Texas Woman’s University Chancellor and President Carine Feyten said she formed the Chancellor’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council in 2020 as a grassroots approach to strengthening DEI practices.
The council came out of the Belonging initiative in Learn to Thrive: Strategic Plan 2022.
“Rather than create an office of DEI with a vice president and leadership, I recognized that there were many pockets of DEI work happening within deans offices, faculty and staff affinity groups, student life,” Feyten told the Lone Star Standard. “My idea was to pull all these various volunteer efforts together into a council.
Texas Woman’s University Chancellor and President Carine M. Feyten
| Texas Woman’s University
"The members of the council could learn from the work of others so that each would have greater awareness if not coordinate the efforts more holistically," she added. "I have learned from colleagues that top-down approaches to creating culture rarely work, but grassroots efforts can, if supported from the top.”
The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, made up of faculty members and students, is responsible for educating the university community about diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as specific DEI programming and strategies.
The council is also responsible for promoting fair and equitable treatment of employees, and for identifying and implementing promising practices for the recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty and staff. Additionally, the council works to ensure equal access to professional opportunities and advancement for underrepresented faculty and staff.
“Texas Woman’s want to graduate more students, especially those who come from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, as a college degree can help break the cycle of poverty which disproportionately affects families from racial and ethnic minority populations,” Feyten said. “We believe a more diverse workforce is also a key ingredient to a more robust, innovative and competitive economy.
"Diverse perspectives help unlock solutions to previously intractable problems, the message of a recent video I made about our NASA competition wins." she added. "How do we achieve these goals for students and the economy? We hire a more diverse faculty and staff, reflective of our student body and the state’s population.”
According to a 2021 message from Feyten, diversity and inclusion will be “in the forefront of our work across the many facets of Texas Woman’s.”
To build a diverse community and culture, members of the DEI Council will seek to spread their knowledge around campus, sharing resources, educating and learning from one another, Feyten said. She authorized the affinity groups to “focus on diversity and inclusion.”
The message mentions Jason Lambert from the College of Business who will lead the DEI effort for three years, meeting with Feyten monthly and attending university cabinet meetings periodically.
According to public information received by the Lone Star Standard from the university's public information officer, TWU allocated $511,171 towards DEI-related expenses in fiscal year 2021, while $503,831 was allocated in fiscal year 2022. Feyten disputes those figures.
Items under the budget list were diversity training for the Division of Student Life, bias training film, bias training workshop, bias training HR work-related hours, Diversity Council committee meetings, Diversity Council presentation preparations, research for committee, ad hoc reports, website development/maintenance, Circa (a diversity recruiting tool), and EEO/diversity new hire reviews.
The university allocated more than $50,000 for fiscal year 2021 and fiscal year 2022 for “DEI Council.” The largest number was Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Outreach budget, which totaled $868,740 for both years.
But Feyten said a report that the DEI Council had a budget of $1,008,966 for fiscal years 2021 and 2022 was ”a very specific number,” and also “very inaccurate,” adding, "the amount of support is closer to $20,000, not over a million.”
She said the university has a distributed model rather than a centralized office.
“In short, there is no budget for the DEI Council for next year," Feyten said. "We have the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Outreach in Student Life that has existed for decades and focuses on programming for students such as our multicultural graduation celebration. This office also includes the Go Program to recruit students from underserved populations.”
The university has not hired anyone in the last three years for DEI positions or faculty, Feyten said. Instead, she is taking on the issue in a more comprehensive manner.
“The chancellor’s DEI Council is my way of building a more inclusive culture where all students can thrive,” she said. “I believe you cannot throw money at building culture. It takes time and grassroots effort for a sustainable, long-term change.”
DEI resources for faculty include the 1619 New York Times podcast, the Anti-Defamation League glossary of diversity terms, anti-racism and diversity resources, the Harvard Implicit Association Test, LGBTQ human rights campaign resources, and many other podcasts, projects and articles.
Faculty and staff are able to start a new affinity group described as “a collection of faculty and staff who actively engage in communication and/or gather around a centrally unifying purpose, mission, background or activity.”
Feyten offered a response to DEI detractors who criticize the allocation of funds for specific programs and the hiring and training of DEI-sensitive faculty.
“It’s about the university’s mission and bringing more highly skilled and qualified individuals to the workforce and building a robust Texas economy," she said. "Over 40% of the Texas population is Hispanic, 12% is Black, 5% is Asian, and these are very reflective of our student body."
Texas Woman’s University, in Denton, was founded in 1901. It is the nation’s largest public university with a focus on women. About 90% of the student body identify as women and 60% as non-white. Its enrollment in fall 2021 was 10,283.
