Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com August 15, 2016 • Worcester Business Journal 7 WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR BUSINESS? Massachusetts has been widely recognized as a national leader in driving the use of renewable energy. A big part of that success has been the state's renewable incentive programs. With coal and nuclear generating plants coming offline over the next few years, the state faces the challenge of meeting its long term renewable goals while replacing significant generating capacity, all without breaking the bank. The outcome of that process is the state's new energy bill, passed just as the legislature went into recess in August. This special Forum will use a panel of experts to break down the new bill, focusing on how the legislation will affect commercial and large scale users. We'll sort out the winners and losers, and let attendees know how the legislation will affect energy prices as well as future investments in renewables. Don't miss this highly rated annual gathering, where energy sector leaders and business executives will share the latest market intelligence and what it all means to commercial, municipal and other large scale energy users. M a s s a c h u s e t t s ENERGY FORUM Register today! To register or for further event updates: www.wbjournal.com/massenergysummit Massachusetts New Clean Energy Legislation Produced by: Presenting sponsor: Topics of discussion will include: • Solar subsidies • Offshore wind & hydro • C-PACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) Event date: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 Time: 7:30-11:30 AM Location: DCU Center, Worcester Cost: $45 Pre-registration required Keynote Speaker: David W. Cash, Ph.D. Dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston our underrepresented students, having a role model in front of them can make all the difference," said Kristin Tichenor, senior vice president at WPI. In 2015, WPI's student body of 6,047 was made up of 33 percent women and 43 percent minorities, according to the school's website, an increase from 27 per- cent women and 29 percent minorities in 2008. International students represent 13 percent of the study body, and they rep- resent over 80 different countries such as China and Greece. Jones-Johnson will focus on faculty and staff. Data from the Federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows the university's full-time instruc- tional staff was 27 percent women for 2014-2015. Though her concrete long-term plan is still in the works, Jones-Johnson said she expects it will include strategic efforts around attracting women and underrepresented minorities to come to work at WPI. A place at the table Jones-Johnson sees her job as holistic, and thinks talent development and diversity go hand in hand. That's because talent development means helping peo- ple reach their full potential, and diver- sity work means creating the environ- ment in which people feel they can thrive, she said. Jones-Johnson's position was devel- oped out of the former vice president for human resources job. "We've been working for years to grow diversity of our student body, and recognized that we needed to bring in expertise to help us cultivate diversity within staff and faculty population, that that wouldn't magically happen," said Tichenor. Last spring, the university did its first ever campus climate survey, which sought to determine a baseline of where WPI is right now in terms of racial, eth- nic, gender, sexual orientation and gen- der identity diversity. Using a survey from the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, the survey posed ques- tions such as, "Have you ever observed a racial issue on campus?" to "How com- fortable are you?" to gather quantitative data based on qualitative information, Tichenor said. Once results are tallied in the fall, the survey can serve as somewhat of a road- map for Jones-Johnson as she develops diversity initiatives. "It will give us a good snapshot of where we are now, and we can look back and see how far we have progressed," Tichenor said. Need for better representation Nationally, colleges and universities have added chief diversity officers at a steady rate over the last five or six years, said Benjamin Reese, immediate past president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and vice president of the Office for Institutional Equity at Duke University and Duke University Health System in Durham, N.C. Locally, the College of the Holy Cross and the city of Worcester both added chief diversity officers within the last year; Clark University and the University of Massachusetts Medical School also have people in the position. Reese, a clinical psychologist who has done diversity and race relations work for 45 years, said a chief diversity officer is typically the most senior person in an organization responsible for diversity and inclusion strategy – both in specific initiatives and as an overarching univer- sity mission. They are most effective when they report directly to a university president, Reese said, which Jones- Johnson does. "Everyone – particularly senior lead- ers – should be thinking about integrat- ing diversity into everything they do, but there needs to be someone thinking about it 24 hours a day," he said. "It's similar to a CFO. Everyone should be a good steward of funds, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a CFO, who has the major responsibilities for coor- dination of funds." The woman for the job Jones-Johnson is originally from Michigan and has lived in Worcester for seven years. She joined WPI in July from Hartford insurer Aetna, where she was senior human resources business partner. She previously worked for UMass Medical School, where she was director of talent management and implemented a 10-week summer intern- ship and mentoring program for under- represented minority college students with an interest in academic health sci- ence administration, according to WPI. She is still settling into her job and has spent a lot of time over the past month having conversations with faculty, staff and students about their experiences and their ideas about what her job will mean for them. From her conversations so far, she said there is a great under- standing of the competitive marketplace in terms of talent around town, a desire to better leverage existing talent, and a want to make WPI more attractive to people from diverse backgrounds. "It is sort of this holistic view, and I think it's really building on what we've already done, and so the question is, "How do we pull that together into an institution-wide road map that we con- tinue to be committed to?'" she said. For Jones-Johnson, chief diversity officer means being a partner in WPI's strategic process, and being an advocate for the community by understanding what's meaningful to them and commu- nicating that to other members of the leadership team. The university's Office of Multicultural Affairs already has several diversity pro- grams, including one that reaches out to middle and high school students from underrepresented minority back- grounds to introduce them to WPI, help them through the college application process, and teach them about math and science. Jones-Johnson said the question is how to pull all of that existing work together, combine it with new work, and cultivate it into all areas of WPI. That's something she'll better understand through the conversations she continues to have. "Once the students get here, I can't wait to get talking with them and hear about their experiences," she said. n

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