Officer made permanent

By Allie Blood

Published May 6, 2008

After, two years it became official for Interim Chief Diversity Officer Roger Worthington, with a permanent appointment to the position by Deputy Chancellor Michael Middleton on Monday.

The chief diversity officer is head of the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative and charged with promoting diversity on the campus.

MU spokesman Christian Basi said the main difference is that Worthington’s position is now permanent. Basi said he is unsure if the position’s responsibilities differ.

At the MizzouDiversity Summit on Monday, Worthington said he aims to promote more dialog on campus, linking people of different backgrounds. Worthington said the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative doesn’t only focus on race and gender, but also traits such as sexual orientation and language preference in its efforts to improve the campus climate. Change, he said, will be gradual because large-scale organizational change is a slow process.

“You will probably not see a whole host of specific identifiable changes that will take place immediately,” he said. “But issues that have been discussed (at the summit) will be pulled together, and we will start working.”

Specifically, Worthington recommended that schools and colleges within the university put together a diversity resource team to more actively work toward addressing diversity.

“While some colleges have one person or a couple of people that ‘do diversity’, most often I think there is not a team that is recognized as a group that has some kind of level of responsibility to addressing issues,” Worthington said.

As leader of the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative, Worthington promoted affirmative action and diversity on campus. The initiative is about 3 years old and was designed to promote diversity to attract teachers and students. Worthington is a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, according to the news release. Worthington was also an assistant professor in the Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology at MU.