The Full Senate held its annual fall meeting Oct. 17 to discuss inclusion and diversity at Texas State.
During the meeting, the Full Senate, comprised of departmental liaisons alongside senators, viewed data over Texas State demographics and discussed recruiting faculty and staff of color.
Araceli Ortiz, research associate professor at the LBJ Institute for STEM Education and Research, and Scott Bowman, special assistant to the provost for Inclusion and Diversity, gave a presentation on faculty and student diversity data at the university and why it’s important.
The faculty diversity data presented by Ortiz and Bowman showed 71.9 percent of all faculty and program faculty at Texas State are white or non-Hispanic, 10.9 percent are Hispanic, 4.2 percent are black or African-American, and 11.4 percent are Asian. According to Bowman, students have increasingly complained about Texas State’s faculty not reflecting the diversity of the student population.
Upon viewing the data, Full Senate separated into groups to discuss diversity and inclusion initiatives the university already practices as well as initiatives the university might consider adopting to develop a more diverse workforce.
Faculty Senate Chair Alex White also gave a list of faculty concerns to the Full Senate and talked about potentially changing the name of Senate Liaison and Full Senate come the spring semester.
Following the Full Senate’s adjournment, Faculty Senate named sociology professor Nathan Pino as a new member of the police chief search committee. According to White, the new Chief of Police should be named by the end of the semester.