In the second “Meet the Cabinet” series on Oct. 2 with the Colorado College Student Government Association (CCSGA), College Diversity Officer Rosalie Rodriguez briefed members on an upcoming Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) climate survey that will be sent out to students, faculty and staff in the coming months.
The series is headed by Student Body President Royce Hinojosa ‘26, where members of CCSGA will meet with cabinet members sporadically throughout the year in order to align their work.
“A large goal of mine is to better contextualize CCSGA’s work representing students within the entire ecology of the college,” said Hinojosa. “This series allows us to better understand where student voice is lacking in cabinet-level decisions in order to more efficiently and effectively leverage our representative capacity.”
In her address to CCSGA, Rodriguez outlined a DEI climate study that was sent out to students, faculty and staff in 2021 to gauge students’ sense of belonging and equity at CC. The Office of Institutional Equity and Belonging plans to send out another survey to see if student sentiments have changed over the past four years. The previous survey primarily focused on race, but the new one will be more comprehensive, said Rodriguez.
According to Rodriguez, responses showed that roughly 40% of CC students felt like they only partially mattered on campus. In the new survey, the Office of Institutional Equity and Belonging will be able to determine if there has been an increase in campus belonging. Rodriguez said that the office will also be comparing the data with similar colleges, such as Macalester College, to determine what changes can be made.
Rodriguez said that after the school gathers the results from the survey, the next steps are to “gather narratives” from students who feel like they do not belong and use those to come up with campus-wide solutions.
This DEI climate survey will also act as a guide for each of the 12 divisions of campus leadership to develop individual plans to increase belonging following a rubric that assesses DEI activity, according to Rodriguez. The aim is to obtain an accurate representation of student, faculty and staff attitudes toward belonging across the campus.