Strategic Initiative 9: Promote an Inclusive Campus Climate
IUPUI will nurture and promote a campus climate that seeks, values, and cultivates diversity in all of its forms and that provides conditions necessary for all campus community members to feel welcomed, supported, included, and valued by the campus and each other.
Task Force on Inclusive Campus Climate
IUPUI’s role as Indiana’s urban, public institution of higher education inspires us to seek, value, and cultivate diversity in all of its forms, and to provide an environment where every individual feels welcomed, supported, valued, and can achieve their fullest potential. To do so requires a commitment to a healthy, inclusive campus climate, one that emanates from IUPUI’s leadership and permeates throughout the entire campus. IUPUI has a strong track record of serving an array of students—high-ability, first-generation, veteran, returning adult, historically underrepresented, to name a few—and our ability to effectively educate these diverse learners is highly contingent upon ensuring sufficient diversity reflected in our faculty and staff. An inclusive campus climate is fostered, in part, through our curricular and co-curricular activities, and it is improved and sustained through the structures, policies, processes, and opportunities where diverse people and perspectives can thrive.
The Task Force on Inclusive Campus Climate is charged with: (1) identifying current initiatives, best practices, and future trends related to diversity and an inclusive campus climate; and (2) making specific recommendations that can foster IUPUI’s ability nurture and promote diversity and an inclusive campus climate. In conducting its work, the Task Force might consider the following as suggested questions for framing its discussions:
- How can IUPUI become a national model for fostering diversity and inclusion for students, faculty, and staff?
- What resources are needed to create and sustain an inclusive campus climate for all stakeholders?
- How do we leverage our role as Indiana’s urban, public institution of higher education to provide outreach and opportunities for historically-underrepresented populations to have access to and success in college?
- In what ways do we need to strengthen our curricular and co-curricular programming and interventions to infuse education and development opportunities surrounding diversity and inclusion?
- How do we regularly evaluate and improve our policies and processes in support of diversity and inclusion?
- In what ways can we provide opportunities for affinity groups to have meaningful representation and connection on our campus?
- What are the most appropriate ways to take the pulse of diversity and inclusion efforts at IUPUI, and how can we use data to inform enhanced decision-making in this arena?
- How do we promote, recognize, and reward efforts to cultivate, increase, and support an inclusive campus climate?
- How can we better develop a leadership pipeline at IUPUI that reflects the diversity of our campus?
- What role do our community partners play in helping us improve our campus climate?
Task Force on Inclusive Campus Climate Membership
- Zeb Davenport, Chair
- Marsha Baker
- Gail Barksdale
- Richard Bray
- Darrell Brown
- Aron DiBacco
- Charli Champion-Shaw
- Aye Nu Duerksen
- Angela Espada
- Gina Sanchez Gibau
- Dan Griffith
- Kathy Grove
- Amanda Helman
- Wayne Hilson
- Robin Hughes
- Julie Lash
- Jayme Little
- Monica Medina
- Khaula Murtadha
- Gary Pike
- Johnny Pryor
- George Rausch
- Jim Scheurich
- Pamela Shaw
- Kim Stewart-Brinston
- Carleen Thompson
- Winnie Wilson
- Jack Windsor
IUPUI Dialogue Group Members Participating
- Kathy Cabello
- Steven Ramos
- Joseph A. Slash
- Jamal Smith