, a structure that some students have been skeptical about. But I think there are students who are really at a stage of wanting to engage with the administration at meaningful levels. There have been meetings that have been ongoing even prior to my appointment.

I think we really need to engage students so that they feel like they’re equal partners in this work. Moving forward with diversity and inclusion isn’t something where you sit high and direct low.

Q. Improved faculty diversity has been one of the students’ most adamant demands. Missouri’s flagship in particular has struggled to retain minority professors. How might you help remedy that?

A. Part of it is going to be identifying what, historically, have been the issues that have impacted the recruitment and retention of faculty of color. There are stories there.

Also, there’s been research that’s looked at faculty of color and tenure, and talked about notions of climate, culture, and collegiality. Is that something that’s important here? Are there other areas of support that could be provided — is there a need to have more senior faculty who come in, or more junior faculty in clusters? Are there opportunities to have more visiting scholars, or more postdoc positions that can be supported and grow into full faculty?

Q. Missouri’s Board of Curators issued a series of recommendations last fall after the protests. At the system level, they include developing a diversity- and inclusion-education program for the board and administrative leaders, as well as broader training for faculty and staff members. Will you be overseeing that?

A. I don’t know. But I do think it’s important to have increased levels of multicultural competency and understanding about where diversity and inclusion efforts fit. For so long we talked about diversity as an access issue. Now there’s more understanding that it has a greater connection to other areas of our organization. So what does that mean for administrators? Are we committing ourselves to integrating the work into our daily lives?

Q. A lot of the debate at Missouri recently has centered on whether the protesters and those who support them are threatening free speech by demanding safe spaces and, in some cases, trying to keep out opposing viewpoints and members of the news media. Where do you stand in that debate?

A. In the academy, we need to at least have safe spaces for people to express themselves. We build ourselves on important discourse, and sometimes these conversations are hard. I don’t know about keeping anyone out or in. But we need to have spaces on our campuses to allow for these important conversations to take place.

Quite honestly, if the media is a part of that, I don’t take any issue with that — sharing the information and getting it out there. I think our academic institutions are founded on an opportunity to engage in that way, and we definitely shouldn’t alter that.

Q. Missouri’s board has no nonwhite members after a pair of recent resignations. Do you think the board can effectively manage the system in the aftermath of racial unrest without any diversity on the board itself?

A. It’s an important question. But I’m confident that the membership that remains has a diversity lens. They clearly understood the importance of having a role like the one that I’ll be walking into and the importance of the impact that the protests have had. I think with that there’s a level of diversity awareness that will have to be inextricably bound to the search process for the new president and to any role that I can play in supporting their efforts.

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.