EIU Media Relations

University Newsletter

Campus Climate Focus Group Invitation

The HLC Quality Initiative committee at EIU is inviting faculty and staff to participate in focus groups aimed at assessing the culture of inclusion and belonging at the institution. We hope you will consider participating in this second phase of data-collecting that will help us better understand what our institution does well and how we can improve.  

The focus groups are intended to build upon the results of the climate survey administered by the committee last semester as part of the strategic initiative for diversifying faculty and staff at EIU. This climate survey, the first in several years, was aimed at assessing how faculty and staff of different ethnic and racial backgrounds experience their workplace, including interactions with colleagues and students. The survey results offered

valuable feedback regarding the campus climate. These insights require deeper exploration in focus groups to identify ways to improve recruitment and retention of all faculty and staff.   

The participants will be organized by affinity groups (white and underrepresented race/ethnicities) and will be given several question prompts to guide the discussion. Focus groups will be conducted over Zoom and recorded. The committee will ensure that responses will be anonymous in the summary report and that participation in the focus group will remain confidential. 

This round of the campus climate survey and the focus groups does not encompass the many other forms of diversity that deserve attention, such as (though not limited to) gender and sexual identity, religion, and physical and cognitive ability—identities that often intersect with racial and ethnic identities. This Quality Initiative focuses on faculty and staff of color because these identities are most visible on campus and they represent a form of diversity that we can track using federally-mandated data collection. The aim of the plan is to foster an inclusive and equitable working and learning environment at EIU.  

If you are interested in participating in a focus group, please indicate your interest on this brief Qualtrics survey before end of day March 31: https://eiu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dmB1sdRrMH6dSlM 

QI Steering Committee 

Sace Elder, Catherine Polydore, Angela Vietto, Jeff Stowell