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Community Engagement

To make certain the strategic planning process included the voice of Dartmouth constituents, IDE invited the entire campus community – undergraduate students, graduate/professional students, postdocs, staff, and faculty to participate in community engagement sessions in spring 2022. All community members were invited to participate and managers were encouraged to provide paid release time to ensure staff across the institution were able to engage. In addition, IDE attended or hosted sessions with various governance groups across campus. During these discussions, individuals and groups had the opportunity to review a proposed framework for the strategic plan, engage with proposed DEI priorities, and offer feedback.

The Community Engagement Themes Report provides a summary of common themes that emerged through engagement with members of the Dartmouth community during these sessions. Additional information regarding attendees, session formats, and the session timing is found in the Appendix. To refine these results, all members of the Dartmouth community were invited to review this report and complete a ranking of these themes. This additional community engagement step allowed for asynchronous input and further prioritization of the proposed actions in Toward Equity.

Summary of Community Engagement Themes

This is a bar graph showing the themes across community engagement sessions. With 633 total comments, 103 were about accountability for commitments, 87 about equitable processes and policies, 67 regarding DEI skill development for leaders, 63 about institutional alignment across schools and divisions, 56 regarding community involvement and input, 50 about institutional responsibility for community belonging and well-being, another 50 about resources to actualize change, 49 about communication and transparency as elements of change, 32 about recruitment and retention efforts to sustain a diverse community, and the last 76 were about other themes or non-DEI issues.
Summary of themes from community engagement sessions with staff, students, and faculty. The total number of comments across all meetings was 633.