1. Current representation of minorities and women in EETD. Using the data provided by the Workforce Diversity Office, as of June 15, 2005, EETD has 187 people in career, term or postdoc positions. Of these positions, 61 are held by women (33%) and 51 by minorities (27%); these numbers have slightly increased from fiscal years 2002 and 2003, but the previous years represented a different mix of staff job classifications. Table 1 shows the percent of minority and women in Career staff positions, from 2003 to 2005:

2. Hiring and minority recruitment. In fiscal year (FY) 2004, EETD hired six career, term, or postdoc employees who identified their ethnicity and gender. Of these six, three were white females (50%), and two were minority males (33%); the remaining person was a white male (17%). Thus, with minority/women hires of 83%, EETD surpassed its 2005 goal of 60%.
3. Understanding the EETD workplace environment. In the summer of 2004, the EETD Diversity Committee developed and carried out a survey about diversity in the workplace for EETD staff as a way to understand the underlying beliefs about diversity. The survey had 110 respondents, a response rate of roughly 33%. Based on the finding from the survey, recommendations were made and presented to the EETD Council. After discussing the recommendations with the Division Council, a town-hall meeting was held to discuss how the recommendations would be implemented, and to get feedback from staff on the proposed actions
4. Outreach to elementary schools. EETD continued to work with “Community Resources for Science” in placing EETD staff in local elementary schools to talk about our work on energy and the environment. We visited 12 classrooms in Emeryville, Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley this past year, and had requests for return visits to several other schools.
5. Outreach to high-school science classes. EETD staff developed an innovative Web-based curriculum on energy consumption in the home for high-school science classes. The project was tested and well received by the teachers and students. The class is being revised for a special class of high-school students who participated in a program at Laney College in summer 2005.
6. Outreach to community colleges. EETD staff coauthored and were awarded a National Science Foundation grant to work with community colleges in developing a curriculum to train energy managers for buildings. EETD staff worked with Peralta college administrators and faculty to develop the curriculum and held a daylong workshop to structure a program with potential industry partners to provide internships for the trainees.
7. Training college students. As in the past, EETD hosted a large number of summer college students, many of whom were women and minorities.
8. Improving the Division’s workplace environment. EETD Director, Mark Levine, continues to hold weekly “office hours” for all staff to talk about issues concerning them. This activity has been very popular with staff, particularly in addressing one-on-one problems that relate to the workplace environment. The semiannual town-hall meetings provide additional opportunities for diversity issues to be discussed by staff, in a group setting.
9. Recognizing diversity achievements. Supervisors were asked to recognize and acknowledge contributions to workplace diversity in employee Performance, Review, and Development (PRD) files.
10. Participate in the Laboratory’s Best Practices Diversity Council (BPDC). EETD’s representative to the Laboratory’s BPDC, Rick Diamond, has chaired the Council’s working group on “Retention and Workplace Environment,” developing and presenting recommendations for all the division directors. Feedback from these meetings has helped identify pilot projects.

Action Items for 2005

1. Continue recruitment of outstanding minorities and women. Assuming funding is available for hires, it is still our goal to have at least 60% of hires be women and minorities. We are especially aware of the goal of 60% for Career employees. (Although we may have difficulty in meeting the goal in a given year because of the small number of hires, we will continue to monitor our performance with respect to the goal, looking at time periods of over 3–5 years.)
2. The major finding from the EETD Diversity Survey was the need for management training in issues related to communication and leadership. We’ve identified a management consultant, who has extensive training experience at LBNL and elsewhere, to develop a curriculum for our management staff, and we plan to launch a series of training workshops in fiscal year 2006.
3. Expand our educational outreach programs, and continue the ongoing outreach to local elementary schools and mentoring of high-school students in Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, and Richmond schools.
4. Continue to use the PRD process to specifically recognize achievements in diversity and improvements to the workplace environment.
5. Work with the Laboratory’s Workforce Diversity Office to analyze current data on hiring and promotion to understand the specific issues that need addressing.
6. Continue EETD activity in the BPDC, both by providing lessons from our own experience and seeking to learn what has worked in other divisions.

For more information regarding this Diversity Plan, contact Mark D. Levine, EETD Director, or Rick Diamond, Best Practices Diversity Council Representative.		Download this Diversity Plan in printable .rtf format.