Tracey Ray is the assistant vice provost for student diversity in the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity.
What does your job entail in the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity?
What I do is student diversity. I actually oversee aspects that reach students, faculty, and staff, and so there are several initiatives that I provide leadership for. One is Diversity Education Week which becomes a time for the entire campus to engage in building their awareness, and, hopefully, also their skills and their engagement around issues of difference, whether that be domestic diversity, global diversity, and, hopefully, engage in constructive and meaningful dialogue as well on our campus.
Another initiative that I oversee is the university diversity mini-grant program, so this is a seed grant opportunity for faculty and staff to apply for funds to grow to build or grow an initiative that they’re working on relative to diversity. It can be something as simple as recruitment or retention, or as complex as a research project or something related to their specific area of study. I also connect with each of the colleges, so each college has a diversity director assistant dean and I convene and work with that group as well
I know that Diversity Education Week is upon us, so what is Diversity Education Week and what is its purpose?
Diversity Education Week is, right now, in its eighth cycle. It was started in 2011 by three students, and those three students were heavily engaged in leadership roles. They had connections with student government, as well as a group at that time called the Student Diversity Advisory Council, and they, as individuals, came together and said ‘you know, NC State needs a time that is really focused on and clearly articulates a message around engaging with people different than yourselves and learning from those differences.’ We also had a group at the same time of faculty and staff who had gone to an annual conferenc called NCORHE, National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, so we call that our NCORHE Alumni group and they actually had been meeting and had come to that same conclusion. So, with the point that the students had this idea, they came together with that NCORHE Alumni Group and planned the first annual Diversity Education Week, which was in spring of 2011, immediately prior to this office merging and being created. And so for several years we worked to build and grow Diversity Education Week, partnering with different student organizations and partners over the years, and we’re just really pleased with both the quantity and quality of programs, and who engages. Over the years, we’ve had staff in it who host programs, student organizations from all different types of walks of life. We have an interfaith student organization called Better Together, and they’ve held interfaith dialogues for the last three or four years during Diversity Education Week, so it gives us a time to focus on diversity in a very broad way, but also in a very engaging way. The first year, the programs, mostly, with Diversity Education Week involved food. It was sitting, talking and enjoying food, and not a lot of high-impact engagement, whereas now I think students get to have deeper dialogue and really get to be exposed to new ideas even. So some of the programs this year might expand students’ knowledge and what they know and think about the world, and hopefully they will go beyond the program to think and look a little bit deeper as scholars.
Ultimately, what are you hoping that students, faculty and staff can take away from Diversity Education Week?
It is a few different things. One is to share a very important message that diversity education is important, it is a critical skill of 21st-century thinkers, and so it is really important that we engage with things that are different from us and that we do so in scholarly and engaging ways. So one is cultural competency is important, understanding diversity is important, the other thing is that cultural competence is a never-ending journey, so you cannot go to one program and know everything there is to know about Asian culture. Usually, a good example, Global Training Initiative here at NC State, they do a workshop about international culture and different ways to engage and going through norming around time, so what’s on time to you may not be on time to me culturally so going through those differences. No training is a one and done. You have to always continuously engage in training and opportunities to be exposed to differences, so no matter even how much you know about diversity, even those of us that work in diversity, none of us are culturally competent. It is literally a never ending journey.
Additionally, is there anything else students should know about the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity or Diversity Education Week?
The calendar of events this year is available through NC State Guides so it’s the Guidebook app. What’s great about it, when students download it, they can build their own schedule and it gives you reminders. You can actually rate and evaluate programs right in the app as you’re there, so it’s a great one-stop shop, efficient way to access the calendar and engage in the week.
Also, there are newer kinds of programs that haven’t been done in the past, so, even if you’ve participated in the week, there are some new topics. There is one program about the Cambodian Genocide, so that’s a great learning opportunity that many students may not know or understand. It is still very recent in history as well.
Finally, when people come to the event on Monday, one of the things on the slideshow that plays as people are seated is that recently, this year, NC State was a recipient of the HEED Award, which is an extremely highly distinguished award which notes universities that excel diversity and inclusion. We were one of only 80 universities to receive that in 2017, and so when we talk about diversity, and who is responsible for diversity, it is great for people to look to us, but at the same time we are looking to them. It takes everybody at NC State to make NC State a diverse and inclusive campus, so it is everyone’s responsibility. And, I think that’s what Diversity Education Week also does, it reinforces that each member has responsibility.
