Lehigh University
PA-5: Assessing Diversity and Equity

As part of an agreement with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR), The Lehigh Survey was administered to the entire Lehigh community of students and employees in the fall of 2015 and will be administered during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years. The purpose of the survey is to provide a snapshot of the current state of Lehigh’s climate and also to provide insight into how Lehigh is changing. In sharing the results of the survey, the goal is to foster honest dialogue about diversity and inclusion at Lehigh and to identify strategies to improve our campus climate. The Lehigh Survey was reviewed and approved by Lehigh’s Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research in July 2015. In order to ensure confidentiality, the web-based survey was administered by Lehigh’s Office of Institutional Research. Participation was encouraged by the offices of the President and the Provost, the Office of the General Counsel, Lehigh’s Council for Equity and Community (CEC), as well as several other offices and groups on campus. The survey was launched on October 12, 2015 and remained open until November 10, 2015. Three versions of the survey were administered to accommodate slight variations in questions for each of three groups on campus: students, faculty, and staff.

Through analysis of institutional data on diversity, comparisons between graduation and retention rates for diverse groups, comparisons of student diversity to the diversity of national benchmarks.