By MARTY LEVINE
First results of the Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey, which was sent to all staff, faculty and students in the first two months of 2023, were offered at the June 12 Staff Council meeting.
The results were not surprising: LGBTQ+ people, especially nonbinary and trans people, as well as Black people, others of color and under-represented minorities, reported more discrimination and harassment, as well as less satisfaction with campus leadership, than did international students, whites, Asians and heterosexual and cisgender people.
The survey results came with caveats: Participation overall was 14 percent, or 6,400 of the 47,000 surveys sent out, which is low by itself and lower than peer institutions, according to the organization that administers the survey, the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS). Jamaal Wheaton, director of Data & Equity Assessment in the Office for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, said it is “a fairly average response rate within higher education.”
HEDS does not reveal the peer institutions it uses for comparison, and the survey may be taken both by HEDS members (such as Pitt) and non-HEDS member institutions. Plus, of course, those choosing to take a climate survey are self-selected and self-reporting of attitudes and the incidence of items for which the survey asks.
Some of the results overall showed that:
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Those generally or very satisfied with campus climate were nearly or exactly comparable to peer institutions, with 74 percent of staff/administrators saying they are satisfied, 68 percent of faculty and 76 percent of both graduate and undergraduate students.
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But those generally or very satisfied with their feeling of belonging on campus were mostly below peer institutions, with 67 percent of staff/administrators saying they are satisfied, 63 percent of faculty, 62 percent of graduate students and 68 percent of undergraduate students.
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Those who ranked leadership support for diversity placed it generally below peer institutions, with 63 percent of staff/administrators saying they are satisfied, 57 percent of faculty, 59 percent of graduate students and 57 percent of undergraduate students.
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Campus climate was deemed best by international students, whites and Asians while less highly ranked by Latinos, those of multiple races or ethnicities and African Americans.
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Cisgender men and women also experienced the campus climate on the positive side, while those who are nonbinary or transgender thought it at the middling level.
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Heterosexuals see a more positive campus climate than LGBQ+ people (in a question that did not include trans people).
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23 percent of faculty and of undergraduate students, 19 percent of graduate students and 18 percent of staff reported experiencing discrimination or harassment at Pitt
Among staff/administrators, results found that:
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African Americans (29 percent), multiple races/ethnicities (29 percent) and “all other races/ethnicities” (45 percent) experienced the greatest amount of discrimination by race/ethnicity, which are higher rates than in Pitt’s peer institutions — especially the last category.
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14 percent of cisgender men, 22 percent of cisgender women and 37 percent of non-binary and transgender employees said they experienced discrimination by gender identity (the latter slightly less than in peer institutions)
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18 percent of heterosexuals and 28 percent of LGBTQ+ staff said they experienced discrimination by sexual orientation, equal to peer institutions
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Highest among the groups who “Often wonder ‘Maybe I don’t belong here’” by race/ethnicity were Black people and others of color as well as under-represented minorities; by sexual orientation, this feeling was greater for the LGBTQ+ population
About 7 percent of students responded to the survey, about half the HEDS average of 13 percent, while employees overall responded at 26.3 percent, less than the 38 percent HEDS average. Staff members responded at 33.6 percent — the highest among the student, faculty and staff groups at Pitt.
The data will be presented to the full campus in a few weeks, said the other presenter, Angie Jack, executive director for Strategic Operations & Planning in the equity office. “This is just one piece of data that we’re hoping will become just part of DEI data collection at the University,” Jack said. The office plans to conduct focus groups in the fall, then hopes to alternate the survey and focus group data-gathering methods every other year.
“And then some action planning that will come from that,” Jack added.
Some of the data has been suppressed by HEDS, to protect the potential identification of respondents when the data is broken down into responsibility centers at Pitt and there are five or fewer people in one category — often nonbinary/trans, Wheaton noted.
He highlighted a few findings that the equity office plans to investigate further for causes and cures, including employees’ percentage experiencing discrimination by race/ethnicity. “When we start to see a trend that is a particular outlier, this is definitely something we want to understand where that is coming from and why that is happening,” Wheaton said. “Some really, really robust tools, some dashboards and other tools will begin to appear on the OEDI website and we’ll begin to do town halls and listening sessions.”
Wheaton concluded: “We’re really thinking about a holistic campus climate program … that really gets into the layers of the University,” including microclimate surveys, since “it might take some time to see where the problem is happening.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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