The first recommendations from a committee charged with finding ways to implement proposals from last fall’s campus climate study have been released.

The Campus Climate Study Implementation Committee has developed 33 pages of action items to address concerns about Iowa State’s campus diversity.

The final report for the study, conducted by Sue Rankin of Rankin & Associates Consulting, a group that has conducted surveys on other college campuses, came out in November.

“The charge to us is to look at areas of interest, areas of concern from the campus climate study and then develop action items to address those areas,” said Larry Genalo, committee chairman.

Genalo said the work was divided into five goal areas: access and retention, research and scholarship, curriculum and pedagogy, intergroup and intragroup relations, and university policies and service. Each area was also assigned a subcommittee.

“The overall goal of our subcommittee is to achieve an environment on campus where everyone feels welcome, respected and safe,” said Karen Zunkel, chairwoman of the university policies and service subcommittee. “We asked ourselves, ‘What policies do we have in place as an institution? What services are available for employees, staff and students that help us reach this goal?'”

The university policies and service subcommittee met with constituent groups to gather input from a variety of sources, Zunkel said.

Zunkel said the subcommittee took the information gathered from campus input and related it to the campus climate study.

“We tried to figure out action [items] that the institution could implement short-term and some things that would take longer to implement that would help the university create a more welcoming environment,” she said.

The subcommittee looked at other institutions to find out what they have in place for policies and services, she said.

She said the information gathered can be used to recommend specific actions and determine the resources necessary for the action.

“We are proposing to tighten up the diversity requirements for international perspectives so that those courses that count for international perspectives cannot be focused on a single country, but on a number of countries,” said Robert Baum, chairman of the curriculum and pedagogy subcommittee. “It would also include some materials from Latin America, Africa or Asia, and it could not be limited just to Europe.”

Baum said another idea was having orientation for all faculty advisers to help them understand the importance of diversity.

“We hope to do workshops that would encourage faculty to incorporate issues of diversity in their courses and also encourage them to deepen their understanding of the importance of diversity in the general education requirements,” Baum said.

Genalo said after each subcommittee developed its individual list of action items to address specific goals, the committee created its first draft of action plans.

Between now and March 7, committee members will be narrowing the list of recommendations.

The final report to the president and the President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity is due April 15. The committee will look at the report and decide what actions to implement right away and what actions will wait.

“We are talking about implementations that take effect and have an outcome over the next five years — 2005 to 2010,” Genalo said.