University of Wisconsin–Madison

Transcript from the Inclusive Excellence presentation

• Julie Underwood, Interim Provost
• Damon Williams, Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer
• Steve Olikara, Chair of the Diversity Committee for ASM
• Amandeep Kaur, Executive Staff Member, Multicultural Student Coalition

Julie Underwood: It is a really, really good sign when it’s hard to get people’s attention because it just means that you’re all enjoying each other’s company, and that is really what this piece is all about, and I am proud to do the kickoff here. My name is Julie Underwood. I’m currently the interim provost for UW–Madison, but I’m also, or at least was until six weeks ago, the dean of the School of Education. I get to say that with great pride because a number of our diversity programs live in the school of education and have for a long time and we are very proud of every single one of them. So it is wonderful for me to be here in a couple of different capacities. I’m just here to get your attention and get things moving.

I have to tell you personally what a great job I think Damon Williams has been doing. As many of you know, because as I look out, we have lots of people who have worked in various capacities on this university campus in many, many ways over a long period of time and a lot of you have moved from place to place on this campus. But you all know this campus well and you know that sometimes it’s difficult to navigate this place, right? Damon had never worked here before and so his coming in and seizing the opportunity and providing us with a platform for change has been absolutely wonderful. I have made a joke of looking at, I hope you all picked up his document here, he is visual like I am so we got charts and lists and things so we can all see it in different ways, which also talks about his understanding of people but one of the parts that I love about this is the number of people that Damon has gone out to visit, to talk to, or more importantly to listen to.

It has been through that process of engagement that he has built a plan for this campus and more importantly brought people together like us all here today to think about these absolutely critical issues of diversity, climate and excellence on our campus. And we have done it with focus and we have done it relentlessly so I hope that this is, as I kick off, just one step as we move forward. And if you will look around, many of you may not have worked with each other, although you may have been working shoulder to shoulder and not even known it. So pulling all of these pieces together on our campus is an important part of the work that he has been doing.

So, not to take up too much time at the mic, I’m going to turn this over to Steve Olikara, who is chair of the Diversity Committee for ASM and let him do the next piece. Steve?

Steve Olikara: How’s everyone doing tonight? First of all, I want to personally thank Dr. Williams for this opportunity. I want to thank the entire OPDC staff for all of their support and everyone in this room. I feel extremely privileged to have this opportunity tonight because this is a defining year for our university, not just because the political environment has changed and we’re making tough decisions with budget cuts, but because Plan 2008 has ended, we have a real opportunity to change course. And students five to ten years from now will be assessing what we’re doing right now. Just as we evaluate Plan 2008, they’ll be assessing whether or not we took this university in the right direction.

That is precisely why I’m speaking today, to share a new inclusive vision for diversity, a vision understanding that diversity isn’t a predefined type of person; it is a constantly evolving dynamic between people. Diversity of thought creates an exchange. It creates opportunities for learning. Diversity is essential and inherent in education, so it’s not a question of whether or not we received some grants, achieved some quota or published certain statistics. It’s whether we are accomplishing our central goals as a learning institution. It’s a question of how broad is the intellectual scope of this university? Before I even came to this campus, I felt our current approach to diversity felt very unnatural to me. It seemed that there were plenty of programs and initiatives so I was wondering where is the breakdown. I started to explore this.

In preparation as my role as diversity chair, I met with students, faculty, staff and organizations across the campus because when you do this type of work, you need a very open mind, you need to broaden your perspective and you need to challenge your views. I met students who blew me away with their incredible and unique backgrounds but I noticed that because of their genetic makeup, they didn’t fit the traditional definition of a diverse student. That’s when I started to understand the consequences of a traditional narrow approach. Think about how the conventional mindset smears diversity with all of these other terms; minority, students of color, multicultural, underrepresented, underprivileged, disadvantaged. It all feeds our status quo mindset. It feeds our stereotypes and it feeds racial tensions. It tags on these inaccurate labels onto students especially those involved in diversity programs.

While we recruit some underrepresented minorities to become an inclusive campus, we simultaneously exclude students. What about the students including Caucasians who do not fall under this narrow definition? Exclusivity creates tension. As a university, our vision of diversity needs to include every student. Our vision must send a message that every student adds diversity to campus. This message should be new. It should be different and it should be reflected in every institution on campus from Admissions to Communications to Housing. A more inclusive approach will help extinguish this traditional mentality of underprivileged students of color versus privileged Caucasian students. If we can change the climate on campus, we can change the perception at UW–Madison. If we can change the perception, we will draw larger and more diverse applicant pools. We will attract higher caliber professors and faculty across the board and the effects will compound.

So let’s forge a new direction understanding the true dynamics of diversity. Let’s build the foundations of an environment that organically promotes the intellectual exchange of diverse ideas. I envision diversity initiatives that consider all aspects of one’s character, seeking unique backgrounds, unique perspectives and unique ideas, seeking open-minded people who will synergize these diverse ideas, people who will take action and implement these ideas to more effectively serve our planet. I strongly believe that if we work together, all of us open to innovative change, the potential is enormous. While universities and organizations across the country are trying to figure out how to effectively address diversity, remember the University of Wisconsin has a tradition of pioneering new ideas. If we are truly forward thinking, let’s take the lead, let’s set the example, let’s break this stranglehold of the status quo and take our diversity initiatives in a new direction with a new vision that understands the new generation. If we can do that, I’m confident we’ll not just change this university, we will change universities across the country. Thank you.

Damon Williams: Thank you very much. Isn’t Steve fabulous? I met him very early on in my time here and he sent me an E-mail before he assumed his role as chairperson of the Diversity Committee and he said, “I want to get involved.” I put him in a database and I said, “At some point, I’m going to come back to you and we’re going to ask for that involvement.” He is now in a role of leadership in this area, and as you can see, it’s very well deserved. I’d like to bring up another student that I’ve asked to be a part of our event today: Amandeep Kaur, who is executive staff of the Multicultural Student Coalition and is also an amazing and wonderful student leader here on campus.

Amandeep Kaur: Hello, everyone. Again, my name is Amandeep Kaur and I’m really, really proud to represent the MultiCultural Student Coalition on campus. I’m one of the executive staff members who work with the Human Resources Team, their press steering committee and also Beyond Plan 2008 Steering Committee within MCSC. To me, MCSC has been the foundation for bringing me up as a student leader on our campus. MCSC is a very unique student organization on this campus, and I can probably say we truly are in alliance of students deeply committed to social justice, principles of inclusivity, integrity, responsibility and respect. MCSC values community and undertakes coalition building, promoting excellence in scholarship and service among MCSC staff members as well as all students on this campus.

One of the prominent things that allowed us to do the type of work that we do is that we are a coalition of students. That means that we bring in students from all different aspects of the campus to create a diverse environment so we can really bring different types of issues affecting different communities at the table and come together as student leaders and talk about how we’re going to work on those issues. So in talking about a coalition, I feel that the university needs to build a coalition so we can bring different issues at the table and figure out different ways that we can work on that. Through this coalition building, over the last 10 years of our existence, we had been able to create many different allies within the different spectrums of this campus community with other student organizations, faculty, staff and different community members. However, much work still needs to be done on our end, and I feel like for us, this is a great space and a great way to start building more relationships and continue to strengthen the ones that have been built already.

I want us to [talk] quickly a little bit about some of the things that MCSC has been working on. This semester, one of them is our InterCultural dialogues class. It’s in its sixth semester. The first student led cause of its kind on this university and one of the first kinds in the US. ICD’s nontraditional setup of classroom works on creating dialogue around the issues of race; race in education, race in gender, race in religion, etc., which provides a way for many students who may not be student leaders who might not have ever known that there was an issue with not having enough diversity on this campus. So this is one of the great things that we feel is much needed, this dialogue. We also have our hip-hop conference, a week-and-a-half-long conference with the theme of hip-hop on the front lines coming up in April.

We also have been working on the Beyond Plan 2008 Steering Committee with students from all over the campus. Some of the things that we’ve been working on within that is creating a mentorship program so connecting students who might not be involved with the program here on campus, for a lot of students of color who are not involved on scholarship programs, people program, POSSE, First Wave; they need to have the resources available to them. So we’re looking at creating a mentorship program including faculty, staff, community members and also working on high school with the admissions to make sure that students are also involved with the process when tours are being given of this campus. And also putting on a parade for students to show their pride and who they are and what they’re doing with our spring barbecue. There is also a core committee with Beyond Plan 2008 which we’ll be working on the long-term strategic planning on exclusive excellence for students.

Anyway, besides MCSC, I do want to thank everyone who has been doing work around the issues of diversity and trying to make this campus a more inclusive place for all. For us students, this is a very short journey, but I truly believe that if we are strong active leaders on our campus and really passionate about the issues of social justice and making this really an inclusive excellence institution, not just for us but for others to come after us, we will leave that legacy that others will want to follow. We, as students, have a strong history in making change happen and we need to continue this tradition. However, students, of course, cannot do it all alone. We need help, guidance, mentorship just as well as this university needs our guidance and help. It is important to understand that all different communities of this university complement each other and build off from each other. We need to be able to work together as an institution to create change for tomorrow.

Lastly, I want to take a second to remember all the students, faculty, staff, community members that have gone through hardships at this university and universities all across the country over the years due to the color of their skin, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, class, etc. There is a lot of work that needs to be done and this should give anyone more than enough drive to want to make a change. As Paul Ferrari said, education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. Thank you.

Damon Williams: Well, I’ll tell you what. If I didn’t have one reason to be at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I definitely do in terms of our students both undergraduate and graduate. Now, we are in this room and you’re standing. I know that folks are being polite but why don’t we just take a minute just to shake it out a little bit? I don’t know about you but I got this bum knee from playing football and all kinds of other stuff and sometimes I just need to shake it out a little bit.

I wanted to thank each and every one of you for being here today. In bringing you here, I wanted to accomplish three goals: 1) I wanted you to hear some of our key voices on campus that are really playing an active role around these issues. There were a ton of folks that I could have brought to this meeting and asked to join me at the podium. 2) I wanted to share some ideas and some strategies of where we’re going institutionally by way of conversation and by way of process not necessarily by way of policy. 3) I wanted to bring together, and this is probably the most important thing, our active diversity champions; individuals that are in this room and individuals as well who could not be here that we have been actively trying to locate.

In this room, we have phenomenal diversity, not just the diversity that we see but the diversity of issues that folks are engaged in at this institution. One of the things that had struck me is the immensity of this place. I have never been in a leadership role of this kind at this level and so it has been an incredible challenge as Julie said earlier to get my hand around this place. So one of the things we did very early on is we developed this strategic transition framework document which is everywhere and we’re going to continue to get it everywhere. If you have any committees you’d like to give a hardcopy for, my staff can get you that document as well. And I’m not going to belabor what’s in it because you have the opportunity to read it, and many of you have already heard me talk about it as I’ve been making my way across campus.

One of the fundamental ideas that I’m trying to bring to fore in this conversation and it draws from what is now a legendary work on organizational excellence good to great. How many in the room are familiar with the idea or the book Good to Great by show of hands? Jim Collins, a former Stanford University business professor, who is now a management guru, wrote this book and began with the very simple question as I believe all great research does. What makes a good company become a great company? A very simple question, and the ideas that he found in that study have become so powerful that they’ve been communicated across all types of organizations and indeed have become ideas that inform how individuals go from good to great. One of the key principles in that is this idea of putting people on the bus, getting the right people on the bus and getting the wrong people off the bus. Now, a key component of that and a key idea for why I wanted to bring this conversation and bring this moment together is not to lay out exactly what’s going to happen but I wanted to bring you together and enact a moment of change at the level of symbol, not necessarily at the level of material because that’s going to come later, but at the level of symbol.

I wanted to bring you together and ask you and encourage you to help me not put you on the bus because you’re already there; to put more folks on the bus. Because what we know is that if we’re going to achieve real change, deep change, meaningful change, it’s going to come from having folks that are not in this room today on that bus with us. One of the key ideas for helping us to get there, and this is something that I have found to be pernicious in this culture since I have been here is folks looking for the yellow flag moment. Now, that yellow flag moment is throw the yellow flag, they grab their whistle and say, “I whistle racism. I whistle sexism. I whistle homophobia. I whistle you said diversity but you didn’t say my group but you did say 10 different identities but [not] mine, I call foul.”

Although I think there is an important continuance of elevating those things when they do occur around us, the question I ask is, does that in any way fundamentally and how does it fundamentally get us to where we want to go? When we talk about the idea of diversity, we’re talking about the idea of each of us trying to get better and as were so eloquently mentioned by the speakers before me, and one of the persons who I consider very highly is Cornel West, the legendary public intellectual. One of the things he said to me in direct conversation, he said, “Damon, well, if there’s a little sexism, racism, homophobia classes and all other isms in me, chances are there are some in you. The question becomes, how each of us are grappling with it?” So one of the things I wanted to put forward here today is that idea that as we move forward in this conversation and we’re trying to be intentional by bringing groups together, we have to remember we can’t be throwing that yellow flag at every moment. We got to save that yellow flag when it really, really matters. Otherwise, we erode the potential for a conversation of connectivity.

I see at this university an incredibly rich history, a history of intentionality, a history of hundreds if not thousands of different diversity initiatives across campus, pipelines, grad school stuff, the chancellor scholars, people, first wave, all these different things that we’re doing, wisely certain delta, all kinds of different things that I see. Indeed, I see an incredible community that is deeply about the business of being in this conversation, so about the business of being in this conversation that each and every one of your committee wanted me to come and give this exact same presentation for you.

Unfortunately and fortunately, and I call this the gift and the curse of Madison, the gift is that there’s such a robust community, the gift is that we have such incredible lateral diversity infrastructure as I talk about in a forthcoming book; at the same time, the curse of we’re all over the place. We are scattered indeed, and I think and I know that to go forward, we’ve got to get more connected. But at the same time that with the glass is half full, the glass is also half empty. And in that half emptiness, there are persistent challenges remaining around equity of representation and outcome. Some groups feel marginalized from a central discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion. In particular, the LGBTQ community, the disability community, the international community, the classified staff community and others that I have intersected with as I’ve been going about my travels like Gulliver or someone. Traveling about this university anywhere that the winds may take me or the strategic compass that I have developed may take me to hear these stories.

The thing that I’ve said from the very beginning is that there are no magic diversity bullets to these issues. I believe that the frame of diversity though, how we think about it, how we conceptualize it at the level of mentor model must change, must evolve as again was pointed out by folks who spoke before me. A new mentor model of diversity that diversity is not just in, in terms of headcount but diversity is fundamentally and essentially a means to our fulfillment of mission as a public research university that is of the most magnanimous and prestigious in this country. Why is that so important in this current moment? It’s so important because we live in the age of diversity. We live in the age of diversity that there’s so much diversity that we see that’s reflected in this room. And the consistent message that I’ve offered whether I’m in the room with all black men, I’m in the room with members of the LGBTQ community, I’m in the room with all women, I’m in the room with any community, the thing I’ve said from beginning to end is I am not the vice provost for race and ethnicity. I am not the vice provost for black and brown folks. I am the vice provost for diversity.

Let me help you understand what I mean by that. In saying that, not saying that issues of historic access and equity underrepresented groups have gone anywhere, they have not. But what I’m talking about is how we evolve a paradigm, how we bring more voices into a conversation and try not to wash away the difference but understand that when we say we’re a UW diverse community, what we’re saying is we’re both diverse, meaning different, and community meaning united. That’s what I’m talking about. If I ask people in this room to define diversity, I get all kinds of things that says equity, social justice, educational benefits, diversity, campus climate, multiculturalism, international, I get race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national status, economic background perspectives, position on campus and so on and so forth. I get it’s the courses, it’s the general education requirements, it’s what goes on in IGR, the multicultural students, it’s our pipeline, it’s circle delta, it’s learning community.

The thing I’d say to each and every one of them is yes, you’re right, it’s all those things. But at the same time too, I think that it becomes important that we get more sophisticated in our conversation around these issues, how they connect, how they disconnect, how they synergize, how they catalyze, how they don’t. We live again in this era in this age of diversity. And we saw it play out in incredible ways in the recent election. Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, power, privilege, economic background, sexuality, particularly we’ve looked at the children of various different folks that are part of the conversation, rural, rich, poor, urban. We saw all these issues play out, so where before the conversation of diversity was something that was way over there on the back burner, the conversation on diversity plays out on CNN. It plays out in Bascom Hall. It plays out everywhere on this campus. And as a result, the moment has evolved.

One of the things I’m talking about in this same book, yes I’m pushing my book, you’re not going to get it for free although you already paid it for me, I’ve been talking about how do we define diversity? How do we define diversity at the level of idea? Understanding the ideas evolve, shift and change over time, that it’s these ideas that sit within each of us in our mentor models that we have to be focusing on. At the same time that we see all those newness, we see this continuing increasing complexity of issues. The promise and the hope realized by Barack Obama balanced against a crisis level moment in terms of African-American men. The lowest demographic racial agenda or combination cross every societal indicator; economic, health disparity, die earlier, die more frequently, have less money, have less wealth, incarcerated more. So yet in the promise of Barack Obama, we also see the gift and the curse of the moment that we’re in again. And I return to that. And I elevate this issue because this is going to be something I think that we have to be thinking about this complexity of issues.

One of the things that I saw just recently, and again it illustrates the pervasive way that these ideas play out, I was watching CNN. To my left is one of my favorite anchor persons, Campbell Brown, and of course First Lady Michelle Obama, and that is not the young lady that was on CNN but she’s a cutie patootie just like the young lady I saw on CNN. I saw that young lady on CNN and I was watching it and flipping through the channels and Campbell does a phenomenal job most of the time trying to be perceptive and get to the real issues. She said, “I got something I just got to show the viewers” and so she rolled the tape. The tape cut to Michelle Obama who had come to visit this after school program for low-income urban primary families, primarily people of color that were in the program. And there was this little six-year-old girl and she comes up to Michelle Obama and she says, “Where’s Obama” because all she heard was the president was coming and you’re nice but where’s Obama. So Michelle Obama says to the young girl, “Well he’s not here. He’s in Florida.”

Campbell then, you can hear her chime in over the airwaves, she said, “Ain’t she just adorable? Watch the questions that she asks from here.” She’s just commenting on how adorable the moment is that’s going on in this exchange and you know how inquisitive young kids are and they had that active mind and she’s asking these questions. So the next thing that she said to Michelle Obama, she said, “Well is he coming home?” She said, “Yes, of course he’s coming home.” She said, “Does he come to visit you?” She said, “Of course, he lives with me.” “He does?” So what we saw was right there in CNN being played out the gift and the curse, the promise and the hope with the persistence of the challenge. And what was even more tragic than that is one of the real stars of media who I think incredibly highly of didn’t get it at all. And so again, the thing I say and the reason I bring this issue to the fore is that the moment has changed. It has evolved.

This stuff is not important just because it’s morally right, because it’s the continuation of a civil rights movement although it is. That is the continuation of women or a feminist movement or a queer movement because it is. It’s fundamental because of the air in which we live, issues of diversity are tantamount to leadership, not just for the young person but for each of us asking the question of what is a leader if you’re talking to folks in the corporate community and this is a model I developed. They said it’s thinking and problem-solving. It’s technological savvy; it’s having sophisticated communication abilities; it’s being able to lead and following teams; it’s having the ability to interface with diversity. Every single thing you see from that external community talking about what we need to do centers on those five key things and diversity is right there. So beyond Plan 2008, what do these things all add up to? What do they mean?

One of the things you’re going to hear about quite a bit going forward is this idea of inclusive excellence. One of the things we’ve done today is we provided several monographs that are at the back of the room to talk about inclusive excellence but because we’re in tough economic times, we did not do a full print for every one. And actually what we’re going to do is we’re going to have a website posting where you’ll be able to go out and get some of the monographs that have been developed around this notion. Inclusive excellence was an idea that was initially conceived by the Association of American College and Universities post the Michigan Supreme Court cases to offer guidance to the nation with respect to these issues. I had the good fortune to be an author in that. Quickly, as we talk about inclusive excellence, what are we talking about? We’re talking about a continuance of a historic conversation of access and equity for historically underrepresented groups. The issue didn’t go anywhere. Women are still underrepresented in science. African-American Latino native students, domestic Asian students still underrepresented at the university, still not performing, getting outcome the way we would hope.

The issue still remains an inclusive excellence but also too, within that dimension of access and equity might be asking the question fundamentally, well, because we do value diversity then the fact that maybe we have no white men or no men at all in nursing becomes something that to some degree we need to be focusing on. Not necessarily that that issue is the first issue but it enters that conversation as other issues should enter that conversation. It’s a continuing discussion about climate and inclusion but not just talking about the climate and inclusion of folks that looks like me but the climate and inclusion of each of us. Whether you are otherly-abled and wheelchair-bound or you process information differently and it impacts learning and learning style that we’re talking about issues of climate and inclusion broadly. That we’re talking about how we meaningfully infuse the idea of diversity in the curriculum and the co-curriculum in terms of engagement and the work that we do in our diversity requirements and our courses and our study abroad programs and our service learning, outreach programs. It’s what happens there.

Lastly and importantly and really the monumental thing that I think is quite different from anything that we’ve seen before is this becoming laser-like intention around creating learning and development moments, not just for students but for the folks who run this place at the senior level, for the folks who teach the classes, for the folks who chair the search committees, for the folks who are department chairs because again, we’re not talking about these punitively; we’re talking about this in terms of embracing the possibilities and the realities of where we are. And I can’t and we can’t ask anyone to teach differently, lead differently, select differently if we don’t create educational moments to help them to get there. So what becomes essentially important as we move forward is asking at every instance that we talk about doing something different or continuing something forward, what’s the learning plan to help folks be able to accomplish it? I’m certain that my colleagues in human resource development who are here in the room and who have been doing an amazing job of supporting the efforts of my office, I’m sorry, we’re going to do a lot of business together, my friend.

The idea here is how do we move the conversation from the margin to the center? At the center of organizational culture, we’re talking about mentor model. We’re talking about how you see the world, how you process the world, how you mentor students, how you do what you do. It’s how you approach someone as a member of our police force. It’s the ways in which you welcome folks when you’re working at SOAR. It’s the ways in which you embrace different identities and different voices in the classroom. It’s all these things that exist at the level of mentor model. So again, learning plans to impact mentor model. Coming here, it’s like fish in a bowl; all these folks just darting around, so much energy, so much going on. At the same time lacking in strategic alignment. We’re in tight economic times. Darrell Bazzell’s office is one office down from mine. I have the good pleasure to sit in a lot of meetings that many of you do not. We’re in a difficult moment, and there’s no more money coming but yet we will continue to be great. We will continue to move forward. And the ways in which we will, and this has been a consistent mantra of mine but it has also been a consistent mantra more importantly of Chancellor Martin’s is this idea of alignment, this idea of coordination, this idea of connectivity.

This place is what I like to categorize as a hyper decentralized culture, a culture in which everybody is going their own way again like fish in a bowl. So again, I take us back to everything I’ve been doing here which is trying to interrupt the usual, trying to create coalition, trying to approach this conversation of difference in ways that are humble, and trying to move beyond politics and agenda. There’s so much politics and agenda around these issues. Every meeting, well we do that; you don’t do that. You don’t do it with rigor discipline and focus relentlessly over time. If you did, the outcomes wouldn’t be the same. I’m sitting in a cabinet meeting recently and we were talking and then he said something similar, “I hear that all the time too, Damon.” We do that. And a part of it is again the gift and the curse of Madison. The gift is we’re very insular. We have a very strong culture and strong value. The curse is because often times, we think we do everything right and we do not nor does any institution.

So again, how do we move beyond politics and agenda and be a part of the conversation importantly? What’s my role? Capacity-builder, integrator, amplifier, coordinator, advocate, change leader. One of the things I think is incredibly important to how we activate change and hit on our strategic goals is, number one, how we communicate about them; important. Number two is going to be the degree to which we can build accountability systems, incentive systems, and relational systems. Accountability systems which drive change; incentive systems which orchestrate and encourage change; and relational systems that bring about change through the communication of the idea in where we’re trying to go. Plan 2008 didn’t fail because it was a bad plan. Plan 2008 was less than successful because it was a horrible implementation. And all of the diversity plans that I see, and I visited over 200 institutions, the entirety of my practice as scholar, administrator, educators around these issues.

One of the things that Ron Kramer, chief information officer who I saw here earlier, we were in a meeting earlier, he quoted the well known phrase, “Culture eats strategy everyday for lunch.” In higher education, it has implementation for dinner. So it’s going to dine on strategy in the afternoon and implementation in the evening. Consequently, it does that because we’re not fundamentally aligning ourselves to how you really get change going and how you build it and infuse it into our systems. This is not a conversation of relevance just for diversity, equity and inclusion. This is a conversation of relevance for anybody who is trying to lead any change effort. One of the things I think that has surprised some of my colleagues is that I know more about change and organizational behavior and management in higher ed than I probably know about diversity, and that was intentionally so. Because there are lots of folks who can go to the well of understanding and give you the analysis but there are few folks that are lucid and clear with respect to the types of processes that need to be activated to bring about change. My entire life has been about the business of trying to be amongst one of those folks that we’re going to see going forward, at least in terms of my role.

I’m moving to a place to close. You’ve been fabulous. Strengthening our lateral infrastructure. So what are some of the things that I’m going to do to bring together what was over 600 people that we invited to this event representing nearly 50 committees? E&D committees have splintered into an E&D staff, E&D faculty, E&D student in the same school departments have, committees, and we are still finding them. And if we haven’t found one of the others that you’re on, please elevate it, let us know. We’re trying to find these folks to get connected to them. I am trying to see this thinking and this perspective at the levels of the organization in which I operate. One of the reasons that we wanted to have this event is we wanted to create the context in the beginning of you seeding the ideas in the communities that you represent. Next week, you will see by email from me a follow up survey asking for suggestions about anything you’ve seen, anything you’ve heard, anything that’s just resting with you. We will be asking for sign-ups for discussion about inclusive excellence. We will be looking to develop a webinar sometime in the future where we’ll be talking about these issues more broadly.

We’re developing a database of this community, and we’ve got our first steps here with this group coming together. You will continue now that I have you captured receive more and more regular updates from me. Delete me if you choose, that is fine. In addition to, and you should have received this, every semester, I’m doing an email updating what’s going on. We live in the era where we’ve got to be letting folks know and we’ve got to be creating opportunities for folks to get involved. We’re going to be working on some immediate revisions to the building community Web site where we’re going to try to list these various committees so folks know where they are.

I was sitting in a lunch meeting for the CIC (Creating Institutional Change) leadership fellows event and there was a colleague in the meeting and she is closely connected to some of the disability work on campus, and I start talking about this accessibility, disability working group which I thought was really important and trying to get some real traction, and she said, “What is that? Why sit on this and that? I’ve never heard of it.” And that is something we see over and over again. One of the things I want to do is I want to take that piece out of the equation, and that’s all about moving information and helping people be connected. This site will be able to capture ongoing ideas. We’ll have an inclusive excellence posting, and we’re going to do a full-blown relaunch of this so that as it becomes as a central portal to all of the diversity capacity on campus, not just pre-college programs for underrepresented moderately income or other types of families which is what we have currently. We’re going to expand that out and make it something that’s a true electronic portal for a connection around these issues.

We’re going to have regular meetings of all chairs and co-chairs of various diversity committees that I will convene. We are toying around whether it’s going to be once a semester, once a month, once every month and a half. That is yet to be determined and that will be determined in conversation with you who asked to be a part of that conversation going forward. We’re exploring possible dates for first bringing together of that community. We also are going to be asking for your help with the development of what we’re referring to as a diversity affiliates program which is a type of role that I really want to create to tap into the real special grassroots energy that exists at this university; students, faculty, alumni, community members. We have a member of our community who is standing right here. Roe, would you tap the beautiful lady right behind you? What’s your name again? I’m just going to say, Sister Melba and keep it accurate.

Melba emailed me early in the semester and she said, “Damon, I really like to meet with you to talk about how I can get involved with diversity work.” She’s not the first. She’s one of many. Then she got on two buses in the cold, came over, and met with me in my office and the director of admissions and I promised her that I will find a way and we will continue forward to get you engaged because anyone who wants to be about this work, I welcome it, I want it, I need it. I have an incredibly small staff of folks who are amazing. Paula Gates, Kellea Miller, Carole Kolb, Ruby Paredes. They are working so hard. They said, “Damon, you have increased our workload by 500% and some other offices on campus, too.” One of the persons that I’m so blessed to have worked with us is Jane Dymond in Human Resource Development and she has been amazing. She’s like my surrogate go-to person and I appreciate that. More importantly, I appreciate her supervisor, Don Schutt, allowing for that to happen. That’s what inclusive excellence is about and I really want to acknowledge that.

Going forward, we’re also going to be continuing to activate on this plan. We got roundtables that are about to happen; roundtable on gender, roundtable on international, roundtable on grad students, roundtables that are having continuing retreats. We’ve already got some that are ongoing already that have happened. Those are the things that I had planned to communicate today. I’m not going to do questions. You’ve stood for much too long. I think the bar is still hot for a couple for minutes. I invite you to continue socializing and interacting. I am so humbled and enthused and thankful for each of you giving us the benefit of your time. I want to thank Provost Underwood who had to leave, and I want to thank our student leaders who did such a phenomenal job with also providing an incredibly clear and lucid message. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening.