William Paterson University administrators and faculty sought to understand how members of our campus community perceived the institution in terms of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. To this end, administrators collaborated with the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) to administer the HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey to full-time faculty, staff and students in December 2019 and January 2020. For this report, we analyzed the data from the HEDS survey to understand perceptions of three key areas of campus climate and how they varied by race and gender: (1) the overall campus climate, (2) sense of belonging, and (3) support for the recruitment and retention of students, faculty and staff who are members of historically marginalized groups.
