The Duke University Department of Neurology recognizes that a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community – including clinicians, researchers, trainees, leadership, and staff – is a necessary component of its mission of world-class patient care, education, and research. Our department is committed to building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive community where all members thrive in a welcoming and engaging environment.
Our efforts to improve and maintain equity, diversity, inclusion are built on self-assessment, accountability, and transparency. The foundation of this approach is self-assessment to understand the people of our Department, gauge our successes and areas for improvement, and guide future efforts.
2024 brought about our second census to learn more about the demographic breakdown, beliefs, and preferences of our department. The anonymous survey included questions on job titles, race, gender, countries of origin, languages spoken, time spent in our Department, outside interests, and more. 204 members of the department responded to the census, which was a response rate of approximately 68%.
Review the full 2024 census below, as well as the 2020 census synopsis.
The gender pay equity analysis demonstrated remarkable equity between male and female clinical assistant professors with women making an average salary that is 99% of the average man’s salary. The research assistant professors demonstrated a greater pay gap with women earning an average salary that was 13.5% lower than the average man’s salary. This gap could potentially be explained by duration of service as most of the men who are assistant professors of research have been at Duke for more than 10 years and most of the women who are assistant professors have been here fewer than 10 years.
The Duke Neurology Department maintains an online archive of our grand rounds speakers from 2016 to the present. This archive of our main educational activity for faculty, staff, and trainees contains more than 200 lectures. For our Speaker Analysis, an analyst viewed recordings of these lectures from 2016 to 2019, noting the gender and race of each speaker (this analysis should be interpreted with caution as race and gender are self-identifiable traits that cannot be determined without asking the individual; however, this imperfect method remains a good starting point for a preliminary analysis). We then analyzed this data for both guest speakers and lecturers within our own Department.
The gender analysis of Grand Rounds speakers indicated that men and women from Duke speak in proportion to their numbers in the department (62%-38%). When outside speakers are invited, women and men speak at a rate much closer to 50% each. The racial analysis of Grand Rounds speakers among Duke speakers is again proportionate to the rates in the department (72% White, 23% Asian, 5% Black/Hispanic/Native American). Duke Neurology did not invite a guest speaker from a traditionally underrepresented racial group to speak at Grand rounds between 2016-2019.
To assess the success of our efforts relating to diversity and inclusion, and identify future priorities, we assessed employee satisfaction within the Department, perceived respect and ability to thrive, and their thoughts on our diversity and inclusion efforts over the past two years. We analyzed these responses based on gender, race, job title, and other factors. This analysis identified strengths within our efforts, particularly in our Chair’s perceived commitment to diversity and inclusion, a high value for our D&I grand rounds series, and in evaluation of our Diversity Officer.
Review the full 2024 survey results below, as well as a synopsis from 2020.
