Concerns about the legitimacy of the institutional chief diversity officer (CDO) have frequently prompted conversations about the need to professionalize the role. As recently as this year, organizations like the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) are making headway in elevating the role as an efficient institutional change agent.
At this year’s Standards of Professional Practice Institute in June, NADOHE officers and institute faculty debunked assumptions associated with the diversity officer role and discussed solutions to assist the participating cohort in leveraging their role in order to foster inclusive excellence at their respective institutions.
NADOHE’s efforts to professionalize the role include working to realign diversity practitioners’ work within the necessary power structures at institutions and building practitioners’ competency in its 12 standards of professional practice.
“When you look at the scope at how large this work is, I think that’s a challenge” in professionalizing the role, says Dr. Clyde Wilson Pickett, a NADOHE board member and chief diversity officer for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. “It’s an opportunity to think about how we impact, as diversity officers, all aspects of the institution. Getting other folks to realize that and to help further build upon that work has been one of the opportunities or challenges, if you will, that we have.”
Attaining administrative buy-in and campus-wide support is an integral element to accomplishing institutional diversity, equity and inclusion goals that diversity officers set, say practitioners.
Dr. Archie W. Ervin, president of NADOHE and vice president for institute diversity at Georgia Institute of Technology, points out that, as institutional change agents, the senior-level diversity officer is responsible for making the institution supportive of the success of people “who are there in all dimensions.”
This can look like ensuring access to educational opportunities where students or faculty are validated by being a part of the academic focus or curriculum. It also entails ensuring that all groups on campus have an opportunity to be a part of the “voice and structure of what makes that institution unique,” Ervin says.
