Dr. Susan Rankin of Rankin Climate, which is serving as the outside consultant for UNM Health & Health Sciences climate survey, defines campus climate as, “the current attitudes, behaviors, standards and practices of employees and students of an institution.” The climate is often shaped through personal experiences, perceptions and institutional efforts.
Dr. Susan Rankin of Rankin Climate, who is serving as a consultant for our UNM Health & Health Sciences climate assessment, defines campus climate as, “the current attitudes, behaviors, standards and practices of learners, trainees, staff, and faculty of an institution.” Climate is shaped by personal experiences, perceptions, and institutional efforts.
Dr. Rankin’s research shows that positive personal experiences with positive perceptions of campus climate generally facilitate successful professional outcomes. Examples of successful outcomes include positive educational experiences, healthy professional identity development, productivity, sense of value, and overall well-being for learners, trainees, staff, and faculty.
This assessment is a vital initiative to support inclusive excellence, belonging, and equity on campus. Creating and maintaining a community environment that respects individual needs, abilities, and potential is critically important. A campus climate that fosters belonging is grounded in mutual respect and inclusion. A positive climate is nurtured by civil dialogue and interactions, and is foundational to UNM Health & Health Sciences.
After a thorough review of potential vendors, the Climate Assessment Core Group selected Rankin Climate, LLC to help us in this effort. Rankin Climate has conducted over 230 campus climate assessment projects over the last 20 years. Dr. Kadian McIntosh and Dr. Becky Crandall from Rankin Climate are the project leads who are partnering with the CAWG.
Dr. Rankin, who founded Rankin Climate, is an emerita faculty member of Education Policy Studies and College Student Affairs at The Pennsylvania State University and a senior research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education. She has extensive experience in institutional climate assessment and institutional climate transformation based on data-driven action and strategic planning. Dr. Rankin has conducted multi-location institutional climate studies at more than 230 institutions across the country. She developed and utilizes the Transformational Tapestry model as a research design for campus climate studies. The model is a “comprehensive, five-phase strategic model of assessment, planning and intervention. The model is designed to assist campus communities in conducting inclusive assessments of their institutional climate to better understand the challenges facing their respective communities” (Rankin & Reason, 2008).In reviewing efforts by other universities that conducted comprehensive climate studies, several best practices were identified. One was the need for external expertise in development, implementation, and summation phases. Administering an assessment on sensitive subjects like campus climate is likely to yield higher response rates and provide more credible findings if led by an independent, outside agency. Members of an academic community may feel more comfortable to respond honestly to an assessment by an outside entity.
We believe the assessment process itself is informative. We have sought and received commitment from the UNM Health & Health Sciences senior leaders that data will be used to plan for an improved climate at The University of New Mexico Health & Health Sciences. This work dovetails with the current UNM Health & Health Sciences Strategic Planning process and UNM 2040 and will inform our goals and priorities. The results of the assessment will enable us to make informed, lasting changes to promote a climate of fairness and equitable access for all.
We hope all learners/ trainees, faculty and staff at the UNM Health & Health Sciences participate. Every response matters and is valuable in providing the most beneficial feedback and results.
Confidentiality is vital to the success of campus climate research; particularly as sensitive and personal topics are discussed. While the assessment cannot guarantee complete confidentiality because of the nature of multiple demographic questions, the consultant will take multiple precautionary measures to enhance individual confidentiality and the de-identification of data. No data already protected through regulation or policy (e.g., Social Security number, campus identification number, medical information) is obtained through the survey. In the event of any publication or presentation resulting from the assessment, no personally identifiable information will be shared.
Confidentiality in participating will be maintained to the highest degree permitted by the technology used (e.g., IP addresses will be stripped). The assessment will be run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security to reduce risk of improper data capture. We will not report any findings for groups of fewer than five individuals, because those “small cell sizes” may be small enough to compromise confidentiality. Instead, the consultant and the college will combine the groups or take other measures to eliminate any potential for demographic information to be identifiable. Additionally, any comments submitted in response to the assessment will be separated at the time of submission so they are not attributed to any individual demographic characteristics. Rankin Climate will redact any identifiable information submitted in qualitative comments.
Participation in the assessment is completely voluntary and participants do not have to answer every question and can skip any questions they consider to be uncomfortable.
Information in the introductory section of the assessment will describe the manner in which confidentiality will be guaranteed, and additional communication to participants will provide expanded information on the nature of confidentiality, possible threats to confidentiality, and procedures developed to ensure de-identification of data.
UNM Health & Health Sciences’ IRB will have reviewed and approved the assessment design prior to any data collection.
Rankin Climate has conducted climate assessments at more than 230 institutions across the nation and developed a repository of tested questionsThe Inclusive Excellence Council DEI Executive Officers, At Large Representatives, Committee Co-Chairs and/or Content Experts were invited to serve on the Climate Assessment Working Group (CAWG) to assist in contextualizing the assessment for UNM Health & Health Sciences and to capitalize on the many assessment efforts already undertaken. The CAWG will work with Rankin Climate to develop the assessment questions. The team will review selected assessment questions from the consultant’s tested collection and will also include additional questions informed by focus group results.
It is important that all participants feel included and be able to identify themselves in response choices. The goal is to reduce the number of respondents who need to use the free text option in their responses to assessment questions.
The primary investigator from UNM Health & Health Sciences for the IRB process is Valerie Romero-Leggott, MD, Vice President and Executive Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer, at The University of New Mexico Health Sciences & Health Sciences. Our IRB will review and approve the design prior to any data collection.
Rankin Climate will provide the final report that will include: an executive summary; a report narrative of the findings based on cross tabulations selected by the consultant; frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations of quantitative data; and content analysis of the textual data. The reports provide high-level summaries of the findings and will identify themes found in the data. To ensure participant confidentiality, generalizations for populations are limited to those groups or subgroups with response rates of at least 30%. The CAWG will review draft reports and provide feedback to the consultant prior to public release.
UNM Health & Health Sciences has worked with the consultant to develop a research data security description and protocol, which includes specific information on data encryption, the handling of personally identifiable information, physical security, and a protocol for handling unlikely breaches of data security. The data from online participants will be submitted to a secure server hosted by the consultant. The assessment is run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security and is stored on a SQL database that can only be accessed locally. The server itself may only be accessed using encrypted SSH connections originating from the local network. Rankin Climate will have access to the raw data. All Rankin Climate analysts have CITI (Human Subjects) training and approval and have worked on similar projects for other institutions. The web server runs with the SE-Linux security extensions (that were developed by the NSA). The server is also in RAID to highly reduce the chance of any data loss due to hardware failure. The server performs a nightly security audit from data acquired via the system logs and notifies the administrators. The number of system administrators will be limited and each will have had required background checks.
The consultant has conducted more than 200 institutional assessments and maintains an aggregate merged database. The data from UNM Health & Health Sciences project will be merged with all other existing climate data stored indefinitely on the consultant’s secure server. No institutional identifiers are included in the full merged data set held by the consultant. The raw unit-level data with institutional identifiers are kept on the server for six months and then destroyed. The consultant will notify the PI/Co-investigators of any breach or suspected breach of data security of the consultant’s server.
Rankin Climate will provide UNM Health & Health Science a data file stripped of any identifiable data in free text fields at the completion of the project.
The assessment will be administered to all students/learners, faculty, and staff within UNM Health & Health Sciences. Micro-climates create an overall climate, so creating opportunities to maximize participation is important as well as maximizing opportunities to reach populations that in the past may not have been robustly included. Rankin Climate recommends not using random sampling as we could fail to reach particular populations where numbers are very small. Furthermore, to center inclusiveness, all members of the UNM Health & Health Sciences must be offered an opportunity to participate.
This assessment has five phases:
Phase 1: (Fall 2022): Focus group data collection
Phase 2: (Fall 2022 and Spring 2023): Survey development using the focus group data collected in Phase I.
Phase 3: (Spring 2023):Survey all students/learners, faculty, and staff within UNM Health & Health Sciences ,
Phase 4: (Fall 2023): Report results to all learners/students, faculty, and staff within University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center UNM Health & Health Sciences .
Phase 5: Convene working groups to determine priorities, action plan and timeline to advance a positive campus climate whereby community members have positive educational experiences, healthy professional identity development, productivity, sense of value, and overall well-being for learners, trainees, staff, and faculty.
As we move through this process, we welcome your questions and comments. Please contact the primary investigator Valerie Romero-Leggott, MD, Vice President and Executive Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer, The University of New Mexico Health Sciences to discuss any questions and comments.
To be determined following Rankin Climate meeting with the Office of Institutional Analytics/HSC Counterparts.
