Patricia Hamilton Gyi records

The Patricia Hamilton Gyi (PHG) records contain materials from 1988 to 2003 and document PHG's position as Director of Equity Programs at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM). The papers are generally organized by committee although there are a few sections that deal with employee and student policies within OU-COM and general Ohio University policy and procedure. There is also a miscellaneous section comprised of various information sheets related to minority programs around the country and articles used as research related to topics such as affirmative action, sexual harassment, compassionate teaching policies and disability sensitivity. There are many types of documents, with email correspondence, interoffice memorandums, typed committee meeting minutes and agendas being the most prevalent. The papers relate almost entirely to coordination and implementation of programs and policies to increase the diversity and equality of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The largest section deals with the various incarnations of the OU-COM Council on Equity. This council went through several name changes and mission goals. Originally conceived as the Affirmative Action Advisory Committee (Box 1) the committee broadened its focus and became the Diversity Coordinating Committee (Box 2) that focused on increasing the presence of minority students in the college and improving the environment to encourage growth. The final incarnation of the committee was the Council on Equity (Boxes 3 and 4) which handled the revision of the college's sexual harassment policy and increased its programs aimed at minority matriculation.

Also included in the collection are documents that illustrate the college's attentiveness to changes with regard to academic policies and procedures as well as the steps taken to implement such changes (Box 5). Included are documents that assess the admission statistics for the college, copies of the college's sexual harassment and disability policies, as well as published statements about the college's commitment to diversity and equality. This section also contains copies of the general Ohio University policies regarding sexual harassment, discrimination and campus-wide tolerance of diversity.

Materials in one box in the collection relate to PHG's involvement in the Council on Regional Education (CORE) (Box 6) which handled an extensive learning climate study in the late 1990s. Along with the Environmental Task Force, these papers discuss the learning climate study from its birth as an idea through its implementation in the form of surveys up to its final report in 1999.

A small part of the collection involves PHG's presentation to the Medical Centers Incorporated group (Box 7). Along with statements from the Finance Committee and PHG's own Clinical Efficiency Committee, this section of the collection is comprised of meeting agendas and minutes.

The final aspect of the collection is made up of miscellaneous files (Box 8) that relate to individual minority programs across the country, such as the Cherish our Indian Children group. Another part of the miscellaneous collection includes articles collected as research on topics such as affirmative action, disabilities, sexual harassment and discrimination.

One of the more interesting aspects of this collection is a group of files containing the replies of a fictitious Dr. Watson to questions related to diversity issues with the College of Medicine. These questions and Dr. Watson's answers to them were included in the OU-COM newsletter Rounds.

Another interesting aspect of the collection is the opportunity it affords to witness the evolution of the Council on Equity from the narrowly focused Affirmative Action Advisory Committee. The Affirmative Action Advisory Committee was originally created to increase minority representation at the university. It then became the Diversity Coordinating Committee which also focused on increasing minority representation and encouraged representation from many nationalities. Out of all this evolved the Council on Equity that created pre-matriculation programs to encourage minority students and began to deal with sexual harassment and gender issues within the college.

All of the documents in the Gyi papers are textual files. Aside from three identical photographs of the violinist and lecturer Martha Curtis and three bound final reports, the collection is comprised of type-and hand-written notes and papers. Many of these documents are copies of emails written between PHG and various committee members.

During appraisal, a number of documents were removed. The removed items consisted of duplicates of correspondence, as well as duplicates of meeting agendas and meeting minutes.