The U. of Iowa Keeps Losing Diversity Officers. The Turnover Has Raised Alarms.

Ryan Adams, The Daily Iowan

When TaJuan Wilson took over as associate vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Iowa, in June, it was seen as a breakthrough for a campus working hard to diversify an overwhelmingly white faculty and student body but beset by frequent leadership turnover.

He lasted six weeks.

“Coming to Iowa was a leap of faith for me personally and professionally,” Wilson, a former diversity director at the Medical University of South Carolina, said in a written statement in mid-August. “I have great respect for the university and the work being done in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and believe Iowa has the potential to be on the right path. This opportunity will be wonderful for the right person, but it is not the right fit for me at this time.”

University officials said they had no immediate plans to replace Wilson, who was hired after a two-year period without a permanent diversity leader.

Wilson’s resignation was just one in a string of departures from key administrative perches at Iowa, many of them directly related to diversity work. In another blow to Iowa’s minority-recruiting efforts, Melissa S. Shivers, the vice president for student life and a former interim chief diversity officer, announced last week that she was leaving to become vice president for student life at Ohio State University.

With the departure of Shivers, who is African American, only one member of the president’s cabinet comes from an underrepresented minority group: the provost, who is from Spain. Shivers did not respond to The Chronicle’s requests for comment on her departure.

Shivers began her job overseeing student life at Iowa in 2017. She took on an additional role as interim diversity head a year later, when the interim she was replacing left. Including Wilson, Iowa has had four diversity directors in the past two years.

The churn in diversity chiefs isn’t particularly surprising, given the demands of the job. It’s complicated in Iowa by the demographics of a state where about 80 percent of residents are white and on a flagship where 11 percent of students but only 5 percent of the faculty are people of color. And as more colleges hire chief diversity officers in response to escalating demands for more-diverse campuses, professional opportunities spring up quickly and turnover is rapid. Continuing state budget cuts have made it hard to compete.

But diversity administrators aren’t the only ones leaving Iowa. Over the past two years, eight of the university’s 12 deans either have left or are in the process of leaving, The Gazette, a Cedar Rapids newspaper, reported. When it comes to diversity efforts, “we cannot lose the momentum built over the past several years,” the university’s president, J. Bruce Harreld, said in a written statement.

The urgency became clear earlier this year, when the university released a campus climate survey showing that nearly half of female faculty members and 60 percent of underrepresented minority professors reported that they had seriously considered leaving the university in the past 12 months. About 50 percent of the faculty and 60 percent of the staff who responded that way cited departmental climate as one reason.

The leadership dynamics have frustrated those who were already impatient for change. “We are in a place and time where we need to do a gut check as an institution and try to figure out how to move forward, creating a space for marginalized people who want to stay and thrive here,” said one staff member who works on diversity issues and asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive cultural issues. “If it weren’t for the students, I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I have.”

When students see departments where faculty members are mostly white, “they don’t feel they have anyone who can empathize with their experience,” the staff member, who asked not to be identified by name, said. And finding a partner can be challenging for a single person of color in a predominantly white space, the staff member said.

A History of Turnover

The turnover in Iowa’s top diversity role began in 2017, when Georgina Dodge, who had been at the university for seven years, left for a similar job at Bucknell University. (Dodge has since become vice president for diversity and inclusion at the University of Maryland at College Park.) After Dodge, the chief diversity position was handed off, on an interim basis, to Lena Hill, who left last year to become dean of the college at Washington and Lee University.

Hill said that she’d never intended to take the job on a permanent basis, and that she had left Iowa after 12 years with fond memories of her time there. Harreld, she said, supported her efforts, inviting minority faculty members to his home to talk and dropping in at the university’s cultural centers “to meet students in their space.”

Recruiting scholars and students of color “is a challenge everywhere,” particularly as colleges nationwide step up diversity efforts, she said. “Clearly, it’s a greater challenge in a state that’s largely seen as lacking diversity,” she added. “I’d never imagined myself living in Iowa, but we loved our time there.” Her husband, Michael D. Hill, taught English and African American studies at Iowa, and when the two left, it was a blow to the relatively small community of minority scholars.

After Hill came Shivers, who also filled the diversity role on an interim basis until earlier this year, when Wilson was hired.

Among the other recent departures at Iowa was Tracy Peterson, the diversity- and outreach-programs director for the College of Engineering. He left last month for a similar position at Pennsylvania State University, following his predecessor in a similar role, Tonya Peeples.

Wilson chose to resign from his position, according to the university. “As Wilson pursues a new opportunity, he will spend the next five-and-one-half months working with the vice president for external relations, Peter Matthes, on initiatives that support the university’s work to become a more inclusive and equitable campus,” officials wrote in a statement. Specifically, a spokeswoman later said, the work will include researching and analyzing how other universities have carried out their own diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.

Under his separation agreement, signed in August, Wilson will continue earning his $224,000 annual salary until he finds a comparable job elsewhere, or until January 31 at the latest. During that time, he is allowed to telecommute and look for another job during work hours, but he has to be available for consultations if needed. The university waived the requirement, set out in his offer letter, that he’d have to repay the $25,000 in moving expenses if he left within a year.

Wilson did not respond to requests for comment. Sources who work on diversity efforts but asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter said one source of tension was that his position, which used to report directly to the president, had been reassigned to the new provost, Montserrat Fuentes, who began the same day as Wilson. A spokeswoman, Anne Bassett, said she couldn’t speak for him, but said that his offer letter had made the reporting line clear. Others involved in diversity matters said the rift had more to do with conflicting strategies that Wilson and other campus leaders wanted to pursue.

Under the university’s new reporting structure, three directors of offices that house diversity, equity, and inclusion issues now report to the provost.

Asked whether the university planned to hire a replacement for Wilson, Bassett responded: “The university’s immediate priority is continuing the momentum of the [diversity] action plan, then next steps will be evaluated.”

Creating an Inclusive Process

Meanwhile, the university is moving ahead with efforts to address such concerns. Based on the troubling results of the campus survey, national data, and a series of listening sessions in which students, faculty, and staff offered suggestions for improvements, it created a diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan.

Among the specific steps officials are taking are allocating funds to support summer research and professional development for faculty members’ diversity-related work, and creating visually welcoming and inclusive spaces that include gender-neutral bathrooms and appropriate images on walls and building names.

The university is also providing training on diversity and implicit bias to help promote more-inclusive conversations. And it’s identifying ways to ensure that faculty members are rewarded, in salary and promotion reviews, for their work on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Sarah K. Bruch, who left Iowa over the summer to become an associate professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, was a key player in drawing up the university’s diversity action plan. Creating an inclusive process for diversity efforts was especially important given the leadership transitions and the need for continuity, she said.

With the departures of key diversity leaders, it’s more important than ever, Bruch wrote in an email, that “both UI leaders and the entire campus community take ownership over the efforts that are required to see meaningful positive change.”

A 2017 national survey of chief diversity officers warned of the dangers of relying on one person with too few resources to shoulder the job of diversifying a campus. Overburdened diversity officers faced with unrealistic expectations burn out quickly, the survey noted.

When Harreld was appointed as president, in 2015, the former IBM executive was a controversial choice, and while the regents have extended his contract through 2023, opinions about whether he’s lived up to his bold promises are mixed. But several people involved in Iowa’s diversity efforts said Harreld seemed genuinely committed to making diversity a campuswide priority.

Both the president and the provost declined interview requests, but in a written statement Harreld said that “strong collaboration between the provost and the three directors, along with deans and other campus leaders, is crucial to executing the goals of the DEI Action Plan.” He called that alignment “another step in continuing to create a cohesive approach to supporting, recruiting, and retaining students, faculty, and staff.”

Bassett, the campus spokeswoman, pointed out in an email to The Chronicle that competition for diversity leaders makes it harder to hang on to them, but that the university’s work in strengthening recruiting and retention will continue. “Many universities are doing this important work,” she wrote, “and in an increasingly competitive job market it’s challenging to retain talented faculty, staff, and administrators.”

Fuentes, in a written statement, called the most recent move “a great opportunity for Dr. Shivers” and added that “we are celebrating her success.”

Data visualizations by Audrey Williams June, a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey. Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.