UW Restructures Diversity and Employment Practices Office

The University of Wyoming’s Diversity and Employment Practices Office has been restructured and augmented.

The office, which works under UW Vice President and General Counsel Rick Miller, promotes diversity in UW’s search and hiring processes, investigates civil rights and workplace violence complaints, and trains members of the university community on discrimination and sexual harassment, among other duties.

The office now is composed of two units: Employment Practices, and Equal Opportunity Report and Response.

Heading Employment Practices is Oneida Blagg, who has been with the university for three years. Among other duties, she will continue to serve as the coordinator for Title IX and for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

She will be joined Oct. 5 by Janean Forsyth-Lefevre, who has been in UW’s Human Resources Office for more than 10 years and will serve as an equal employment opportunity and diversity specialist. Forsyth-Lefevre has worked on diversity and training, with a focus on recruiting veterans and people with disabilities.

“She will bring many of her duties with her but will have expanded responsibilities under this new structure,” Miller says.

Among those are exploring and proposing additional diversity-related approaches to increase diversity in applicant pools; developing and administering specialized training in faculty and administrative job search protocols; developing and administering UW’s equal employment opportunity program; and conducting training to address matters of diversity, sexual harassment prevention and other forms of discrimination.

The Equal Opportunity Report and Response Unit, meanwhile, will focus on reviewing and investigating allegations of violations of UW regulations 1-5 and 1-44, which address civil rights discrimination and violence in the workplace.

Serving as manager of investigations in that unit is Jim Osborn, who has been an equal employment opportunity and diversity representative and specialist for more than seven years. He is joined by Dann McLean, who has worked in the office for two years.

“Jim and Dann already devote a substantial amount of their time to investigations,” Miller says. “This restructuring simply assures that we have appropriate levels of resources to handle complaints, which vary in number and complexity at any given time.”

Anyone with questions or issues related to employment practices should contact Blagg at oblagg@uwyo.edu or 766-6236. Questions or concerns related to investigations should be directed to Osborn at jimosbrn@uwyo.edu or 766-3459.