While diversity marks a starting point, inclusion is an ongoing process.
Creating a More Inclusive Ursinus College: A Diversity Strategic Plan
The strategic plan at Ursinus was built on the belief that liberal education is an engine of individual change and social mobility, capable of transforming students into leaders. To that end, one of the seven pillars is to intensify our commitment to diversity and inclusion.
As part of that process, all members of our community will continue to develop a thoughtful, reflective, and empathetic understanding of others. We insist that our campus community champion the humanity of all of its members; we commit to breaking down the barriers faced by marginalized people, recognizing the particular constraints and pressures that affect members of underrepresented groups on this campus and in our world. A nuanced appreciation of diversity is a cornerstone of our educational philosophy, a moral imperative, and an essential part of twenty-first century citizenship. By devoting our resources and energy, we will build an inclusive culture, in which every individual, regardless of background, is poised to excel and to find respect for one another at Ursinus.
The Status
Ursinus is characterized by allegiance to group, and much less to the overall institution. This is well recognized at many levels—current students, alumni, faculty and staff. It is not a surprise that this plays out in the divides that society in the United States provides for us—across race, socio-economics, gender, politics, and religion, to name a few dimensions of those divides. It is essential that Ursinus attend to these divides to enable the campus to welcome twenty-first century diversity.
The Vision
That Ursinus becomes an institution that enables all members of its community to feel a sense of belonging and ownership on campus. This welcoming environment will allow community members opportunity to gain support from others who share their identities, the opportunity to embrace multiple identities without conflict, and the opportunity to develop deep, understanding, and meaningful connections with others across identity divides.
This vision can only become reality if it is an institutional initiative, and not just an initiative of a single office, department, or division. Clearly some offices play a critical role, such as the Institute for Inclusion and Equity, the College Chaplain, and Title IX programs, but at best these offices can only provide models for the rest of the campus community to adopt, as driven by leadership at all levels.
The Dimensions of the Plan
Inclusion is only meaningful if those from all backgrounds have the resources and support necessary to be successful. This of course includes students, but their success to a great extent is a mirror of the success of faculty and staff. For students, success comes in many ways: retention, graduation rate, grades, access to graduate and professional programs, employment following graduation. For faculty, success includes tenure and promotion, success as teachers, and success as scholars. For staff, opportunities for professional growth must be available to staff in all areas.
The ability to achieve success for all members of the community depends on the ability to identify ways in which the institution is falling short of its goals. This means that correlations between success and demographic characteristics must be used to identify groups that are underserved in addition to advancing success for the community as a whole. Analytics must combine quantitative statistical information with qualitative information to all the development of targeted responses. Ultimately, good methods of targeting at risk individuals early is highly desirable to allow more effective interventions.
The extent to which all members of the community feel welcome and included is an essential element to success. The feeling of belonging is an essential element to the persistence that all community members need to overcome inevitable challenges. Climate must come from a combination of the kind of support from those with similar backgrounds (“You are not the only one like you.”) as well as unity with those from different backgrounds (“We are all Bears, and our strength comes from us working as one.”)
None of these goals is possible without a diverse group on campus to begin with. It is essential that we work to recruit a wide range of students, faculty, and staff. This recruiting is made easier and more meaningful when we recognize that a diverse community on campus allows us to better prepare our students for a diverse world after Ursinus. In other words, recruiting a diverse campus is not an “add-on” that competes with selecting “the best individual,” but we cannot have “the best campus” unless we recruit a diverse range of community members. Diversity itself is an asset to be recruited. Although we must be attentive to expanding the diversity of voices and representation on our campus, we must be equally attentive to retention efforts. If we are committed to creating a welcoming environment for all, then we must provide the necessary support, resources, and services to meet the needs of all constituents, particularly those who often feel marginalized and disaffected.
“Training” is essential for faculty and staff, but the use of this narrow term suggests that diversity issues are easily understood, and easily solved. We recognize that these issues are large, and trans-generational, so that to change an institution, and to help change society, we must continually challenge ourselves to learn more, to see from other perspectives, and to engage in meaningful and at times uncomfortable conversations with one another. By normalizing this learning experience—this conversation—we hope to lower the barriers to achievement of our broader diversity goals. This professional development will affect our ability to interact with students, but also help us structure similar development opportunities for students, such as for residence life staff, campus tour guides, and student leaders generally.
We must regularly document and communicate our goals and our accomplishments relating to creating an inclusive, diverse campus. It is too easy to focus on inevitable shortcomings and believe that “nothing ever changes.” Therefore, it is critical that we remind ourselves of our forward progress, update our goals, and tell our story to ourselves on a regular basis. Equally important, we must tell that story to the outside world so that we are seen by prospective community members and peers in higher education as a model of an inclusive campus.
Inclusive practices in the classroom are critical to student success as it requires attention to what we teach (curriculum) and how we teach (pedagogy). In addition to developing courses that include diverse voices and perspectives, we must also develop assessment tools that enable students to demonstrate learning in a variety of ways. Incorporating diverse content, policies, teaching strategies, and assessment instruments in the curriculum gives us better opportunities to meet students where they are as learners and thinkers.
As an institution located in the town of Collegeville, we are part of a neighborhood and are thus members of the larger community. While we offer programs and activities that draw members of the community to campus, we recognize our own need to go beyond the campus to take advantage of the different services provided by the businesses and organizations in the area. In short, we are mutually dependent on each other, which suggests that actions taken on the campus will likely impact those beyond our campus and vice versa. Thus the work of creating a more inclusive environment should, where appropriate, involve elements that extend beyond the borders of our campus.
Implementation
In the past, various teams have been brought together, sometimes spurred by a campus issue, sometimes by external funding, to identify needs. While these have been useful efforts, they have not had the continuity and public presence necessary to engage the full community on a regular basis. This implementation plan lays out a way to build on these past efforts and bring a high level of involvement and recognition of inclusion efforts.
On a regular basis, the president’s office will gather relevant parties to identify recent activities, future activities, and missing elements. These consultations will include the cabinet, the diversity committee, organizations with explicit or implicit inclusion responsibilities (IIE, Chaplain, athletics, ISS, CIE leadership, etc.). These consultations will result in an inventory that documents the accomplishments and lays out an agenda for the next period. This structure is meant to avoid a simplistic road map, and instead provide a structure that allows for continuing innovation and nimble responses to campus needs as they arise.
