CUPPA’s Inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Announced
Public Administration Clinical Associate Professor Kathleen Yang-Clayton Appointed
At a time when most educational institutions are trying to understand and grapple with the seismic shifts in the urban environment and inequities that have festered for generations, UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA) is implementing a resource to help address the historic and cumulative effect of those inequities in higher education.
CUPPA has created a new position of associate dean for diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI), that will systematically address and be responsible for helping to recruit and retain diverse students, faculty and staff, and to develop policies and programs that provide a supportive environment in all of CUPPA’s units.
“The new associate dean will be working with faculty, staff and students to make sure that a focus on DEI permeates all of our activities,” said David Merriman, interim dean of the college. “We are very excited to be adding this position to CUPPA.”
Public Administration Clinical Associate Professor Kathleen Yang-Clayton has been appointed to serve as CUPPA’s inaugural associate dean for DEI. Yang- Clayton will work with CUPPA’s Departments of Public Administration and Urban Planning and Policy and the college’s eight research centers to create programs and policies relative to areas of recruitment and retention, student counseling, current and prospective student diversity and inclusion, and community programming. She will also lead long-term planning and research and monitor internal and external resources to support DEI activities within CUPPA.
“UIC's leadership has asked all departments to create a strategic plan focused on advancing racial equity and I will support that effort in each unit,” said Yang Clayton.
“Prior to COVID-19 and amplified during the pandemic, BIPOC students had been leading discussions and demanding more support to ensure their academic success. We will honor those efforts and begin the process of identifying how to reform institutional practices and operationalize racial equity within specific student programs,” she said.
As the associate dean for DEI, Yang-Clayton will also oversee training and educational programs, projects and activities designed to create and maintain a diverse and inclusive work and educational environment. She will develop and maintain relationships between CUPPA and relevant external/internal programs and organizations that help advance diversity and inclusion.
“Operationalizing racial equity will not be an instantaneous process and will take a coalition of the willing within our college to tackle problems that have persisted for years if not decades. One position or one person should not be responsible for dismantling institutionally racist practices and implementing processes of inclusion - it will take all of us, faculty, staff and students to make this work sustainable and scalable,” she said.
“Professor Yang-Clayton is superbly qualified for this role with a long commitment to these issues and much experience at building bottom-up programs that work in the public sector,” said Merriman.
She brings extensive legislative, advocacy, organizing, applied research, and teaching experience to the new associate dean post. She is also a research fellow at the Great Cities Institute.
Yang-Clayton’s current research focuses on the operationalization of racial equity practices inside of large public organizations that increase the public's trust in government and improves government performance, especially but not exclusively in historically marginalized communities. Her most recently funded work was on the Illinois 2020 Census, providing training and applied data analysis to over 350 nonprofits, public agencies (libraries, public health systems) and local municipalities to increase self-response rate numbers in hard to count communities. She serves as a member of several national initiatives that integrate public administration and racial equity together from the Kettering Foundation, National League of Cities and the International City/County Management Association.
Yang-Clayton received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. She also holds a M.S. in Natural Resource and Agricultural Economics from the University of Arizona and has worked as an agricultural economist for the World Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa.