September 7, 2022
In Spring 2022, the Jackson School of Geosciences’ (JSG) executive committee on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) began designing its first workplace climate survey. As the climate survey launched this week, I wanted to give an insider’s perspective of the months of preparation, thought, and decisions that went into the survey.
The 2022 JSG climate survey, for all staff, faculty, postdocs, graduate students and geoscience undergraduate students, will be the first baseline measure of the JSG workplace climate. Repeat surveys every 2 years will track change over time and response to particular policies or initiatives. Importantly, the climate survey will also inform areas of workplace climate that require attention and may indicate how best to approach these challenges. This will be particularly useful as JSG prepares to form its individual long-term strategic plan as part of UT Austin’s wider “You Belong Here” strategic DEI plan.
Overall, it has been a very insightful survey design process, and I am excited for the analysis of the results, and to see how we can continue to build the JSG’s inclusive community. To get the most meaningful results, ALL OF Y’ALL have to FILL OUT THE SURVEY! The survey is open for 2 weeks and it should only take 15 minutes, so please fill it out! If you have any questions about the survey, you can direct them to Milestales (info@milestales.com) or to the JSG DEI team (dei@jsg.utexas.edu).
The DEI committee that designed the survey was formed by Professor Julia Clarke, the Associate Dean for DEI, and has two representatives, including one in the leadership team, from each of JSG’s units (DGS, BEG, and UTIG), as well as myself as a student leadership liaison. Putting together a climate survey was our first task, which has required a lot of thoughtful iterations. Thankfully, we had a lot of help from an experienced workplace climate and diversity consulting firm, Milestales, founded by JD Ama Karikari-Yawson.
At the very start of the climate survey design, the committee decided on a few priorities.
Firstly, participant anonymity is paramount to ensure that everyone feels able to answer the survey honestly and completely. Anonymity is guaranteed in a few ways:
(1) No names or contact information are collected.
(2) Raw participant data is hosted and analyzed externally, by Milestales, and will never be seen by JSG.
(3) Demographic groups with small numbers respondents will be pooled by Milestales to ensure anonymity.
Secondly, it became clear that JSG is missing key demographic and inclusion data, e.g. of LGBTQIA+ identities, which limits our ability to assess DEI performance over time. Collecting this data is key to determining whether persons belonging to typically underrepresented and marginalized groups are present, and whether they feel safe and included at JSG, or in what ways JSG is not serving such persons or groups.
Thirdly, we want to collect as much meaningful information from as many people as possible, which means balancing the specificity of questions with survey length. This was the most time-consuming aspect of the survey design. We started working with templates from other institutions, e.g. WU-Madison’s Climate Survey and UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering’s DEI Climate Survey. We also looked at questions assembled by GEN and Champions of Diversity members here at UT. We had 60 or more questions that were preferred by the committee, but we thought this would take too long and discourage people from completing the survey. Through lengthy discussions about the meaning and interpretation of words and their synonyms; and about what exactly needed to be on an anonymous survey to the whole school vs. more specific groups, the survey was finally distilled into just 24 climate questions (which should only take you 15 minutes to complete HERE).
We also discussed ways to incentivize the survey and provide awards for completing the survey. Ultimately, providing awards to specific individuals would interfere with the complete anonymity of the survey, and we also felt that filling out the survey is in everyone’s best interests and is now a core component at JSG. So, as a committee we decided that we will instead celebrate the success of the survey and motivate y’all to fill it out with FOOD provided at EVENTS as the survey comes to a close.
After the survey window closes, Ama and her team at Milestales will perform quantitative and qualitative analysis of responses, redact identifying information from comments, and prepare a report and presentation of results to share with the whole JSG community. The DEI committee will then lead conversations with the JSG community on the next steps moving forward and will work to improve existing or implement new policy and initiatives where required, to make sure “You Belong Here” is truly echoed in all corners of the Jackson School of Geosciences.
