Office of Inclusive Excellence

• To trace all diversity efforts, programs, courses, curricular components, and resource allocations (from January 1, 2010 through June 1, 2014);
• To examine all diversity efforts, programs, courses, and curricular components through analytical layers;
• To delineate the ACTUAL (not projected or remembered) activities engaged in by California State University, Monterey Bay;
• To establish the baseline for where California State University, Monterey Bay is with regard to implementing major diversity efforts across all levels (top-down, bottom-up, and across) and divisions (academic to student to community affairs) at the institution and for all campus constituencies (undergraduate/graduate students, staff, faculty, managers and administrators, community members). This baseline will be used to identify and measure progress via California State University, Monterey Bay and future diversity strategies;
• To identify strengths, “leverage points” or current resources, empty zones, and “opportunities” or needed areas of improvement;
• To identify potential coordination efforts;
• To recommend possible pathways and strategies for action and implementation and next steps

The following is a brief summary of major findings of the Diversity Mapping Projects and major recommendations made by Halualani and Associates. For a more comprehensive explanation, please download “Chapter 8: Leverage points and recommendations”.

Major findings

CSUMB is doing the “work” of diversity (efforts and curriculum)

Halualani and Associates defines a diversity effort as being: “campus activities, programs, initiatives, processes, and or events related to diversity, culture, inclusion, and social justice (and or demographic factors of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, regional identity, linguistic background, disability, political ideology, religion, socioeconomic status, and intersectionalities among all of these)."

On the curricular level, analysis of diversity-related programs included examining university competencies, program learning outcomes, course learning objectives, course descriptions, syllabi content, and submitted assignments and outcomes.

• The Diversity Mapping project found that every major division at CSUMB is involved in some type of diversity effort.
• In total, there were 309 diversity efforts found and 214 diversity-related undergraduate courses offered at CSUMB.
• While these findings indicate that solid diversity and inclusion work is happening throughout CSUMB, there is no evidence of an intentional, organizational approach to diversity and inclusion on campus.

Where is CSUMB in the “evolution” of diversity?

Halualani and Associates has developed a four-stage sequencing designation to assess the evolution of diversity practice in an institution (see figure below).

Major recommendations

Two major recommendations based on the above findings are:

1. the formation of a diversity strategy or master plan for diversity that identifies specific action steps, needed processes and resources, outcome measures and metrics, and an assessment schedule; and
2. a key, resourced, diversity organizational structure (like the Office of Inclusive Excellence) to facilitate transformative change.

CSUMB's diversity organizational structure

This division or office should be multi-layered, comprehensive, and incorporate the following:

1. Visioning Function: “charting the path” with proactive strategizing and planning
2. Support & Engagement Function: “building up the campus community with skills and perspectives” by providing professional development training for: faculty members (on inclusive pedagogy, issues of intercultural competencies, discussion facilitation); staff members (on issues of intercultural competency, discussion facilitation); leadership (on issues of intercultural competency, discussion facilitation, mentoring); students (on issues of intercultural competency, discussion facilitation, allies and coalition building)
3. Student Success & Academic Achievement Capacity: “facilitating and ensuring” academic excellence for historically disadvantaged groups
4. Diversity Assessment and Analytics: connecting all diversity strategies and actions to impact measures, outcomes, and rigorous analytics

Important ideas to note:

• Halualani and Associates recommends keeping the strategic visioning, implementation, and assessment of diversity separate from equity and compliance work, which they believe can be managed by Human Resources.
• Diversity and inclusion work is “all hands on deck”; in order to provide a sustainable, stable structure, the diversity organization needs to be 2-3 layers thick (diversity leader, support team, key related offices and positions).

Diversity master plan

Recommended Goal Areas

• Diversifying faculty
• Building our skills & perspectives toward diversity excellence: Professional development on diversity engagement for faculty and staff
• Building our skills & perspectives towards diversity excellence: Developing specific learning competencies and outcomes related to social justice and diversity engagement for students
• Educational excellence for our students: Specific retention-graduation initiatives for CSUMB’s diverse students and HSI students
• Community alliances and partnerships as learning labs

Considerations to incorporate into the Diversity Master Plan

General Considerations:

• Strengthen already existing collaborations/linkages across campus
• Need for targeted graduation and retention efforts for specific groups of students (e.g., first generation, international, sexual orientation, etc.)
• Untapped areas or gaps at CSUMB: diverse faculty recruitment and retention, diverse staff recruitment and retention, diversity professional development for faculty and staff, diversity pedagogies and teaching excellence for faculty, co-curricular items.
• Need to identify desired campus engagement level around diversity. Most diversity efforts top out at DELTA Level 1--Knowledge Awareness.(The highest level, Level 5, is Evaluation--Critique of power differences, privilege, and social inequalities.)
• Unrealized opportunities to engage in the diversity topics of disabilities, generation, and sexual orientation.
• Be intentional about the kind of learning to be planned for students around diversity.
• Diversity and inclusion should be life-staged as an educational resource and learning outcome
• As a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), one of the Diversity Plan goals should be to engage in alignment activities or actions that prioritize Hispanic student success and excellence.
• Campus Climate Survey to explore perceptions, observations, and experiences related to diversity at CSUMB from student, faculty, and staff perspectives.
• Recommend using UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute’s (HERI) Diverse Learning Environments (DLE) Survey

Undergraduate Curriculum:

• More diversity-related undergraduate courses are on the books than are actually offered. Faculty and academic leadership should discuss how to best address this gap.
• Diversity is no longer viewed as content-based course but rather framed as an inquiry focus (way of thinking). Deans, faculty, and students should discuss how to maximize diversity in terms of course content and inquiry perspectives.
• CSUMB’s predominant focus on diversity is in terms of an international and global framing. This should be actively linked to more localized domestic power-based differences, positionalities, and inequalities.
• Create conditions so that every student accesses DELTA Level 5 -Evaluation-Critique each year of their educational journey.

Graduate Curriculum:

• Differentiated and targeted diversity efforts for graduate students
• Analysis needed at the graduate level to determine level of diversity engagement in the curriculum

Assessment:

• Major assessment effort needed to examine current diversity and impact to take CSUMB from second order to third or fourth order
• CSUMB is unique in its extant focus on the intersectionalities (co-existing combinations of socioeconomic class, race/ethnicity, gender, and religion). An assessment protocol gauging the type of learning that occurs around intersectionalities of diversity should be developed and implemented.
• Intercultural competence assessment should be done in study abroad and cultural exchange programs to identify key impact.