Diversity team

Diversity Management, or Managing Diversity, means making use of diversity and its inherent potential but also creating an open corporate culture that excludes any kind of discrimination and promotes equality.

Based on the idea to counteract discrimination of individuals for personal characteristics, Diversity Management addresses the following general fields of action: prevention of discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, age, handicaps or sexual orientation. These personal characteristics are the subject of the General Equal Treatment Act (also known as anti discrimination law) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Diversity Management is a future-oriented topic and constitutes a management approach that employs and promotes individual diversity, specifically in personnel and organization development.

Diversity Management Team

The diversity team was established early in the summer semester of 2010 and meets at regular intervals to discuss, integrate and promote diversity management topics at Witten/Herdecke University. Contact for the diversity team: Kirstin Schütz.

The diversity team includes works council members, representatives of the human resources department, and students. 

Objectives

The diversity team is in charge of the design and implementation of a diversity concept for UW/H, with the idea to integrate this important topic in all areas and at all levels of the organization on a long-term basis. 

Unlike state universities, UW/H is not obliged by law to introduce, e.g. a gender concept to ensure equality. But several requirements for (re)accreditation of degree programs, as well as evaluations and recommendations by the Science Council strongly suggest such a concept. In any event, UW/H appreciates and respects the social diversity of staff and students. Several student, works council and executive board initiatives have resulted in plans to create a formal context for diversity management, to address specific topics, and to design and implement a more comprehensive diversity strategy that corresponds to the university's mission statement. The core elements of the UW/H mission statement (encourage freedom, strive for truth, promote social responsibility) are an ideal starting point for anti discrimination strategies.

The diversity team already discussed potential fields of action for diversity management and identified approaches of relevance to UW/H. From a first wider range of topics such as gender, family, disability, race, religion, age and sexual identity, the diversity team will focus on three as a first step: gender, family, and disability.