Dear NEOMED community:
The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will soon be sending a survey your way. I’m writing now to let you know what to expect — and why your participation is vitally important.
It is common for institutions of higher education to periodically assess their campus environment with a tool called a climate survey, which solicits employees’ and students’ feelings, opinions and perceptions. Climate surveys help to identify campus needs, with the goal of building a learning and working environment in which everyone feels welcome, safe and respected. In the coming weeks, you will receive a campus climate survey designed to measure the extent to which diversity, equity and inclusivity are present at NEOMED.
The survey was developed by INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the largest and most widely respected diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. NEOMED intentionally selected an outside entity so that everyone who answers the survey can be sure of anonymity. Viewfinder®, the company administering the survey, will keep Identifying information private when it shares the results with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Our team will work with NEOMED’s Office of Institutional Research to analyze the data, looking for trends and areas in need of improvement.
Why we need you:
Information gathered from this survey will help to determine how NEOMED sets objectives aligned with the Strategic Plan and allocates resources towards these objectives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We need a large enough sample size from each population (faculty, staff, and students) to reach statistical significance. I can’t emphasize enough the value of each person’s participation. The more of you who complete the survey, the more data we will have to guide our decisions.
These decisions will affect each of you, as members of the NEOMED community, so we encourage you to participate. And we have added an incentive: There will be an optional prize raffle at the end of the survey. We will randomly select student respondents to receive one of several available prizes, as well as several employees to receive $25 in credit for the campus dining facilities. For privacy, information gathered as part of the prize raffle will be collected and stored separately from the survey results.
Watch your email for the Viewfinder campus climate survey in the coming weeks. Thank you in advance for your participation.
Sincerely,
Andre Burton, J.D.
Vice President for Human Resources and Diversity