Evans-Cowley honored for enhancing diversity
Evans-Cowley, associate dean for academic affairs and administration and professor of city and regional planning, has combined commitment and passion with significant administrative skill to create policies and practices that promote diversity and inclusion in the College of Engineering.
Her efforts include a renewed focus on diversity recruiting, enriched onboarding of new faculty, new faculty mentoring approaches and professional development programs for faculty leaders.
“I have been impressed with Jennifer and her efforts to bring forward substantive change to the engineering faculty,” a nominator wrote. “It is clear that she is a skilled and passionate leader, an ardent voice for diversity and inclusion who is able to use the tools of administration to create an environment in which faculty can flourish.”
She played an instrumental role in engineering’s Project CEOS (Comprehensive Equity at Ohio State) Action Learning team, which used university culture survey data to recommend policies and practices that would improve the culture for both underrepresented faculty and the faculty at large.
As associate dean, Evens-Cowley has been able to put the recommendations — including an automatic 50 percent reduction in teaching load for parents who birth, adopt or foster a child; creation of an onboarding process for new faculty; formalization of a mentoring process; creation of a program to increase diversity in the senior faculty ranks; and setting of expectations to include a diversity representative on all faculty search committees — into action.
“Jennifer has done all this work passionately with a firm resolve in her personal commitment to diversity,” another nominator wrote. “Her actions have changed how we view diversity in the College of Engineering and we are all benefiting from the change in culture from these policies.”
She received her doctorate from Texas A&M University in 2000 and has been teaching at Ohio State since 2001.
Award recipients were honored with a plaque and a $1,200 honorarium at a ceremony. The University Senate Committee on Diversity sponsors the award program in cooperation with Human Resources.
