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REFLECTIVE: Smith gave voice
to others' thoughts.
John Todd |
Efforts to improve diversity
among medical students are “doing pretty well,”
says Hannah Valantine, professor of medicine. More than
50 percent of current students are women, and 22 percent
are members of underrepresented minority groups.
But when she looks at the figures that tell the story
of faculty diversity, Valantine is not pleased. “As
you move through to residencies and faculty, the numbers
diminish considerably,” the cardiac transplant
specialist says. “The faculty is 25 percent women,
and the senior faculty is 15 percent women; the percentage
of African-Americans is 1, and of Hispanics is 3. Not
good.”
As the newly appointed senior associate dean for diversity
and leadership, a half-time post, Valantine aims to
improve these figures over the next three years. She
is launching a program that will train senior faculty
to be mentors to junior faculty, and will coach women
and underrepresented minorities on navigating administrative
responsibilities and grant writing. “The issue
is sufficiently important not to leave it to chance,
but rather have it institutionalized in the fabric of
the school,” she says.
Indeed, this initiative comes from the top. “This
is the dean’s mandate,” Valantine says.
“I’m just the commander in the field.”
At the school’s strategic planning retreat in
late January, actress and former drama professor Anna
Deavere Smith presented a one-hour performance on diversity
based on her interviews with several faculty members
and students. “What I’m trying to do is
take part of what these people have said and put it
in a larger collage of the whole community,” Smith
told Stanford Medicine. |
