Anderson, McGhee lead discussion about diversity and inclusion among UNC IT staff
October 30, 2015
Kathy Anderson, PhD, associate dean for information technology and project planning at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, says she engineers her schedule every year to make sure that she can attend UNC’s Carolina Technology Consultants (CTC) retreat, held this year on Oct. 27.
Anderson said she is humbled and amazed by the achievements of information technology personnel at UNC-Chapel Hill and is impressed with the way the university’s IT teams collaborate to ensure innovative and secure technology services.
Members of the IT diversity panel were (l-r) Kushal Dasgupta, Dr. Marco Barker, Tim Shearer, Dr. Kathy Anderson, Maribel Carrion, O.J. McGhee and Donovan Dolph.
This year, she proposed to leaders of the retreat that the meeting include a forum on diversity and inclusion among UNC IT staff members – and she had a great suggestion about who could plan such a forum – namely, O.J. McGhee, IT manager in the Gillings School’s Instructional and Information Systems group.
McGhee, newly appointed chair of the Carolina Black Caucus, which represents UNC’s African-American faculty and staff members, worked with members of the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative to plan sessions on “Recruitment and Creation of a More Diverse Pipeline” and “Staff Retention and Development.”
“Recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce is a common problem in the IT field,” McGhee said. “It was great not only to collaborate with such a distinguished group of panel members about plausible strategies to address this disparity, but also to see so many IT professionals from the UNC campus who were interested in engaging in the conversation.”
Panel members for the discussion included McGhee, as moderator; Anderson; and:
- Marco Barker, PhD, senior director for education, operations and initiatives for diversity and multicultural affairs at UNC-Chapel Hill and clinical assistant professor in the UNC School of Education;
- Tim Shearer, MSLS, director of library and information technology in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science;
- Kushal Dasgupta, MSA, associate vice chancellor of advancement services at North Carolina State University;
- Maribel Carrion, senior director of student administrative applications in UNC-Chapel Hill’s IT Services division; and
- Donavan Dolph, consulting systems engineer at Cisco.
“I felt incredibly energized by the Diversity & Inclusion in IT sessions,” Anderson said. “We know that diversity and inclusion in IT is not where we could hope, either in the tech industry as a whole, or here at UNC. It was valuable to come together in the forum to introduce issues, acknowledge challenges and barriers, and learn about some opportunities and solutions. I already have a few ideas I’m going to put into action to improve how my organization recruits and retains talent.”
Anderson and McGhee said they were grateful to those who helped initiate what they hope will be a continuing conversation in the UNC IT community.
