Mission & goals

Our purpose within the NAU community

 

Mission

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) makes recommendations to the President and leadership about women’s issues addressing concerns in university policies, practices, and programs to enact constructive change. The NAU Commission on the Status of Women:

• promotes and advocates for gender equity, parity, and inclusivity
• fosters a diverse, safe, and welcoming campus environment
• helps to create a family friendly community

Goal 1: Actively pursue gender equity, parity, and inclusivity at NAU.

Strategies:

• Monitor and assess gender parity regarding equitable pay, promotion, and workload for faculty and staff, and support changes that lead to more equity. Include in this assessment factors such as summer money, start-up funds, sponsored projects, class sizes, teaching loads, resource allocation, assignment of teaching/research assistants.
• Monitor, and assess gender distribution among tenured, tenure track, non-tenure track, and part-time faculty, and support changes that lead to more equity.
• Promote awareness of differential workloads and unrecognized labor, and actively support programs that acknowledge these issues and promote fairness.
• Advocate for transparent, consistently applied evaluation criteria and training of chairs and others in approaches designed to counter unintended or implicit bias.
• Promote and recognize the achievements of women and gender minorities across campus through the CSW Outstanding Achievement and Contribution Award and other awards.
• Advocate for formalized, meaningful, long-term mentorship designed to help women navigate successful careers at NAU.

Goal 2: Cultivate a more diverse, safe, and welcoming campus that embraces and recognizes the contributions, successes, and challenges of our female faculty, staff, and students at NAU.

Strategies:

• Study, monitor and assess unconscious bias, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and gender discrimination at NAU and help to raise awareness of these issues throughout campus.
• Promote and support programs at NAU that address campus safety and inform the community about proper reporting and prosecution of sexual harassment, assault, and gender discrimination.
• Recognize people and organizations that advance diversity through the CSW Outstanding Achievement and Contribution Award and other diversity awards.
• Work with Equity and Access and Faculty Professional Development, promote adequate and relevant mentoring, training, and professional development for faculty and staff on issues of diversity, unconscious bias, and inclusion.

Goal 3: Build community by fostering a family friendly environment and promoting a healthy work-life balance for all faculty, staff, and students at NAU.

Strategies:

• Advocate for a child care center on campus.
• Advocate for at least 6 weeks of paid family medical leave at NAU.
• Advocate for NAU to provide a network of back-up caregivers.
• Advocate for transparent, consistently applied policies regarding flextime, family leave, job sharing and equitable workload and help communicate these policies.
• In collaboration with Human Resources, Faculty Professional Development, Equity and Access, and supervisors promote resources that help faculty and staff negotiate FMLA, flextime, job sharing, and equitable workload.

For more information on NAU’s higher arching mission, vision, and goals, we invite you to visit the Office of the President’s website.