Diversity, Equity & Inclusion within the Department of Pathology

By Angela Wu | November 27 2017

Pathology's Plan for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

As part of the University of Michigan's overarching campus-wide strategic plan, the Department of Pathology has formed a committee with the primary goals of engaging our faculty and staff in an open and honest discussion and to brainstorm ideas on how to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in our department. The committe is comprised of both faculty and staff from anatomic pathology, clinical pathology, pathology informatics, and experimental pathology. 

A department survey was conducted in order to collect data on the department's strengths and weaknesses. As a result, the following projects have been completed, or are currently underway.

Completed and Current Projects

  • Through human resources, we have reviewed the gender, racial, and ethnic breakdown of our department to determine areas of improvement.
  • We are reviewing the salaries of our faculty and staff to ensure there is not a gender gap in salary.
  • To increase diversity in our recruitments we are in the process of ensuring a member of the DEI committee is on all recruitment committees.  We are also instituting a novel protocol for determining if we are successfully identifying diverse candidates and recruiting diverse staff/faculty, and we are actively exploring opportunities and tools to improve the diversity of our candidates/recruitments.

  • We are ensuring that all in recruiting and managerial positions undergo unconscious bias training.

  • Human resources is to hold meetings with those in managerial and recruitment positions to explain best practices in enhancing diversity in recruitment. 

  • Human resources is holding meetings with staff and faculty regarding salary and promotion determination/process in an effort to increase transparency.

  • We are in the process of launching a diversity, equity & inclusion portion of the pathology website to include sections such as mission statement, meet the team, “share your stories,” events/meetings, list of mentors, and human resources/reporting links.  This website will be shared with not only with current faculty/staff but will be highlighted in new employee orientations.

  • We sponsored several women from staff and faculty to attend the Leadership Summit for Women in Academic Medicine and Healthcare Conference in May (co-sponsored by University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Ross School of Business, and Michigan Medicine).

  • We nominated several women to attend the Taubman Institute Seminar “Empowering Women to Succeed in Academic Medicine” in June.

  • Members of the pathology DEI committee are participating in professional mentoring skill enhancing diversity (PROMISED) fellowship training and additional training such as “crucial conversations” training. 

Get Involved

For more information and for ways to participate, please visit diversity.umich.edu We would love your feedback. Please send your ideas and input about diversity, equity, and inclusion to path-diversity[at]umich.edu.