During a global pandemic, supplier diversity at colleges and universities may have become an afterthought. This is a strategy used by companies to procure products and services from small and minority-owned businesses. These businesses contribute to local economies, yet their value oftentimes goes unrecognized.
Colleges spend millions of dollars on goods and services annually. However, the current financial focus in higher education is on revenue losses and budget cuts, reopening campuses, keeping faculty and staff employed amid government policy changes, and more. This is having a dramatic effect on suppliers, especially those who are underrepresented.
Colleges and universities generally include social responsibility, equity, and justice in their mission statements, including adopting and maintaining supplier diversity initiatives. However, the institutional mission has not waned and looms larger than ever, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
Research indicates that while these influences are important to a supplier diversity initiative, none are individually sufficient. Organizational understanding of this diversity is critical to the extent to which a supplier diversity program is implemented. The experience of personnel leading these programs, along with visibility in the business community, also affect the organization’s success. Cultural and political norms, likewise, can influence program outcomes.
Colleges and universities, businesses and corporations, and community and government organizations are all stakeholders in higher education procurement. Each has a role to play in making supplier diversity viable. Their relationships increase the chances of success for such programs. During a pandemic fueled with competing financial interests, these relationships are crucial for non-mandated supplier diversity initiatives.
Incorporating supplier diversity objectives is a great way to demonstrate your institution’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Supporting small and minority-owned businesses, regardless of an owner’s race, ethnicity, gender, disability, veteran status, or other potential discriminating factor benefits everyone. Making this support part of an inclusive business development continuum helps economic growth.
Select leaders in supplier diversity have noted that colleges and universities tend to give precedent to student and employee diversity and inclusion initiatives; therefore, some leaders in the higher education consider supplier diversity to be the “third leg” of diversity.
Throughout U.S. history, there has been a push for small and minority business participation to have access to procurement and purchasing in companies and government. It can be argued that once these businesses began expecting equal treatment, differences in the ideals of a free enterprise system unfolded.
Yet, despite philosophical underpinnings that changed leadership accountability, success in supplier diversity has been built on community engagement rather than state mandates or external drivers, according to Larry Ellis, former head of supplier diversity at University of Florida (UF). He says that at UF, it became a moral duty to support any business willing to provide products and that could compete with transparency. Faylene Welcome, head of UF supplier diversity after Ellis, adds that, “Goodwill in the community, from small and minority businesses, corporations, and government agencies enhanced donor and recruitment efforts for UF.” Supplier diversity became an award-winning part of UF’s mission.
Despite COVID-19 and other challenges, supplier diversity must be a strategic focus. Its benefits extend beyond the traditional goals of teaching, research, and service.
This diversity should have a promising future in higher education. Interactions between minority businesses and procurement officials that are usually based on a legal focus can be successful when administered within a framework of opportunity for the betterment of the institution.
Cheryl Seals Gonzalez, EdD, is the chief diversity officer of Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida. She is also a member of the INSIGHT Into Diversity Editorial Board.
![One day after the mass shooting incident at Michigan State University in February, a University of Florida (UF) student called the UF Police Department (UFPD) concerned about a classmate who was researching guns and ammunition. Instead of just police responding to the call, a trained behavioral health specialist was also dispatched. “Our clinicians and officers spent three hours with that person to really flesh out why he was searching what he was searching,” says Meggen Sixbey, PhD, assistant director of the Behavioral Services Division of UFPD and a co-responder. “Do we have evidence to be concerned? In those three hours with him, they learned that he was in fear of his own safety [due to] things that were going on in his own life.” Without UF’s co-responder approach, Sixbey says, the situation could have escalated quickly or ended differently, and the student may not have received appropriate help. Due to widespread concern around mental health and fears of escalation caused by law enforcement response, partnerships between police and behavioral health specialists are growing across higher education campuses. Experts see this collaboration as a way to aid the most vulnerable by connecting them with needed resources and support. Collaborations differ campus to campus based on institutional needs. While some new programs, like the one at UF, dispatch counselors directly to the scene with police officers, others do not involve immediate on-site clinician response to dispatch situations. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, for example, works with both municipal and campus police to provide mental health support services to students, all of whom live off campus. University case managers help officers on the scene when there is no perceived imminent danger. Additional support is provided by the Campus Assessment, Response & Evaluation (CARE) Team, which is a common type of program at colleges and universities. The goal is to reach students before their situation becomes critical. The CARE Team reviews referrals for urgent mental health support among students and connects them to campus resources such as case management and additional counseling services. When assessing a threat, each situation is evaluated based on the NABITA Risk Rubric, a tool used in triaging mental health concerns with an interdisciplinary team approach, says Jan Gascoigne, PhD, associate vice chancellor for student affairs, and associate clinical professor. “Often the situation is determined not to be a threat but really just someone who is struggling and needs help,” she says. “We’d rather try to work with that person, figure out what’s going on, and get them the help they need without having to escalate to a police intervention. Our campus police have the same philosophy.” New programs expand mental health services in dispatch situations, with projects being introduced at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Oregon, Colorado State University, and California State University, Long Beach. During a six-month trial in the city of Denver, in which mental health specialists were paired with police to respond to calls involving trespassing and other nonviolent events, a 34 percent drop in crimes was reported, or approximately 1,400 fewer criminal offenses, according to the Stanford University report “A Community Response Approach to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Crises Reduced Crime,” published last year. UF’s program launched in July and is the first in the nation led by a campus police department, Sixbey says. Calls are answered by UFPD, which contacts clinicians when there is a mental health component. Situations might include, for example, a student who threatens suicide, someone who was just fired from their job, or an individual whose property was stolen. It’s essential to decriminalize mental health, or mitigate criminal offenses in such calls, Sixbey says. It’s also important to de-escalate situations with clinically trained professionals to help reduce hospitalizations, which are often traumatic, she says. The UF team is looking for more effective ways to enhance efforts to assist underrepresented individuals because the relationship between these communities and law enforcement has historically been strained, a circumstance highlighted by recent social justice activism and political attention paid to policing. In addition to a campus climate survey, UF is conducting focus groups to see how underrepresented communities on campus view the program. Preliminary feedback points to possible changes in police uniforms, where officers would wear a pin or patch to identify themselves as Crisis Intervention Team trained, which means they have received mental health instruction to guide interactions. Individuals surveyed also showed interest in making the clinician the lead responder instead of an officer. This model was used successfully a couple of months ago, Sixbey says. A faculty member of color called regarding a Black student who made a concerning statement about suicide and left the classroom abruptly. The caller didn’t want police to go to the student’s home because they were aware he had experienced past interactions with law enforcement, but the caller still felt a wellness check was warranted. Based on the information provided, the clinician was able to strategize and lead the interaction. They found that the fears the instructor had regarding the student’s mental health were not present and that he was thankful for the tailored response. “Why a program like this is so beneficial, especially to underrepresented populations, is simply because it provides an additional resource which is an alternative to law enforcement response,” Sixbey says. “Even the best law enforcement officer with an abundance of mental health and crisis intervention team training is still an officer. When you can bring a mental health worker to the scene, it can shift the dynamic and allow for a noncriminal approach to a noncriminal matter.”](https://www.insightintodiversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Crisis-Response-1-218x150.png "Counselor-Police Response Partnerships Benefit Students in Crisis")
