Research community workshop on embracing diversity

After introductions, the National Working Group for Diversity and Equity Issues advised how it had arrived at the current stage and then the proposed Consortium Model was presented. General questions around the Consortium Model were discussed before breaking out into groups to discuss the key questions as follows:

• Should the consortium investigate a “Quality Mark?”
• Should the initial priority focus on Māori and gender?
• What would be the best funding model?
• Any missing elements?

It was noted that the current Working Group had completed the job it was mandated to do so the proposal will not be further refined at this time.

Each representative at the meeting was asked to take the proposed Consortium Model to their organisation’s management and provide feedback on the proposal to the Society.

The Royal Society of New Zealand agreed to facilitate a meeting of those prepared to send representatives to progress the proposal.

Outcome

The Society thanks those organisations that provided feedback on the National Diversity Consortium proposal.

Since there has been insufficient support for setting up such a Consortium, we will not proceed any further with the proposal.

Stakeholders were subsequently asked if they would be interested in discussing how we might collaborate to develop a national template for collecting and benchmarking diversity data.  To date, only one organisation has indicated an interest in doing this, with most continuing with their own equity goals and measures.

In the meantime the Society will collect its own data and share annually on the website.  The Society encourages all those operating in the research community, to actively collect Diversity data in their organisations, that hopefully can be shared nationally in the future.