Diversity involves recognizing and acknowledging diversity, promoting it, and shaping it. Therefore, in the future, the University of Konstanz will focus its attention even more on diversity-related issues of equal opportunity and quality promotion in science and teaching.
Diversity in the culture of the university
The university is committed to a necessary cultural change in order to fulfill its role as a social institution. In its mission statement, the Code of Practice on Gender Equality, the Code of Practice on Diversity and the Code of Ethics for Young Scientists, the University has therefore laid the foundations for an appreciative institutional culture of science and work for all members and for the elimination of disadvantageous barriers.
In concrete terms, this means: To create studies, research and working conditions in which each individual can optimally develop and flourish, as well as to ensure appropriate organizational structures and a diversity-friendly academic culture.
Central principles of action of the diversity strategy of the University of Konstanz are formulated in the sense of a diversity policy as follows: The University of Konstanz strives - as far as not yet done - to:
- To anchor diversity as a cross-sectional task in order to thereby comprehensively and sustainably enable all members to enjoy the best possible conditions for studies, research, and work,
- Institutionalize responsibilities for diversity, establish diversity mainstreaming, make the diversity of members visible at all organizational levels, and promote the resources and synergy potentials of all members (e.g., through inclusive language regulations, a diversity-appropriate visual language, etc.),
- Ensure equal opportunity for students, researchers, and employees of all demographic groups in new hires, studies, and careers by developing standards and guidelines that take diversity into account, to assert strong and proactive anti-discrimination work (including identifying and dismantling structural barriers and, in the case of structural disadvantages, enabling individual academic adjustments, raising awareness of an intersectional perspective on disadvantages and discrimination, including through training and events),
- Enable student success for all demographics through a model of "flexible study" and provide individual support for students through mentoring opportunities, to guarantee continuous further development as a learning organization in order to be able to react flexibly to social changes in the future, as well as to assume its socio-political responsibility in the community and region and to cultivate diversity-promoting cooperations as well as to maintain its nationwide networking in order to actively shape the diversity discourse in the German higher education landscape.
Diversity in the future
These activities to date have been evaluated through the University of Konstanz's successful participation in the Stifterverband's Diversity Audit, and further steps have been planned. In particular, the objective of our diversity strategy was concretized based on the construct "diversity climate" discussed in organizational psychology.
The term "diversity climate" describes how diversity is funded in an organization from the perspective of its members, how discrimination is prevented, and how members perceive the principles, processes and measures within the organization in this regard. A highly developed diversity climate enables joint learning processes in an organization and thus facilitates synergy effects.
The University of Konstanz thus fulfills its socio-political mission as a pioneer and as an educational institution of future role models and commits itself to strengthening a positive diversity climate that corresponds to its special characteristics, namely a culture of flat hierarchies, short paths and open doors.