The mission of the Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE) is to operationalize the inclusive excellence paradigm by ensuring that the principles and practices of diversity, equity, and inclusion are embedded into all aspects of university life, including, but not exclusively, recruitment, admissions, hiring and promotion processes; curriculum and co-curriculum, and administrative structures and practices.
The Office of Inclusive Excellence plays a leadership role in cultivating a community of belonging by facilitating the knowledge, awareness, and skills critical to creating and sustaining a campus educational community and workplace environment that embraces diversity, achieves equitable outcomes for individuals and communities regardless of their identities and models inclusiveness through respectful interactions and opportunities to fully participate in the life of the university.
Making excellence inclusive is essential to becoming a student-ready campus. This work is a shared responsibility and we welcome your ideas, engagement, and expertise.
“A student-ready [university] is one that strategically and holistically advances student success, and works tirelessly in its pursuits to educate ALL students for civic and economic participation in a global, interconnected society” (McNair, T. Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Higher Education, 2016).
2022 Inclusive Excellence Plan: Catalyzing Institutional and Educational Excellence
The University’s Inclusive Excellence Plan is situated within the framework that emerged from the efforts of the Council for Post-Secondary Education (CPE) to develop a new state-wide policy on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and a process for setting educational opportunity goals and determining eligibility to offer new degree programs.
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Diversity is the wide variety of shared and different personal and group characteristics among human beings. Individual differences (e.g., personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, class, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, physical or cognitive abilities, as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning.
Equity is a goal and a process that focuses on student outcomes by ensuring that all students thrive and graduate at equitable rates by intentionally creating opportunities for equal access and success in three main areas: representational equity, resource equity and equity-mindedness.
Inclusiveness is an active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity – in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, spiritual, social, cultural, geographical, etc.) with which individuals might connect – in ways that increase awareness, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions. To actively demonstrate an attitude that recognizes the value and contributions of all members of the campus community.
The word belonging is composed of two words. “Be”–as in being–signifies authenticity and freed from the need to cover aspects of one’s identity. ‘Longing’ is the profound human yearning to connect with others and be part of something that transcends us.” Belonging connotes full membership and full participation in the work of the university. This means equitable opportunities to participate in the decision-making structures of the university, equitable resources, and a felt sense of belonging.
