8:00-8:30
Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:30-8:45
Welcome
Paula Varnes Fussell
UF Vice President for Human Resource Services
               
Logistics
Larry Ellis
UF Director of Institutional Equity & Diversity

8:45- 10:00
Hiring Foreign Nationals and EEO Implications
Yvette McKinney
Faculty and Scholar Services
Univeristy of florida
Cecil Howard, JD
Charter Officer for the City of Gainesville
Institutional Equity & Diversity Offic

Hiring Foreign Nationals can be challenging in several aspects of compliance and diversity.  Getting the hire right from the start can be a cost and reputation savings for your institution.  One complication that we sometimes face is which comes first the “student” or “employee.”  This session will explore valid searches, sponsorships, prevailing wage and other federal guidelines.

10:00-11:00
Ledbetter Interpretations after One Year
Janet Balanoff, Director, EO/AA
University of Central Florida

Get to know the actual EEOC enforcement guidelines for The Lilly Ledbetter Act, which was passed more than one year ago. Consider your institution’s salary policy in light of the factors now found to be irrelevant. If you are awarding TIPs (Teaching Incentive Program), RIAs (Research Incentive Award), counteroffers to match internal or external offers: understand how EEOC views them in salary equity claims. Pace through a department’s salary review to understand EEOC’s probable reaction.

11:00-12:30
The Impact of New Race and Ethnicity Codes
Dr. Robert L. Harris
Professor Africana Studies and Research Center

This presentation will examine the historical context for the definition of race and ethnicity in the United States and change in categorization over the twentieth century. It will consider the conundrum posed by the new reporting categories in possible over-counts and undercounts of students and employees. Moreover, it will explore initial problems for internal and external comparisons of data. The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger acknowledged that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest in the context of university admissions.” In the companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the court ruled against the use of quotas and race/ethnicity as a primary variable in admissions. Moreover, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested that 25 years from now, “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” I will discuss how colleges and universities might still promote a diverse and inclusive student body, staff, and faculty in the context of the new race and ethnicity codes and the extent to which affirmative action will be relevant within a generation.

12:30-1:30
Lunch

1:30-3:00
A Sustainable Approach to Achieving Broad Diversity
Jamie Keith
General Counsel
University of Florida

Jamie Lewis Keith, Vice President and General Counsel of the University of Florida, will speak about the national, state and institutional imperatives to increase the broad diversity of the faculty and student bodies at institutions of higher education. She will address approaches that are both effective and legally sustainable and the importance of forging productive partnerships among program and legal leaders to design and implement successful diversity efforts. Ms. Keith will provide examples of some race and gender- neutral diversity criteria (i.e., criteria apart from race and gender), that are critical to achieving an institution’s mission, do not trigger legal restrictions, improve the climate for diversity on campus, and also provide the ancillary benefit of increasing racial and gender diversity. Ms. Keith will provide an overview of a national law and diversity project that she is co-directing with colleagues from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, participation by the Association of American Universities, and funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation. This project, which focuses on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields but is helpful in all fields, seeks to provide substantive legal resources to college and university general counsels and to build partnerships of policy/program and legal leaders in order to make measurable progress in increasing diversity of STEM faculties and students in the next five to six years.

3:00-3:15
Break

3:15-4:15
The Obama Effect -- Minority Surge Voters and Banning Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
Daniel A. Smith
Associate Professor, Political Science Interim Director, Political Campaigning Program
University of Florida

Did minority voters—drawn to the polls by the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008—vote for the Democratic Party nominee, and then vote to ban gay marriage in Florida? If one looks at reportage in the mainstream media, punditry in the blogosphere, and self-reflection within the gay community itself, there is ample reason to believe that such a causal relationship existed in 2008. A more rigorous analysis, using survey data and county-level data, suggests that the causal linkage fails to hold. While African Americans in particular are less likely tha whites to support same-sex marriage for gay and lesbian couples, their viewpoint is not monolithic. Education, more so than race, helps to explain levels of support for banning gay marriage across racial and ethnic groups.