Episode 2 of our diversity, equity, and inclusion series. In this episode, Alexis Clark interviews Dr. Maggie Chorazy and Dr. Paul Gilbert about about the first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion annual report published by the College of Public Health, and how they keep DEI in mind throughout the decision-making process.

Alexis Clark:

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to From the Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. My name is Alexis Clark, and I’m your host. If this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and out of the field of public health.

Alexis Clark:

On this episode, we will continue our discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how the University of Iowa College of Public Health addresses these topics and decision-making. Doctor Chorazy is an alum from the College of Public Health’s Epidemiology PhD program, and now Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and is a clinical associate professor still at the University of Iowa. She also is the newly appointed chair for the College of Public Health’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Doctor Gilbert obtained his PhD in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently an associate professor in the Community and Behavioral Department. Welcome to the show.

Paul Gilbert:

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Margaret Chorazy:

Thanks for having us.

Alexis Clark:

Before we get into our topic, I just wanted to give you both the opportunity to introduce yourselves and explain your background. Maggie, would you like to go first?

Margaret Chorazy:

Sure. Thank you again for allowing us the opportunity to speak with you. As you noted, I am currently serving as the college’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. I’m relatively new to this position, having started, let’s see, last year, on November 1st. So not quite fully a year yet. Previously, I served as our college’s founding director for our undergraduate program in public health. So I’m not new to the administration and the college.

Margaret Chorazy:

The Associate Dean for Academic Affairs is responsible for providing leadership and support, really, in all areas related to student success, which can include things like overall academic planning and assessments, accreditation, instructional learning and support, curriculum development, and, really, lots of other areas. But a new area of accountability for this role, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, is to serve as the point person to ensure the implementation and sustained success of our college’s DEI goals across the different units and departments that we have in the college.

Paul Gilbert:

I’m Doctor Paul Gilbert. As you said, I’m on faculty here in our Department of Community and Behavioral Health. I formerly served as the chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee before Doctor Chorazy took the lead on that this last year. I have always gravitated towards these sort of issues. A large part of my research has been focused on disparities, trying to understand how they happen and what might be intervention points. My primary area of research is alcohol use, use of treatment services when there is a problem, and pathways to recovery. A lot of that, I look at things like gender disparities, racial/ethnic disparities, and sexual orientation disparities. So it’s kind of a natural fit for me to step up. I had been involved in the DEI committee, and to step up to lead it, especially during our period of drafting the strategic plan.

Alexis Clark:

Doctor Gilbert, with your different research interests and your experience with that, has that helped you when serving in different roles, in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Paul Gilbert:

I would say yes, but there was so much more to learn. Yes, it helped me because I was already familiar with the issue of equity and knew something about disparities in health outcomes, at least. But what I knew from my research and other work was primarily what’s going on in the population at large. Shifting the focus to academia and the university setting and training in public health was actually new, and I felt like there was a bit of a learning curve to understand just how the college works, how training in public health works more broadly. So I think it actually makes great sense that Doctor Chorazy, as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, leads our DEI efforts. It dovetails so nicely with that higher level view of our educational mission in academia.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah. I completely agree with that, and I think it says a lot that the College of Public Health is allowing her to serve in that role, to make sure that, when making decisions, diversity, equity, and inclusion is being brought to the table. Doctor Gilbert, since you did really play a vital role in creating the strategic plan, can you tell us how the College of Public Health’s DEI committee was first started and what motivated the College of Public Health to develop this committee?

Paul Gilbert:

Yeah, I’d be happy to. First off, I should say it was definitely not my all of my own effort. It was a group project, group endeavor, all along, everything. To be honest, I don’t know when exactly the DEI committee was formed. It was already a standing committee in the college when I got here in 2015. As a standing committee, it’s one of the regular ones that meets, that draws on students and staff and faculty among the members. The general charge of the committee is to improve both the environment and our activities related to inclusion, collaboration, making sure that everybody here who’s associated with the College of Public Health has the opportunity to thrive, that they’re not just getting through or getting by, but we have a culture and a context here, an environment that really supports people and helps them thrive, as I said.

Paul Gilbert:

In terms of a little bit of background, though, in fall of 2018, we decided to draft a strategic plan as a way to give ourselves a jumpstart on DEI issues. The college all along has always had strategic plans, but we felt like we needed to catch up a bit. The field of public health at large, and especially academic public health, was moving more to the direction of acknowledging that this is something we need to explicitly work on. It’s not just our typical classes, the core classes that we take in, say, epidemiology or policy or biostatistics. But there’s more that we need to be doing in our academic contexts.

Paul Gilbert:

We hadn’t had a plan specifically about DEI, so, from the DEI committee at large, a subgroup got together, and we spent really a full year looking at best practices, at models from other schools of public health, from our peers’ institutions, looking to what they’re doing. We reviewed a lot of data that we have from the campus at large, surveys of students and staff and faculty about the environment that helped us to pinpoint where we need to take action and what sort of action we might need. We went through a really deep and comprehensive and iterative process, and at the end of it, we had a plan with three overarching objectives, and then, within each objective, a number of sub-objectives, and then, within those, action steps. In the end, I think we had probably close to 30 distinct action steps that we were going to take.

Paul Gilbert:

And then we spent the year after that, the 2019-2020 school year, revising it, getting input, editing it, making sure that we had not just involvement, but the buy-in from key stakeholders in the college. One of our principles in coming up with the plan, too, was that it wasn’t going to be just the DEI committee or any particular individual or role, but this had to be a broad effort that involved everybody at multiple levels and in different capacities, that we were all in on our plan for DEI.

Paul Gilbert:

And then, starting in the 2020-2021 school year, that’s when we began implementing our action steps, really working on the nuts and bolts of what we were going to do. And then, just at the end of this last summer, we published our first report. This was part of the strategic plan, that we should have an annual report of our activities for accountability, for transparency. So that is now available on our website, on the college website. We distributed it at new student orientation, so folks coming into the college would be aware of what had been going on. And this is going to be an ongoing process.

Paul Gilbert:

Some objectives were easy to complete. Others we knew were long-term prospects that we’re going to be working on for a while. Eventually, our long-term  idea is that this separate DEI strategic plan will no longer be necessary. It’ll be folded into our college’s comprehensive and overarching strategic plan. That’ll just be a part of it. But in the meantime, leading up to that, this is, as I said, our jumpstart, maybe a kick in the pants that we gave ourselves to get things going. You know what? I should stop here and see, Doctor Chorazy, if you have anything else you want to add to that.

Margaret Chorazy:

Thanks, Paul, for that overview and description. I think it’s also, when we’re talking about our annual report, really important to thank not only Paul and his role in the committee and directing that and pulling the strategic plan together, but also our communications team. So a big shout-out to Dan McMillan and Deb Venzke for the work that they did in partnership with a graphic designer to pull all this together, to achieve one of our goals of increasing transparency through this annual report.

Margaret Chorazy:

For me, I think what were we hoping to achieve by creating this report, or what was my mindset, at least, in thinking about the distribution of the report, we really wanted to create a collegiate document of the activities that our college has engaged in the past year to identify key areas of progress, I think all the while recognizing that this is ongoing work, as Paul has said. Our primary audience in drafting this report was really our CPH community members, students, staff, faculty, alumni, other partners. But we’ll also be sharing this report for other leaders and DEI partners across campus, because we recognize that, as this is ongoing work and as we make progress in some of our key areas, we can learn a lot from others on campus about the work that they’re doing and synergize that effort.

Margaret Chorazy:

As we’re disseminating the annual report now, I think I’m tempering my expectations. On the one hand, being relatively new to the DEI committee in my role as associate dean, I really do want to celebrate the progress that the college has made and the commitment that the college has made to integrating DEI across our core missions of research, education, and engagement. That’s really visible and apparent, I think, in our strategic plan. But I also, on the other hand, want to recognize again that this is ongoing work. As Paul has suggested, we can check off some of the boxes that are already in our plan and think what the next steps are for those areas. But in others, we’ve been sort of slow to move. And so I am really excited, I think, in my role, to be able to bring the different units and departments together in the college to continue to move our strategic plan forward. The annual report is just one way to document some of that work that’s been done behind the scenes.

Alexis Clark:

Thank you for that. Just going off Doctor Chorazy, your new role with being an associate dean and also the chair of this committee, what do you hope to accomplish by the end of your tenure in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Margaret Chorazy:

Great question. As I mentioned in my previous response, the overarching goal for the college and thinking about DEI is really to integrate DEI into those three core missions of research, education, and engagement, and to do so in an atmosphere of mutual respect and authenticity. I think, in essence, we want to create an environment in which all students, staff, and faculty feel valued, feel safe, and are encouraged to bring their whole selves to school and to work.

Margaret Chorazy:

The DEI strategic plan provides a roadmap for us to continue on that journey of achieving those goals, and the DEI committee certainly has, I’d say, primary accountability or primary responsibility in a few key areas within the strategic plan. I think in the next year, we’ll see that the DEI committee will be prioritizing work as it relates to a review of our curricula across the various programs, to ensure that all students in the college receive DEI-focused content and training, and recognizing that this will likely lead to curricular revision, and then that we’ll need to support our faculty during this process. So just by enacting that curricular review, we’ve started a snowball of activity for the college. That review process is kicking off and is underway.

Margaret Chorazy:

I’m also currently working with staff from the Center for Teaching and faculty who teach our MPH core courses to pilot a DEI and teaching practice series, that focuses on inclusive and anti-racist pedagogies. All of that has been generated by the DEI committee’s conversation around infusion of DEI content and skills in our curriculum. So that curricular focus is certainly going to be one major priority especially this fall.

Margaret Chorazy:

I think another area of focus for the DEI committee traditionally, and one that I see continuing forward in time, is that the DEI committee has really worked to foster participation by students, staff, and faculty in various co-curricular learning opportunities around DEI. For example, we host three spotlight events each semester. We just hosted one today, and if I’m looking at my calendar, we have two more events coming up on October 6th and November 1st, which are DEI committee sponsored spotlight events. I think there’s lots of different ways that we could encourage folks to participate in these types of activities of skill building and social network building events, both in and out of the classroom. So I see those as two major areas of focus for the committee.

Margaret Chorazy:

But, as Paul has said, I think what I appreciate most about our strategic plan is that if you review it, you will see that there are accountabilities across multiple different units. And so following up outside of the DEI committee with leaders in those units will be a critical role for me in the next year.

Alexis Clark:

I think it’s important to note again that the highlighting of curricular focus is going to be extremely vital to that new up-and-coming class of public health workforce, because what you all are trying to do is train us in a way that has never been done before, really. Making sure that diversity, equity, and inclusion is included in all of our training programs, I think, is going to be central for us to be successful moving forward.

Margaret Chorazy:

I agree wholeheartedly. I think with that observational access is one of the things that we’re certainly hearing from future employers of our students, that we’re hearing from alumni, the critical need for skill-building and awareness, for cultural humility, and recognizing that in public health practice, we are increasingly serving a diverse community and that we need to also support DEI in the public health workforce.

Alexis Clark:

This next question I invite either of you to answer, or both of you, to provide for the listeners that haven’t had a chance to read over the report yet, can you provide an overview of some of the key points or takeaways from this report?

Paul Gilbert:

Well, sure. I could give you a brief summary of our three major areas in our strategic plan. The first is to enhance educational offerings related to DEI. So that’s where the action step, like Doctor Chorazy talked about, doing the curriculum review, looking for content and where we need to revise things or improve things, that’s where that area falls. But that’s broadly speaking around our educational mission and improving that in light of our DEI issues.

Paul Gilbert:

The second broad area is to recruit and retain and advance a diverse community within the college, so that means both students and staff and faculty. That is not just that we recruit folks to come to the College of Public Health, but that they are successful in whatever path that they’re on, getting to a degree and graduating and going off into careers, or advancing in their careers as staff or faculty within the college.

Paul Gilbert:

As a bit of an aside, I’ll tell you, when we started this process, I had a bit of an aha moment that was, I thought, helpful in thinking about this, reframing or reordering the letters, essentially. What struck me is that when we pay attention to things like equity and inclusion, and by that, I mean the barriers that some people may face, that others don’t, to participation, and I should say full participation in collegiate activities, whether in the classroom, in the building at large, in their careers, whatever their jobs maybe be, that when we pay attention to things like unequal access, those inequities, and when we attend to inclusion, making sure that everybody is feeling valued and able to participate to the extent that they want, then we naturally have diversity.

Paul Gilbert:

A lot of times people start with the D, and before DEI became the go-to acronym, a lot of the field was focused just on diversity initiatives. How do we diversify our classroom or our syllabus or our committee or our meeting, or whatever it may be? But, really, when we take it in a different order, diversity will be the end result. But we have to first pay attention to those equity issues, those inclusion issues. So that’s the second major area of our strategic plan.

Paul Gilbert:

And then the third is really around accountability and transparency, that we wanted to strengthen the collegiate processes around DEI. One of the examples of that is the annual report that we are now providing. Every year we’ll do a report back to the whole college and anybody else outside the college who may be interested so that we can be accountable, saying what we’ve done, maybe what we haven’t done yet, what’s in progress, even what has failed, although I don’t think we’ve had any failures yet. But I think that’s important to have a structure in place, that we’re not dependent on any individuals.

Paul Gilbert:

This is sort of a theme that you may be seeing, that we’re spreading this broadly, that it’s not just people and limited to particular roles, but setting up the whole structure of the college so that this in place, and we can rely on that rather than people who may come and go, or there’s turnover with students coming and graduating or staff and faculty coming or going. Anything else you’d like to add, Doctor Chorazy?

Margaret Chorazy:

Yeah. I think just two things that I’m particularly thrilled about or excited to share that are also updates, I think, to what we’ve shared in our annual report as it relates to that third strategic objective of strengthening the administrative structures and enhancing transparency. So really excited that the news has been shared this week with our college, and I think by the time this episode airs, we will have in place a new manager of DEI activities in the college. Liz Lara will be joining in the College of Public Health, and her primary responsibility will actually be student-facing, so forwarding our student-related mission and activities in these areas, and being another avenue for which our students can also provide feedback and get support. So really excited that Liz will be joining us and that the college has dedicated resources to this position.

Margaret Chorazy:

I think the other thing that I’m … Things that happen behind the scenes, that aren’t always really evident to everybody in our collegiate community, that has an impact in research and teaching and engagement. Our collegiate faculty counsel has worked to develop questions or a series of questions, for faculty to reflect on during the time of their annual review as it relates to service summary of their DEI-related activities and goals. Not just thinking about how maybe they’ve participated in training opportunities like the BUILD workshop here on campus, but also reflecting on how they may have integrated DEI into their research teaching service, their professional activities. I think that the significance of this is that it opens up a space for department chairs and faculty to have these conversations and to reflect on the importance of DEI across our mission. This is just one small way that we can dedicate that time and space to do that with the annual review process.

Alexis Clark:

Thank you both for providing those major takeaways and where we’re headed. So with that being said, I’m sure there had to be some barriers or challenges that you both and the committee have faced while addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Can you share some of those challenges?

Paul Gilbert:

Yeah, I’d be happy to. A couple of things come to mind right away. The first one is that there is a lot of information to try and digest and distill. I’m thinking back to that first year of our planning process where we were searching for best practices, reading up on issues, looking to our peer institutions, looking at our own data. There was just a whole lot to try and take in and figure out our priorities, what do we need to do, coming up with our tailored plan. That was quite a hurdle. There was a bit more than what I expected in terms of being overwhelmed by the information there.

Margaret Chorazy:

Just to add one thing, I think the conversations that I’ve had in the last six or so months, and certainly conversations that I had when we were building the undergraduate program a few years ago, I think one of the challenges has been helping others to recognize the role that they play in supporting the success of these goals that the college has outlined in our DEI strategic plan. So where is our individual opportunity to contribute, and recognizing that joining the DEI committee might be one way, but there are things and actions and things we could do, actions we can take, things we can reflect on, on our day-to-day jobs. I think that’s maybe one of the challenges that I’m experiencing now. It’s not a barrier, but just something to be aware of, that we all have a role to play, and helping people to recognize how they might contribute in their day-to-day.

Paul Gilbert:

I could add one more thought. This is something that was a counterbalance to maybe any barriers. We’ve had great leadership, I think, in Dean Parker for DEI efforts. She has made this a priority for the committee, for the college as a whole, for the department chairs at all levels. She’s really been a strong force supporting this and pushing us forward and saying, “We need to do this.” So for all the barriers that we may have found in whatever way, we’ve also got great support from high up in our leadership here, in Dean Parker.

Margaret Chorazy:

Yeah. I echo that entirely, Paul. I just wanted to say I think one of the things that has been good to see is that resources, not just our time, but financial resources and space to have these conversations, whether it’s a conversations update at our executive committee meetings or the spotlight events, we’ve created the time and the space and provided resources, or the dean has, to achieve these goals. And so it’s great to see that we have a plan with action steps to achieve our goals over time and that there are resources dedicated by the college to achieving those.

Alexis Clark:

Thank you both for that. From a student’s perspective, I think one of the resources things that I’ve seen, and this is just a mere perspective as someone that has not went to any of the DEI committee meetings, but the fact is that you do have a table full of not only leadership but also student service personnel, researchers, different academia, evaluating how important this is for the future. So I think that screams volumes.

Alexis Clark:

Our last question for today is a question we like to ask on a majority of our podcasts. What is one thing you thought you knew but were later wrong about? There’s no limitations to this answer.

Paul Gilbert:

That is a great question. Boy. Let me think for a moment. There must be so many things that I thought I knew and was wrong about. Since we’ve been talking about the DEI strategic plan, I think one thing, I went into it thinking that, oh, this is going to be pretty straightforward. We’ll be able to knock something out by the end of this academic year, when, really, it pretty much took us a full two years or twice as long as I had expected to go through this whole process and get the buy-in, get everybody on board, get it approved and ready to start implementing. I think I envisioned just charging ahead a little quicker. But I’m really glad that we took the time that we did. I think it’s a really well-crafted plan, and that was necessary. So that’s one thing that comes to mind quickly that I was wrong about, the time that it would take to go through this process.

Margaret Chorazy:

I’m sitting here laughing at myself. And just a recognition of where we are now, 18 months into this COVID pandemic. First off, congratulations to anybody who’s listening to this podcast and made it to where they are today, whether you’re a student who started class successfully this semester or a faculty member, because getting back into the classroom where somebody in our public health workforce who continues to do the work every day, 18 months into this pandemic, and the teaching online, I thought I knew how to run a Zoom meeting. But I’m not sure I do. So yeah. I think I’m still learning how to engage in this new space of in-person and online and work-life balance.

Alexis Clark:

It’s those Zoom updates. Every month, you get a new update, and every month, something’s different. So I’m still learning with you, I would say. Well, thank you both for coming on to the show today. I know this is a very important topic, and I really appreciate that you both were willing to come on and discuss what the University of Iowa College of Public Health is doing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion within the college.

Paul Gilbert:

Alexis, thank you for inviting me. I want to say I think this is really indicative of the broad interest that you’re devoting a podcast episode to this topic. I also just have to close by saying I’m a fan of the podcast. So thank you very much.

Margaret Chorazy:

Thank you for the invitation, Alexis.

Alexis Clark:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Doctor Chorazy and Doctor Gilbert for coming on with us today. This episode was hosted, written, edited, and produced by Alexis Clark. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues. Our team can be reached at CPH-GradAmbassador@UIowa.edu. This episode was brought to you by the University of Iowa College Public Health. Stay happy, stay healthy, and keep learning.