Faculty, staff, students and others gathered in Reeve Memorial Union to discuss UW-Oshkosh’s Inclusive Excellence Plan Wednesday.
Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells began the forum by describing what Oshkosh has done up to this point, including the Campus Climate Survey, which gave feedback as to who was on campus and how they felt.
“UW-Oshkosh has been in the forefront of collecting information about itself,” Wells said.
But the climate survey did show a few things that the university needs to work on. From these things, Wells said there have been many ideas thrown around in order to help make the campus more successful.
The Inclusive Excellence Plan, which is designed to try and move forward on goals of increasing diversity in every aspect of the campus, is something Wells said he’d like to be a university-wide plan. This would include the Diversity Council, the U-PLAN committee and the chancellor’s staff, among others.
Wells also said he wants the Inclusive Excellence Plan to show up within the curriculum.
However, with all of these components and ideas floating around, Wells also said that it will probably take at least six months to come up with an actual Inclusive Excellence Plan that will have realistic goals and outcomes.
Vicki Washington, UW System associate vice president for equity, diversity and inclusion, gave a presentation outlining what the Inclusive Excellence Plan is made up of.
She said four components of the plan’s inner circle are: individual, institutional, business and societal. Once all of these different categories can be reached, Washington said that inclusive excellence should be a way of doing business every day.
Washington said the plan was one that is both top-down and bottom-up, meaning that it reaches everyone on campus, from administrators to faculty to staff to students.
“This work requires all of us to find our piece in it,” Washington said.
Washington continued by explaining the guiding principles of the plan, which are sharing responsibility, diversity sitting at the center of institutional life, different students requiring different forms of supports (as do faculty, staff, etc.) and requiring implementation as much as strategy.
Since Washington said the plan is a “change-oriented approach,” many points of view need to be changed in order for the plan to be successful.
Some of the shifts in perspective are: managing diversity as an asset instead of a problem, being integrative instead of additive, being collaborative instead of competitive, having an institutional responsibility instead of individual deficiencies, having excellence instead of remediation, and requiring impacts and outcomes instead of just inputs.
Washington finished her presentation by showing that the plan is a three-pronged strategy, which consists of compositional diversity, culture and climate, and equity in outcomes.
After both Wells and Washington outlined the Inclusive Excellence Initiative and Plan, the audience was able to ask questions.
The first one Washington responded to was that the UW System has had to rethink the definition of diversity. She said that all differences don’t affect everyone the same, therefore the diversity definition is not much fuller and wider.
One of the main themes that people at the forum wanted addressed was how the plan would actually be enacted.
As of right now, the Inclusive Excellence Initiatives and Plan are just that. After the climate survey results came out, Wells said the administration got hundreds of ideas that they now have to sort through and turn into a cohesive plan of action.
Kadihjia Kelly, a campus victim advocate for The Campus Violence Prevention Project, was one of the audience members at the forum.
She said she knows that diversity should be a priority, but in order for that to happen, everyone needs to be on board.
“We have an responsibility to also educate faculty,” Washington said in response to a comment about Oshkosh’s non-diverse faculty.
Wells agreed with this and said that, he never stopped learning.
“We cease becoming good faculty when we cease learning,” Wells said.
Wells stressed the importance of prioritizing the suggestions and ideas, which will help the university figure out what everyone on campus needs to know, and from there the learning begins. From the learning comes a greater awareness and openness to diversity on campus.
“We’ve all got to stay open to learning,” Wells said.
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