REAC Subcommittee: Infrastructure & Policy

Overview

The Infrastructure and Policy Subcommittee will examine the capacity and structural support for strategic initiatives to advance racial equity, importantly recruitment and retention, and review institutional policies and practices that address equity and are connected to accountability structures. This subcommittee will also focus on the levers that influence systemic change and identify ways that the institution can align its stated commitments to equity to its actual work and support of the lived experience of each member of the campus community. This work will include identifying gaps and opportunities in the infrastructure of the institution necessary to support the overall commitments.

Initial Priorities

• Examine the goals for racial equity identified by the other subcommittees, and specify policy and resource needs to implement recommendations that arise from the identified goals.
• Evaluate specific needs as it relates to pay equity, pathways to career growth and advancement, and position equity (address the over-concentration of Black and BIPOC employees in certain roles and employment levels.)
• Produce an end-of-academic-year report that outlines the anticipated policy development and resource needs associated with each institutional goal for racial-equity.
• Create a plan for a high-level review/report-out of the progress in units/departments (for example, an Annual Report/Report Card) for each area of campus.

The Infrastructure and Policy Subcommittee created two smaller Subgroups to accomplish their work.

The first Subgroup developed a proposed model for measuring progress on racial equity goals inspired by a variety of models we considered from higher education and broader industry efforts. This summer our Subcommittee will work with Institutional Research to run the Duke Annual Report on Racial Equity (DARRE) for units across two to three departments in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, School of Law and/or Fuqua School of Business, Department of Medicine, one unit in the Duke University Health System, and one administrative unit.

The second Subgroup focused on the acute need for greater transparency and clarity about Duke’s salary setting and adjustment process and how competitive we are relative to our higher education peers for faculty and staff roles. The Subgroup discussed various sources for this information and the prospective audiences and specifically making connections with the Communications Subcommittee to circulate this information more effectively. In addition, we are critically aware of the need to demonstrate that the Duke will be proactive in response to concerns about salary satisfaction beyond reporting on existing practices, thus the Climate and Assessment Subcommittee will conduct a pilot study of pay equity and promotion/retention for both faculty and staff in collaboration with the Infrastructure and Policy Subgroup and other critical partners.

Expanding on existing and identifying innovative approaches to address concerns about advancement opportunities is a priority for the Infrastructure and Policy Subcommittee as we enter year two. We will need to coordinate across REAC Subcommittees to consider how we evaluate existing programs and what we need to do to gather information about what kind of programming is needed in order to be responsive to community members who are struggling to identify opportunities for advancement at Duke.

Read more about the work of the Infrastructure and Policy Subcommittee.

The following items reflect our focal points for the Subcommittee’s work in Year 2:

• Apply Duke Annual Report on Racial Equity (DARRE) that was developed in Year 1 for measuring progress on racial equity to selected units (fall 2022)
• Coordinate with Climate and Assessment Subcommittee on salary equity study pilot
• Work to address concerns about advancement opportunities (ongoing)