The Equity Office already provides help to campus offices and departments wanting to advertise job openings in minority publications that want to deepen the applicant pools and devise strategies to recruit and retain those individuals. The Equity Office provides a neutral and confidential starting place for obtaining information about equity issues. It sees about 100 clients each year, with an equal number being faculty, staff and students. In addition, office personnel continuously field questions and tackle issues for campus members not listed in the client category. Our goal is to have no clients because of effective outreach, but we re still a ways from that, Robinson says.
Clients bring a host of issues.
The Equity Office strives to resolve issues in a non-adversarial manner and setting. Resolution can be sought through informal and formal means. Informal options include simply allowing the client to vent his or her concern, discussing how to resolve it, and perhaps helping the client talk with the other person involved in the conflict. The Equity Office may even determine that the issue can be handled best by another campus unit and will refer the client to University Police, Human Resource Services, the Counseling Center and other services. A collaborative approach is often used to fully meet a person s needs, Robinson says.