Now in its second year, the School of Nursing’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has further embedded diversity principles into the atmosphere of the School. Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion MaryAnn Perez-Brescia, Ph.D., RN, who is also an assistant clinical professor, has gone above and beyond the goals she set for the office for the 2021-2022 academic year. She says she is starting to see a shift in the atmosphere of the School that she hopes will continue.
“The awareness of and willingness to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion has increased greatly,” she says. “I am hopeful that, over time, as we continue to have conversations about race in a safe, trusting environment, they will begin to feel like everyday conversations.”
Diversity Engagement Survey
Perez-Brescia began the 2021-2022 academic year by conducting a Diversity Engagement Survey, which contained 22 questions related to eight factors that connect engagement theory to inclusion and diversity constructs. All responses on the survey are scored on a five-point Likert scale, with five corresponding to strongly agree and one to strongly disagree. Email invitations to participate in the survey were sent to 1,076 faculty, staff, and students. Around 572 responded and 511 completed the survey in its entirety.
The School received an overall score of four, indicating students, faculty, and staff feel engaged and included. This scoring pattern was similar across all races and ethnicities in students. A few respondents scored the School at a one or a two; open-ended questions at the end of the survey revealed that those participants chose those scores based on racial incidents on campus from a few years ago. Perez-Brescia says these are preliminary results and that she and her colleague Stephen Walsh, ScD, MTS, SCM, who also assisted with the initial analysis, need to go back and analyze further.
“As a result of the survey, we discussed the importance of addressing racial trauma as incidents occur to ensure a sense of safety in students,” Perez-Brescia says. “We also knew from anecdotal data that some students did not participate in the survey and did not feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on the survey. Therefore, we hired an outside facilitator to administer a restorative healing workshop during the spring of 2022. We will continue to listen to the needs of our students and respond accordingly. We will do better than we have in the past.”
Strategic Plan and Faculty Training
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are now also embedded into the School’s Strategic Plan, as core values of the School and as focus areas with objectives and metrics. The faculty merit process also now evaluates professors’ and instructors’ DEI efforts in teaching, scholarship, and service. All faculty also attended microaggressions training, building on the implicit bias training from the previous academic year.
DEI Webpage
The Office of DEI has a new webpage on the School of Nursing website, where all members of the School community can learn about DEI efforts, access resources across the University, and get involved with a new student group.
Prominently displayed on the webpage is the School’s updated diversity statement: “UConn School of Nursing is committed to diversity and the excellence it facilitates. We embrace diversity of race/ethnicity, gender, abilities, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic situation, background, experiences, and thought. This diversity culminates in strength that advances our learning, research and scholarship, practice, service, and innovation. Our faculty, staff, and students are required to cultivate equity and inclusion in all campus and clinical-based activities. A perception of belonging for all and the creation of equitable health care for our communities will be realized. We understand that first we must dismantle our social constructs founded on racism and are dedicated to eliminating all acts of racism or bias at the School of Nursing. We will have zero tolerance for actions that breach our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Acts that defy these beliefs will be examined and adjudicated.”
Admissions Requirements
In October 2021, the School’s faculty approved removing physics as an admissions requirement for undergraduate nursing students. The change applied to students who were admitted in fall 2022 and allows more students to apply to the School, even if their high school does not offer physics courses. Perhaps partly due to this change, the School had nearly 2,500 applicants to its Class of 2026 — the largest first-year applicant pool ever.
Black History Month
In February, Perez-Brescia solicited nominations of current students and alumni to be recognized during Black History Month. Called “Making History During Black History Month,” the initiative honored members of the School of Nursing community who have advanced or impacted the education or health of Black Americans and African Americans. Each nominee who accepted the honor was featured on the School’s social media platforms and on digital signage in the Widmer Wing of Storrs Hall.
New Student Organization
Perez-Brescia worked with nursing students to create a new student organization on the Storrs campus: the Future Nurses for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The group is dedicated to the mission of creating diversity, equity, and inclusion within health care as a service and in the workplace. Group members intend to create a community of underrepresented students and allies varying between ethnicity, race, country of origin, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, cultural practices, and religious affiliations, so that they can acknowledge and appreciate individual experiences as they affect practices.
The students hope to influence the School’s social atmosphere and educate each other so that they may all respect varying experiences and views, making them better professionals in the future equipped with empathy, understanding, and knowledge for their interactions with patients and coworkers. The group’s activities so far have included social and educational events, like keynote speakers, and they hope to create volunteer opportunities for clinical work in communities that are affected by the systemic inequities they learn about. The organization is affiliated with the School of Nursing but is open to all health care majors.
The student group is currently planning an event for October in honor of the 50th anniversaries of UConn’s Women’s Center and Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center. The plan is to work with local artists and musicians to hold an art sale and fundraiser to support UConn initiatives dedicated to diversity and health care. Fall 2022 will be busy for Perez-Brescia, as she is also planning to host a virtual Fireside Chat event in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month. The Fireside Chat event series has been hosted by the School of Nursing and its Alumni Board since January 2021. Each virtual event focuses on a different topic of interest to School of Nursing alumni. The Hispanic Heritage Month event will feature panelists who work to improve health care and equity for Hispanic populations.
Goals for 2022-2023
The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s goals for its third year feature both large and small initiatives: bringing back the faculty and staff book club and discussion, which was popular its inaugural year in 2020; continuing to facilitate professional development for faculty; conducting ongoing climate assessments of the School; and evaluating the School’s policies and practices to ensure they are up-to-date and effective in terms of diversity values. But two planned initiatives with the most potential impact are the holistic admissions pilot program and a new community outreach program mentoring high school students.
Faculty in the School’s Certificate Entry into Nursing (CEIN) Program have been trained in holistic admissions and are now in the process of building a new admissions decisions framework. The hope is to create an admissions process that “assesses an applicant’s unique experiences alongside traditional measures of academic achievement,” according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The School of Nursing’s CEIN Program plans to pilot the framework they develop before seeing if it can be adopted by the School’s other programs.
The new community outreach program is being developed in partnership with the Capitol Region Education Council. Perez-Brescia and her team are currently seeking grant funding to support mentorship activities for students in grades eight through 10 throughout the academic year, as well as a weeklong summer day camp at the School of Nursing. The goal is to expose students to the nursing profession, through simulation activities and basic health training at the summer camp, and help them navigate the college application process and the prerequisites they would need to apply to a nursing program.
The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has accomplished a lot in just two years, but Perez-Brescia, as evidenced by her goals for the next year, knows there is always more that can be done.
“I want the School to have the natural mindset that diversity brings excellence, that it is not a task that we must complete, but something we embrace to make ourselves better,” she says. “There are so many assets to diversity that enhance our profession, our scholarship, and our service.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2022 issue of Unison.
