1. Introduction

Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science (CMU SCS) is one of the leading schools in computer science in the world. We have a commitment to excellence in research, practice, and education. At CMU SCS, we recognize that people are our greatest resource. We value each and every community member, and believe in creating and sustaining a transformative community through empathy, compassion, diversity, inclusion, integrity, and respect for the dignity of others.

Our overarching goal is to create a five-year strategic diversity plan that will accommodate specific needs of SCS. In this strategic plan, we describe our mission, vision, and overarching strategy to move towards creating a more inclusive and equitable climate for our students, faculty, staff and alumni. We operationalize this strategy through four actionable goals. We provide short-term and long-term actions towards each goal. This framework is informed by SCS-wide town halls, benchmarking, feedback from surveys and work conducted last spring by Profs. Cassell, Cranor, Kaufman.

1.1 Current state of society and higher education

Research has shown that women face a number of disadvantages in making career progress, especially within historically male-dominated fields and industries. For example, the social costs experienced by women as part of negotiating higher pay has been found to be far higher in comparison to the positive economic and social benefits men experience as a result of negotiating. Additionally, women are often stereotyped as being a better fit for support roles as compared to leadership roles, and unpaid service roles often fall to women.

Research also reveals similar disadvantages, stereotypes, and expectations of URMs in the workforce. Unfortunately, race is often viewed narrowly in the workplace as a mere numeric goal, rather than as a multicultural dimension that serves to enrich an organization. At the same time, a more aware perspective of diversity of race in the workforce has been found to be helpful for everyone. 

There is also a rich body of research on the challenges and opportunities to promoting inclusiveness and diversity in higher education. Our benchmarking work has revealed efforts to improve the climate of inclusiveness on a number of campuses through structural and behavioral interventions. This work has explored inclusive practices in policy making, equitable employment practices, and integration of individuals’ differences in day-to-day work life. These efforts have been shown to increase retention rates of faculty, staff, and students by increasing satisfaction in the workplace.

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1.2 Self-assessment: The current state of SCS

The School of Computer Science has also dealt with the same societal challenges. A series of events in SCS has revealed a clear need to improve departmental climate issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The percentage of female UGs in SCS has grown to 49%. This was achieved in part by relaxing a programming prerequisite and increased messaging about using computer science for societal good, as well as including new courses for those not previously exposed to programming.

The 2018 report “Understanding the Barriers to Diversifying CMU Faculty and Recommendations for Improving Diversity: A Focus on Under-Represented Minority and Female Faculty,” commissioned by then-interim Provost Laurie Weingart and produced by Professors Linda Babcock and Rosalind Chow explored the challenges faced by women and URM faculty at CMU. Babcock and Chow reported low recruitment and retention of female and URM faculty at CMU and made recommendations to mitigate these issues.

As noted in SCS’s benchmarking report from earlier this year diversity – most specifically retention of senior women and URMs in computer science –  is a problem. This data also shows that women and URMs lack mentors, role models, and cohorts. 

Additionally, in 2018, the announced resignation of Computer Science faculty members Lenore and Manuel Blum highlighted a need to examine SCS’s organizational culture and practices with an eye for equitable practices. Additional faculty, staff, and students reported bad behavior and bullying behavior, expressing confusion about where one behavior begins and the other ends. 

More broadly, assessments pointed to three wide areas of DEI challenges in the school, in particular pointing to the fact that the growth of the School in size and complexity needs to be supported by a substantial transformation of its processes and organization: First, many processes that affect critically the careers and quality of life of students, staff, and faculty lack transparency and clarity. Second, the mechanisms for reporting and for representation, i.e., engaging direct involvement of all of the SCS community in its governance, are insufficient. Third, training instruments both for increasing awareness of these issues and for promoting leadership within SCS are insufficient. These identified challenges inform the formulation of our key goals for this plan, augmented with a plan for measuring progress towards these goals.

While many of the actions in an academic environment tend to focus on faculty and students, major challenges pertaining to staff were reported consistently in feedback across the School. These challenges touch all the aspects of the staff’s life in SCS, daily interaction with supervisors, administration, and leadership, as well as evaluation and promotion. Addressing these challenges requires explicit goals throughout this plan. This is particularly important for SCS which relies on a large staff population with very diverse roles -  administrative, technical, and project management - making it all the more difficult to develop coordinated actions. 

The Faculty Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Development, chaired by then-Vice Provost for Faculty Kathryn Roeder, instituted a number of positive initiatives to foster the recruitment, hiring, and retention of women and URM faculty. This is complemented by the strong work of CIT and MCS in developing their own diversity plans. The proposed strategy and action items in SCS will extend this strong foundation of work. As part of this work, we expect to align with efforts in other units and to benchmark our efforts with the campus-wide Climate Implementation Steering Committee.

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2. Strategy

2.1 Our vision, mission, and overarching strategy

Going forward, SCS has developed a vision, mission, and strategy for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within our school. 

Vision: To realize a vibrant SCS community, comprised of individuals diverse in background, gender, discipline, and research and teaching approach, and to create an environment where each individual can reach their full potential.

Mission: To create a climate in SCS that is diverse, inclusive, and supportive of all stakeholders including students, staff, faculty, alumni, and visitors.

Overarching strategy

To realize our vision and mission, SCS has developed an overarching strategy, based on the following pillars: 

• Create an inclusive climate, which will increase transparency, decrease conflict, reduce interpersonal bias, and allow for consensus
• Respect our differences as people, in our disciplines, and in our approaches to doing research and teaching
• Reaffirm our values as SCS; revisit the Reasonable Person Principle
• Implement our work in a way that is impactful to SCS, CMU, and the world

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2.2 Actionable goals

We operationalize this strategy through four broad actionable goals, each with its own set of actions.

1. Develop awareness and training programs that focus on respectful relationships for students, staff, and faculty
2. Develop and communicate policies, procedures, and structures related to admissions, recruiting, hiring, evaluation, retention, reward and promotion for students, staff, and faculty
3. Identify measurements by which we can evaluate our progress; identify reporting activities
4. Develop a sense of belonging across SCS

Goal 1: Develop awareness and training programs that focus on respectful relationships for students, staff, and faculty

Respectful relationships contribute significantly to a positive climate within any organization, but particularly in academia, where the nature of tenure itself promotes the status of one group of individuals over another. Here, we will work in tandem with university-wide development to model and foster respectful relationships in a uniform way.

Metrics. To measure progress towards this goal, we will report on assessments and track numbers of new programs developed, along with data on frequency and consistency of uptake by CMU stakeholders.

Short term actions

• Establish benchmarks. We will assess existing training and awareness programs within SCS for leadership, faculty, staff, TAs and RAs. We will compare these to other units at CMU and other academic organizations within the US.
• Create exemplary narratives. We will compile a list of example behaviors and stories from faculty, staff, and students that illustrate respectful interactions and build positive climate within SCS. We will make people aware of these exemplary stories through SCS communications.
• Review. We will review and document the “service experience” of key elements of campus life, with an eye for consistent and respectful experience, including:
  • On-boarding procedures for faculty, staff, and students
  • Orientation material for faculty, based on the current orientation sessions coordinated by Prof. Cassell
  • Committee selection, membership, chairing, and function (ex., search, admissions, review, evaluation)
  • Processes such as job interviews, recruiting visits, and campus visits
  • Training programs for TAs, RAs, and postdoctoral scholars

Long term actions

• • Create new training materials. Our benchmarking and review processes will highlight gaps where we can improve what we are doing within SCS. Every process will be under scrutiny as we seek to increase awareness and respectful relationships between diverse stakeholders.
    • Develop supervisory and awareness training for staff.  While many of the actions tend to focus on faculty and students, key challenges in supervisor/staff interactions were reported consistently in feedback across the School. Addressing this challenge requires the development of training instruments specific to staff interactions.  
    • Develop supervisory and awareness training for faculty. This includes in particular clear statements of expectations for graduate student advising. 
    • Develop supervisory and awareness training for department heads and leadership. This includes training to ensure consistency of approaches, and transparency of R&P, mentoring, reporting, and leadership appointment procedures.
    • Develop training that creates pipelines for leadership.
  • Create new onboarding materials. Continue to build on and develop onboarding programs for leadership, faculty, staff, and students to communicate and uphold shared norms and values. 
  • Developand offboarding processes. Create and systematically utilize offboarding interviews so we understand why members of our community move on.

• Hold trainees accountable for doing the work. This requires a cultural shift to reiterate the importance of doing service work in our community, so it will take some time.

• • Determine which trainings are optional vs. required
  • Develop mitigation strategies and explanations for deviations
  • Develop mechanisms to assess uptake and outcomes of new materials
• Create long term plans. Work in concert with university-wide resources at the SCS level to improve respectful relationships.

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Goal 2: Develop and communicate policies, procedures, and structures related to admissions, recruitment, hiring, evaluation, retention, reward and promotion for students, staff, and faculty. 

In many cases, units within SCS have made good advances in documenting the policies and procedures that govern how we work. Some of this work will be to gather what is in place. Other efforts will center on creating policies, procedures, and structures that maximize DEI within SCS.

Metrics. To measure progress towards this goal, we will report on assessments and audits. In addition, we will coordinate with members of the Campus Task Force Implementation Committee to ensure that our recruiting, reporting, and mentoring policies are in keeping with the university’s strategy and goals. We will also track numbers of new policies and programs developed, along with data on frequency and consistency of uptake by CMU stakeholders. We expect to see an increase in numbers and perceived quality of experience for undergraduate and graduate admissions.

Short term actions

• Self assessment of policy and process audit. Initial reports and surveys provide a good starting point in collecting data about SCS implementation of policies and processes in all aspects of recruiting, promoting, reporting, and mentoring across SCS. We will expand these efforts by collecting and reviewing what has been done traditionally in SCS; in addition to benchmarking across recent CMU surveys and reports.

• Self-assessment of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Similarly, we plan to expand the current effort in getting input from the community. We recently led three recent town hall meetings for this purpose, and will soon be conducting targeted meetings with smaller groups, through systematic, regularly scheduled listening tours.

• Define expectations for behavior (Reasonable Person Principle, etc.). An important reported issue across all constituencies in SCS is a lack of understanding of common set of expectations for behavior of supervisors and advisors, as well as general expectations of work environment. Our goal, based on input from the community, is to document these expectations around guiding principles such as the Reasonable Person Principle.     

• Develop communications related to diversity, equity, and inclusion at regular intervals for SCS community. We will regularly report on efforts taking place within SCS to increase awareness of our efforts and to offer our work as a source of information to other units. We will involve SCS Marketing and Communications in order to do this.

• Review and update graduate admissions procedures. Our current graduate admissions committees practices need to be reviewed in order to identify opportunities to foster a more diverse set of candidates along all dimensions (gender, URMs, background, disciplinary expertise). This is particularly critical for Masters programs, given their current demographics, for which there is an immediate need for updated procedures.

• Define committees and advisory groups and how membership is assembled for each. Selection committees at all levels of the School (awards, key leadership positions, hiring, etc.) play a central role in ensuring that the selection processes are fair and transparent. In the short term, our plan is to:
  • Assess the role and practices of current committees at all levels, providing the necessary data for putting in place the long-term committee structure.
  • Design a selection committee at the level of the Dean’s office with the charge to manage the selection of key leadership positions. This committee will have published representation of the seven departments and will be responsible for seeking candidates for the positions, and making sure that the selection process is fair and transparent.
• Define and create a position of Associate Dean for Faculty. This new position is critical in coordinating faculty hiring, evaluation, and promotion processes across SCS. In addition, it is essential in implementing new, robust mentoring and career development programs, and recruiting programs. This position will provide a focus point responsible for implementing reporting mechanisms for faculty. The SCS organization does not have such a position currently and a key part of this plan is to define its roles and responsibilities and to create this office.

Long term actions

• • Develop executive and academic search processes. This effort involves implementing transparent, consistent documented procedures and guiding principles for all the searches. This effort focuses on defining and documenting procedures based on:
    • Diverse representation and voices
    • Expected communication with stakeholders
    • Outreach strategies to achieve a robust candidate pool
    • Process checks to make sure efforts are yielding the desired pool
    • Data collection so SCS and the university can assess the yearly outcomes of searches
    • Directives and charges given to search committee chairs to ensure appropriate onboarding, communication of directives, and demonstration of a commitment to diversity.
  • Develop engagement processes. Many processes, such as selection of faculty presented with industry engagement opportunities, are currently viewed as opaque and biased. While they are not directly tied to R&P or recruiting, they have a most direct impact on faculty and staff. We will implement a robust cycle of identifying them and publishing transparent practices.

• Develop internal selection processes. Develop objective, fair and transparent processes for appointing leadership positions in SCS, starting with the Dean’s appointment committee.

• Coordinate faculty processes. The Assoc. Dean for Faculty office will develop consistent documented procedures, guiding principles, and reference materials for 1) engagement, decision-making, and communication during hiring and retention processes, and 2) promotion and tenure practices across SCS, including standards for promotion, department governance, committee membership, and relevance towards diversity goals.
• Develop and coordinate staff processes for staff evaluation and promotion. A key challenge identified in feedback across the School is the lack of transparency in staff career paths. Specifically, the growth in number and diversity of staff roles, administrative, technical, and project management, and their fragmentation across a large number of groups has conspired to reduce the promotion opportunities and to make the evaluation processes opaque. This requires an in-depth overhaul of the evaluation and promotion processes for staff. 
• Develop training programs. We will continue to improve on the Faculty and Staff Leadership Development Programs in coordination with CMU Leadership. In addition, building on our current programs, e.g., BiasBusters, we will develop deeper evidence-based training on topics including
  • Unconscious bias
  • Diversity
  • Bystander intervention
  • Intergroup engagement

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Goal 3: Identify measurements by which we can evaluate our progress; identify reporting activities. 

Evaluating progress against our goals and generally assessing the state of SCS requires data collection, analysis and measurement instruments. Feedback from the SCS community and from our advisory boards is that our data collection systems are generally broken and inadequate. For example, our current approaches are ineffective at combined siloed data, e.g., from multiple departments into useful standardized forms. This part of the plan aims to redefine data collection and measurement instruments to support the DEI plan. 

Metrics. We will develop and share data in two forms with CMU leadership: spreadsheets as a short term metric, and dashboards as a longer-term metric. An additional longer-term goal is to share data and insights as an anonymized dashboard available to the CMU community. We will also develop a yearly report on our DEI efforts which will be shared publicly on the SCS website.

Short term actions

• Standardize data collection. 
  • Assess what data is currently being collected that tracks our diversity, equity and inclusion activities across all the departments and constituencies.
  • Collate data in standard form; make available to Deans, Associate Deans, and Department Heads
• Design Dashboard. SCS currently maintains dashboards, e.g., to track hiring progress across SCS, including candidate pools and interview selection. Our plan is to build on this model to develop an SCS dashboard to maintain relevant diversity data. The first and immediate step is to determine timeline for designing and implementing the dashboard (in coordination with CMU Leadership).
• Surveys and evaluation. Surveys and evaluation instruments are important tools in measuring progress, in identifying key issues, systemic or individual. We plan to develop and use these instruments in two ways:
  • Develop and implement surveys of the SCS community conducted in coordination with the CMU new DEI office.
  • Develop instruments for reverse evaluation, allowing staff and students to provide feedback. Two SCS departments (RI and CSD) conducted this type of reverse evaluation of supervisors by staff. Our goal is to extend these experiments to the School, after reviewing best practices. We plan to explore the feasibility of a similar instrument for students, acknowledging the additional challenges of dealing with student interactions with faculty. In addition to a thorough review of best practices, this activity will involve close consultation with CMU leadership.

Long term actions

• Deploy dashboard. Create a version of the dashboard that can be made public to the SCS and CMU community.
• Provide yearly report. Create a yearly report on SCS’s DEI efforts; make it publicly available on the SCS website.
• Apply measurement instruments. Given the data collection and measurement instruments, the long term implementation involves 1) a long-term schedule of periodic applications of our survey and evaluation instrument; 2) continuously identify additional measures, continuously check measures against baselines and goals, 3) and make results publicly available. The initial categories of measures are:
  1. Demographics
  2. Activities
  3. Policies
  4. Structures
  5. Experiences
  6. Language and symbols
  7. Equity in salary, workload, startup package, attribution of direct reports

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Goal 4: Develop a sense of belonging across SCS

We envision two main efforts in deepening a sense of belonging within CMU SCS. The first is to increase the quality of daily life at CMU for all of our stakeholders. The second is to increase our connections to the local Pittsburgh community with the goal of creating more diversity in how we impact the world.

Metrics. Track membership, attendance, activity, goals, and outcomes of standing committees and working groups. Track listening tours and provide updates and outcomes on this work. Track reporting incidents and reporting actions to resolve incidents. Track creation of new policies and new events that create a better work experience for all stakeholders.

Short term/achievable actions

• • Form working groups. Form standing and advocacy committees for various stakeholders, create goals and charges, structure interaction with leadership. These committees will be tasked with actionable work relative to improving life at CMU and a sense of belonging.
  • Define and implement student and staff representation. A major part of belonging is to have access to mechanisms that allow reporting and discussion of issues and, more generally, direct involvement in the affairs of the School. This need has been repeatedly emphasized in the surveys and town halls. Our plan to address it is to put in place standing groups charged with representing students and staff, and working with SCS leadership on defining solutions to the issues brought up by these groups.
    • Students: Student representation in SCS includes an undergraduate committee, which meets approximately once a month with the Dean, and a Ph.D. committee implemented by the CS4ALL organization. To address the need for better reporting and more direct involvement in the governing of the School, these groups will be elevated to standing committees charged with prioritizing student issues, and developing and proposing solutions. In addition to the undergraduate and PhD committees, a Masters committee will be created. This student committee is particularly important in SCS, where the size and diversity of professional and research Masters programs has created significant quality of life issues.
    • Staff: It is essential that the staff be better represented, in a way that promotes continuous attention to staff concerns. Similar to the student committees, SCS will form a committee to represent staff.  In particular, this new structure will enable continued gathering of data on bias and discrimination, issues in interactions in the workplace, and career path issues, as well as a mechanism for proposing changes. This is particularly important in SCS, which includes a large population of staff members, with a variety of roles (administrative, technical, program management) and does not have, at the moment, a mechanism for staff representation.
  • Appoint a position responsible for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within SCS. This role will help to manage the efforts to develop new policies and procedures for DEI within SCS and to coordinate with efforts that are taking place across CMU.
  • Conduct listening tours. We will create opportunities for regular and private exchanges with individuals and groups as needed. In coordination with SCS Marketing and Communications, we will share themes (anonymized) that have been gleaned from listening tours and other interactions with SCS stakeholders.
  • Gather exemplary stories. We will gather stories of exemplary behavior that improved SCS climate, diversity, equity, and/or inclusion. In conjunction with SCS Marketing and Communications, we will make these broadly available to the SCS community.
  • Assess balance of work and home life. We will gather, review and benchmark a number of processes that contribute to a healthy life at CMU, including:
    • Parental leave, parental support policies for graduate students and technical staff
    • Part time faculty and staff positions
    • We will incorporate work/life balance in our student processes, and in communications about our expectations for students. We will also benchmark these approaches relative to other units on campus and other academic organizations.

• Create opportunities for interaction within SCS.

• • We heard in our listening tours that creating opportunities for cross-department interaction was strongly desired. We will create tea and coffee hours, lunch with new faculty, movie nights, and volunteering opportunities to increase interaction outside of work and to link to inclusion and diversity efforts taking place in Pittsburgh.
• Assess existing community partnerships. We will assess what partnerships we have in the local community, add new ones, and develop a strategy for facilitating new partnerships going forward that will increase diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our connections to the local community. For example,
  • We are currently developing a relationship with https://www.blacktechnation.com, Kelauni Cook, to increase diversity and numbers of developers in the Pittsburgh area.
  • Members of our faculty have partnered with https://www.forge.community, Community Forge, an inclusive space in Wilkinsburg.
• Mentoring programs. Peer mentoring is another essential ingredient of an inclusive environment. SCS currently has faculty mentoring of different forms in its departments, a strong women mentoring program for undergraduate students initiated by women@cs, and a new mentoring program at the PhD level initiated by CS4ALL. These need to be expanded to more robust, across the board programs, among the following groups:
  • Faculty: Coordinate, through the Assoc. Dean’s office, across all departments a consistent approach to faculty mentoring, ensuring access to mentoring across all ranks.
  • Students:
    • Expand the current undergraduate mentoring model to all undergraduate students.
    • Create similar programs for graduate students.
    • Increase the presence of mentoring groups for URMs. 
    • Create new staff role, using new foundation support, to ensure all students feel supported regardless of their background and have access to resources that meet their unique needs, as our undergraduate program becomes more diverse.
  • Staff: There is no formal mentoring program for staff. Our short-term objective is to study best practices through the staff working group. Our long-term objective is to implement a mentoring program that will address the needs expressed by staff in town halls and surveys.

Long term actions

• Develop policies around workplace flexibility. We are conducting research and benchmarking to install new types of positions that match the needs of skilled professionals who do not choose to have a full time position at CMU. These include:
  • Part time faculty positions
  • Part time research track positions

• Develop mentorship roles. We will develop a new part-time role to mentor women and URMs in their academic/research careers.
• Establish working groups to deepen DEI. We will establish working groups to better understand and support the experience of groups, including:
  • International students
  • Students with disabilities
•  Implement community DEI strategic plan. In addition to forging new community partnerships with the goal of increasing diversity at CMU, and developing a strategy for evaluating and selecting partners going forward, we will:
  • Form five new community partnerships that deepen DEI

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3. Timeline

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4. Implementation plan and metrics

The implementation of the plan will be monitored by a small leadership group to be formed by the end of the calendar year. The roles of the implementation monitoring group will be defined as follows:

• Prioritizing. The group sets up priorities, consistent with the items laid out in each goal above and provides regular updates to SCS leadership on progress toward each of the goals.
• Communicating. The group communicates on progress on a regular basis (nominally bi-monthly) using the procedures developed in item “Develop communications” Goal 2 with SCS Communications and Marketing. This role is especially important as the community has reported the lack of communication on intermediate progress as a challenge in SCS.
• Interfacing. Inside SCS, the group coordinates with the newly formed committees for students (three committees for undergraduates, Masters, and Ph.D., respectively) and staff. Outside SCS, it  coordinates with the other schools and colleges to monitor best practices. The group coordinates with the Climate implementation team (Provost Garrett, Vice President Casalegno, Vice Provost Van Briesen, Associate Vice President Piekutowski) to coordinate data gathering and measurement tools, and training programs, as described in Goal 1 and  Goal 2.
• Convening. We are committed to organize regular town halls (nominally once a semester) dedicated specifically to the DEI plan. This addresses an explicit request from the SCS community and is essential for gathering continuous feedback from the community.

Implementation of the plan will be guided by metrics for each of the Goals. To summarize, the initial metrics, which will be refined as the plan proceeds are:

• Goal 1. To measure progress towards Goal 1, we will report on assessments and track numbers of new programs developed, along with data on frequency and consistency of uptake by CMU stakeholders.

• Goal 2. To measure progress towards Goal 2, we will report on assessments and audits. In addition, we will coordinate with members of the Campus Task Force Implementation Committee to ensure that our recruiting, reporting, and mentoring policies are in keeping with the university’s strategy and goals. We will also track numbers of new policies and programs developed, along with data on frequency and consistency of uptake by CMU stakeholders. We expect to see an increase in numbers and perceived quality of experience for undergraduate and graduate admissions.

• Goal 3. We will develop and share data in two forms: spreadsheets as a short term goal, and dashboards as a longer-term goal, with CMU leadership. An additional longer-term metric is to share data and insights as an anonymized dashboard available to the CMU community. We will also develop a yearly report on our DEI efforts which will be shared publicly on the SCS website.

• Goal 4. We will track membership, attendance, activity, goals, and outcomes of standing committees and working groups. We will track listening tours and provide updates and outcomes on this work. Track reporting incidents and reporting actions to resolve incidents. Finally, we will track progress toward creating new policies and new events that create a better work experience for all stakeholders.

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