VCU’s Staff Diversity

In late 2006 VCU conducted the Climate Survey to determine how pleased the staff, faculty and administration is with diversity among their colleagues.

Over all the survey was quite positive, but there were outliers within minority groups and the staff.

To get a better understanding of these outliers, the Equity and Diversity Committee conducted a series of three focus groups. The first was made up of faculty and staff, the second, black faculty and staff, and the third was full time staff.

The findings were startling.

The study found that adjunct faculty feels unappreciated, women aren’t as easily promoted as men, and black faculty feels that the university discriminates.

The EDC realizes that this could be a few upset staff members, but they want to address these issues to make sure they know why someone would feel this way and to insure that no one else does in the future.

They are developing a five-year diversity plan in the hopes to attract more minority administration and therefore more staff.

VCU Alert seeks to defuse campus disasters

School shooting are a reality. In the last year, the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois shootings have taken the lives of 39 people, most of them college students.

To help prevent such a tragedy on its campus, Virginia Commonwealth University has implement the Emergency Alert System, also known as VCU Alert.  The system is designed to give student the information they need to know to stay safe in life threatening situations.

Recyclemania lets VCU score green points

Virginia Commonwealth University is home to the Rams and the well-known colors of black and gold.  But now V-C-U is trying to get students to go green.  A new game is encouraging campus residents to recycle.

V-C-U ‘s goal in this intercollegiate competition is to score points for the environment.  Recyclemania is a game that everyone on campus can play. But will they?

“I don’t know anything about Recyclmania,” said VCU student Sam Wood.

Steve Heinitz has been the school’s recycling coordinator for 7 years. Heintiz and his full time staff hope that the competition will raise awareness on campus.