Washburn University’s Diversity Initiative is opening Washburn’s second diversity climate survey from Feb. 11 until Feb. 25. The survey will be available to all faculty, staff and students through a direct link that will be available in my.washburn next week.  

The survey is designed to help the Washburn community understand how well campus is doing with a variety of diversity issues including what we need to do better, how different groups on campus experience diversity in classrooms or outside of the classrooms, what particular groups may or may not feel comfortable on campus and the survey helps figure out different ways to address these issues. 

“We know that the campus population is becoming more diverse and I think that’s fantastic,” said Kim Morse, associate professor of history. “But what we learned very clearly from the first survey was that students from diverse backgrounds don’t experience campus in the same way as the people from dominant backgrounds. And we need to figure out how to help make that better in terms of supporting diverse backgrounds and also help the dominant population understand the importance of diversity.” 

The last diversity climate survey was in 2010 and had over 1,200 people who participated and completed the survey. This year Diversity Initiative hopes to surpass that number. 

“The last survey was extremely enlightening,” said Morse. “Not just in terms of the number of people who took the survey but because of the comments they left. I strongly encourage students to take a couple minutes to leave comments on the survey. Suggestions are extremely important as we’re trying to incorporate more populations on campus in terms of race, ethnicity, religion and nationality so that we can become a campus that is truly global.” 

The survey takes no more than five minutes to complete. 

“Students should participate in the survey because it gives them a chance to share their voice instead of sitting back and wishing someone would listen to them once in a while,” said Stephen Potter senior history major. “If you don’t participate then you are just silencing yourself.” 

For more information about the survey contact Kim Morse at [email protected] and be sure to check my.washburn for the survey’s link.