This week, The Scout sat down with Bradley’s first-ever Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Warren Anderson for a Q&A session.
Anderson was hired in November and started in the position early this semester.
The following interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Q: How important is this position in your eyes, especially considering that you’re the first VP of DEI at a predominantly white institution like Bradley?
Anderson: It’s immensely important, specifically on the last point that you made [of] this being a PWI. This is an opportunity for us to really build a culture [so] that people don’t think about this work as solely for students of color, or employees of color … [The] majority of students need to understand that they’re going into a very much more global society than we’ve ever had.
The opportunities are immense, and I want students to leave here with something that really supplements that piece of paper they walk across the stage with … The one thing I would hate is for you to walk out of here with a Bradley degree and not be able to sustain a lucrative career because you can’t deal with being in an environment where people don’t look like you or don’t think like you, or you don’t know how to engage with someone who doesn’t have your sense of thinking. This is really critical.
Really, the biggest point for me going for this position was because it was brand new [and] I really get to work with the leadership team here, to build what I think could be a best-in-class DEI division. In higher education, we have the talent, we have the commitment, we have the desire to want to do it. It really is just a matter of pulling all of our resources from all across the institution [and] coming up with that shared vision of where we’re going, and actually doing the work.
Most of what it takes for us to do groundbreaking work in this area’s already here. It’s not money. It’s people actually wanting to do the work that, quite frankly, most people run from.
This is an opportunity for Bradley to really take the lead initially in the greater Peoria region. But I think we could, at the very least in another year, be recognized as the best in the state around this work. I absolutely believe that.
Q: What do you see as a starting point for the work that has to be done in DEI?
WA: That’s the hard part because there hasn’t been a concerted effort around this. Diversity and Inclusion, the office that has been known as diversity and inclusion, they did a really good job of trying to build capacity around this, but they were limited in terms of staffing and in terms of resources, mainly because there wasn’t a true direction around this work at a university level. What we’re trying to do now is make it so that we really show that this is critical, this is important work for us.
Our goal is to make sure that we define what the institution’s values are, and hold everybody accountable to that.
Warren Anderson
Whether or not that’s increasing the amount of training we do, whether or not that’s doing initiatives that provide high visibility to this work. Making it so that people are not scared of this work. This work is not meant to change anyone’s values or beliefs. You can believe in what you want to believe, you can have your own sets of morals, whatever they may be. Our goal is to make sure that we define what the institution’s values are, and hold everybody accountable to that.
But I want to make sure that people get excited about this work. There’s a lot of work already happening. People may not recognize it as DEI. There’s a lot of work that’s happening and people just may not know that it’s actually happening.
Q: You mentioned training — what would you see that training looking like?
WA: There’s a difference between training and education and development. All three of those things are important. When I talk about training, that’s just making sure that everybody has access to the work that is going to put us on a solid foundation, understanding what we’re doing.
How do we then take that training, which will not be just one and done, [so that] it really will build upon the last training you went to? How do we then build that into the education enterprise that we have? How do we encourage faculty to put principles of DEI into their pedagogy and teaching in the classroom? How do we make sure that we have enough courses that really support the cultural competency of our students?
More importantly, how do we then engage with the community to bring those resources to campus here? One of the mistakes that most institutions make is they do programming, education training, just for their campus community. But most of our students, just about all of our faculty and staff, leave campus eventually, whether or not to go downtown to a restaurant or to a supermarket, or living in the community. So it’s really incumbent upon us to build these bridges out into the community.
But there really is an opportunity to make training, development [and] education a part of the everyday here, and it’s not seen as something that’s extra that we are forcing people to do.
Q: What have you seen from the university that shows that they’re committed to building up an infrastructure that allows you to create that access?
WA: So without going into too much detail, because there will be more coming out in the next couple of weeks, I took a plan of action to the president and said, “This is what I think we need to get started to reach the goals that we put out there.” So he and I met with the chief financial officer to figure out how we can make this work.
Essentially, what I did was [focus] on what the priorities of the institution are. We’re focusing on access, we’re focusing on retention. We’re focusing on institutional training, we’re focusing on climate assessment. So with the plan that I took to him, we have been given the resources that I think could really set us on a very different trajectory here.
Bradley is going to look very different.
Warren Anderson
So the university, I think, has gone far and above what has been here, historically. But I can tell you, they’re not done, we’re not done. I’m not okay with being just average. It’s not enough that we had an office and we got this position, which was critical. But now there’s someone here that really is going to try to develop a strategy moving forward for the entire institution. And we have to invest in that.
Investing in this just makes sense. If you think about it, you know, we’re a private school, tuition-driven … If we can put money into something that’s going to help retain more students, [it’s] better for the bottom line. It really is a business imperative to invest in this area, and invest in an area that we quite frankly, have not invested in before, with the expectations that were placed on diversity and inclusion before. This is an opportunity for us to really step up and show what we can do when you invest in something that really is going to show results.
So at the very least, what I can tell you is that when you all come back [to campus after the summer], as it relates to DEI, Bradley is going to look very different. The expectations are going to be very different, the accountability is going to be very different.
Q: What feedback have you heard from students in terms of the culture here and their experiences?
WA: Students are, by and large, extremely excited about this work.
Students want to see this work transpire across the institution. Students want to see more people here who are representative of them. So whether or not you identify as female, whether or not you identify as LGBTQ, whether or not you identify as international, you want to see people who look like you and want to see an environment where you feel as if you can be your best and authentic self.
Students have talked about examples of bias and discrimination that they faced and a perceived lack of accountability that is unacceptable in any environment.
That’s what I’m working towards: making sure that everyone at the institution sees themselves here, sees a place for themselves, but more importantly, remains proud to be a part of the Bradley community.
But I often have to remind people, patience is truly the virtue here. I am a firm believer in taking your time and doing things right. That allows you to go a lot faster in the future, if you have the proper foundation built.
Q: If you could sum up your goals in a sentence or a few words, how would you describe what you’re trying to do?
WA: I’m trying to, with the creation of this division, build a culture that becomes so ingrained that it becomes the new norm – the new Bradley way. I’m trying to build a culture where we instinctively think about DEI through any lens that we’re thinking about [and make] sure that every single policy practice and procedure is fair [and] is equitable.
I’ve never been this excited about work that we haven’t even done yet.
Warren Anderson
I’m trying to build an environment where in 10 years, people will say “Why do we need a DEI division?”, because it’s all fully ingrained in what we do.
Now is that truly pie in the sky? Absolutely. But I think we can make such a big argument in the near future, that we have the capacity to do it, that we have the will to do it, and that we’re putting the resources behind actually doing it.
I honestly can say this, and this is not hyperbole. I’ve never been this excited about work that we haven’t even done yet. This truly is going to provide opportunities for faculty, staff and students to engage in this work in a way that they have not before here.
And that’s a testament to the leadership here. I’m happy to be a part of the leadership team because in my brief time with them, there’s not one person sitting around that table who was not fully on board and fully invested in making this work, work in their respective divisions and couldn’t be happier about that.
