Dear member of our UT School of Nursing community:
As part of UT Austin’s University Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, the Diversity & Inclusion Committee at the UT Austin School of Nursing (UTSoN), has created a survey for all students, faculty, and staff to provide feedback about the climate in our school. Results from the survey will help guide the work of our committee by helping us understand where the UTSoN is currently doing a good job of creating an inclusive environment for diversity and where we can improve. Your participation in the survey is critical to ensuring that all voices and perspectives in our school are represented.
We kindly invite you to participate in this survey, which will take about 15 minutes to complete. You will be asked questions about your thoughts and experiences during your time at the UTSoN related to a range of diversity and inclusion topics. You can take it on a computer or smart phone. Your answers are anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer. Results will be only be reported to stakeholders in aggregate form, and only the Chairs of the UTSoN Diversity & Inclusion Committee will have access to the anonymous data set.
If you need clarification regarding some of the terms you see in the survey, please refer to the attached document, which has a list of definitions. Terms will also be listed at the end of this email. You can keep the definitions open in a separate window and refer to them as needed throughout the survey.
Please note: this survey is only about your experiences at the UTSoN, not the broader university community.
We thank you in advance for your participation.
If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Karen Johnson, Associate Professor, UTSoN at drkj@utexas.edu. If you experience any concerns during or after the survey, please reach out to the following resources:
Students:
Counseling and Mental Health Center
512-471-3515
Faculty/Staff:
Employee Assistance Program
512-471-4772
All participants:
Office for Inclusion and Equity
512-471-1849
If you agree to participate, please click on the link below to begin the survey:
https://utexas.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0cta2HqitLHcC21
Thank you for your time!
Sincerely,
The SoN Diversity & Inclusion Committee
Definitions
American Indian (Native American): A person having origin in any of the original tribes of North America who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.
Assigned Birth Sex: Refers to the assigning (naming) of the biological sex of a baby at birth.
Bias: Explicit and/or implicit attitudes, thoughts, or feelings about a person/group of people that are conscious or subconscious and usually considered to be unfair.
Climate: Current attitudes, behaviors, and standards of employees and students concerning the access for, inclusion of, and level of respect for individual and group needs, abilities, and potential.
Discrimination: Discrimination refers to the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person based on the group, class, or category to which that person belongs rather than on individual merit. Discrimination can be the effect of some law or established practice that confers privileges based on of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, etc).
Diversity: differences across a group of people (for example, in gender identity, race, sexual orientation) that derive from demographic traits or life experiences. Most lists of diversity dimensions, including the ones we employ in this survey, are representative and not exhaustive because people may differ on any number of dimensions.
Gender Identity: A person’s inner sense of being man, woman, both, or neither. The internal identity may or may not be expressed outwardly, and may or may not correspond to one’s physical characteristics.
Gender Expression: The manner in which a person outwardly represents gender, regardless of the physical characteristics that might typically define the individual as male or female.
Inclusion: describes the acceptance of, respect for, reflection of, and engagement of diverse peoples and the beliefs, values, and perspectives they may hold.
Microaggressions: brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward any marginalized group, such as people of color.
People of Color: People who self-identify as other than White.
Racial Identity: A socially constructed category about a group of people based on generalized physical features such as skin color, hair type, shape of eyes, physique, etc.
Racism: a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks, that unfairly disadvantages and advantages different individuals and communities and weakens society through a waste of human resources. Includes institutionalized racism, personally mediated racism, and internalized racism.
Sexual Orientation: Term that refers to the sex of the people one tends to be emotionally, physically and sexually attracted to; this is inclusive of, but not limited to, lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, heterosexual people, and those who identify as queer.
Transgender: An umbrella term referring to those whose gender identity or gender expression is different from that traditionally associated with their sex assigned at birth.
Transphobia: A irrational fear of transgender people. Transphobia includes prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence brought on by fear and hatred.