January 28, 2014

Location

21 Penn Tower, Ballam Board Room

Present

Drs. Baum, Bloch, Collins, Goldfine, Heyner, Higginbotham (guest speaker) Meadows, Myers, Salcido, Saunders, Steinberg; Victoria Mulhern (FAPD)

Absent

Broennle, Deren, McCarthy, MacGregor, Paterson, Nikoo (FAPD)

The meeting was called to order by Meadows at 12:10, and the minutes of the December meeting were approved.

Meadows introduced Dr. Eve Higginbotham, Vice Dean for Inclusion and Diversity. Meadows gave a brief description of the history of ASEF and PASEF at Penn. Members of the Executive Council introduced themselves and then Higginbotham described her own professional history.

Higginbotham then presented "Strategic Planning—Office of Inclusion and Diversity". Meadows said that we all understand what is meant by Diversity, but need to learn what Inclusion encompasses. A summary of Higginbotham’s presentation follows: Current state of affairs at Penn, Penn Med has 6% Under Represented Minorities (URM’s; African-American, Hispanic, Pacific Islanders, Native American) 65% male and 35% female on the faculty. Comparable institutions have 8% URM’s.. Additionally, although the proportion of women is increasing, there are few in the top ranks. Process Undertaken: Higginbotham described the process she has gone through in her first 90 days, interviewing more than 100 individuals across the School of Medicine. She then presented a road map of how a culture transforms itself. She stressed that Inclusion means building programs to level the playing field.

Key Learnings

She obtained positive feedback as a consequence of her interviews and could clearly determine progress over the past ten years. Penn is ready and receptive, but not proactive. This presentation was followed by extensive discussion regarding the status of URM's in the residency programs. Fewer than 10% of URM’s match to Penn's Residency programs.

Mission

The mission is to Reaffirm, Recruit and Retain

Dr. Higginbotham will be sending members of the Council a survey from her office and she urged us to respond.

Presidents Report

There is an election coming up and while we have three
candidates for Council (Brian Salzberg, Virginis Livolsi and Sandra Sue Kramer), we need a fourth. Beverly Coleman was suggested. We also need a candidate for President-elect. We need may wish to send a representative to the AROHE meeting in Minneapolis in the summer. It was suggested that Myers should go as President-elect. Administration: Vicki had nothing new to report. Chair searches are ongoing; Medicine will be announced soon. Gary Gilliland has been recruited as VP in the Health System.

Retirement Programs

February 18 in BRB auditorium, Vicki and Hilary will present their "nuts and bolts" program. On March 20th there will be a panel discussion on the second floor of the Bookstore; four people (Jane Alavi, Roger Allen, Steve Dunning and Sal Salcido will each have eight minutes in which to describe their decision to retire.

Retirement Communities

Goldfine and Saunders have identified about 15 retirement communities with Penn faculty residents; they are in the process of collecting their responses to a questionnaire; these will form a valuable resource for people investigating retirement communities.

Spring program There will be a walking tour of the campus architecture, led by David Hollenbeck, when the weather is appropriate. The spring lecture generated much discussion, Goldfine suggested personalized medical care which was finally approved, and Meadows will contact Gary Gilliland.

Service

In the absence of MacGregor, there was discussion of community outreach. Salcido mentioned a book, ‘The Road Half Travelled’ that lists the Penn Community Service Programs. Higginbotham also has a database of programs. Baum recollected that Britton Chance ran a summer program for High School students in which a student would be assigned a research topic and would present the findings at the end of the program. He said it was amazingly successful.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:40 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan Heyner, Ph.D.
Secretary, Treasurer