IEAT 4 is continuously inventorying accomplishments and identifying opportunities
to do better toward the goal of achieving racial and social justice across all divisions
in assessing and evaluating campus climate, and in then celebrating strengths, directly
addressing weaknesses, and working toward continuous improvement in understanding
and achieving inclusive excellence, campus wide. The Inclusive Excellence Action Plan
(IEAP) was originally created by a team of staff, faculty, and students from across the University, with IEAT 4 promoting
a campus culture of communication, accountability, transparency, and clarity.
Institutionally Funded Initiatives:
Critical Learning Collectives (CLC) and Campus Climate (IEAT 4.2)
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: We have data and findings from our second Campus Climate Survey
(CCS) that we have not yet made use of in any organized way. Inclusive Excellence
Action Team 4 (IEAT 4), charged with making recommendations for realizing a campus
culture of inclusive excellence, worked in Spring-Summer 2021 on coming up with strategies
for doing so. This initiative proposes using a combination of Critical Friends Groups
– which have become known at CI as Critical Learning Collectives (CLC) -- and Town
Hall meetings for discussing CCS findings and strategizing ways to make good use of
them.
CLCs are comprised typically of 8-12 people who commit to regular participation (typically
for two hours monthly) and the creation of a confidential, “safe-as-possible-for-risk-taking”
kind of space. Survey data from CFG/CLC participants over the past several years at
CI consistently support the idea that in these groups, support can be sought, risks
can be taken, critical conversations can be had, trust can be grown, and thorny problems
can be tackled -- all through the process of working on dilemmas of professional practice
(for example, campus climate issues) with the help of structured protocols led by
qualified facilitators.
Through the IEAT/IEAP process, we are working to create a culture of DEIA praxis --
that is, the ongoing cycle of reflection and action -- with IEATs serving as the reflection
arm and IEAPs serving as the action arm of this work. Toward that end, status reports
are submitted by IEAP Initiative Leads and read by members of Inclusive Excellence
Action Teams (IEATs) and by the President's Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence
(PACIE) who will support the IEAP Initiative Leads by responding to formative assessment
questions posed in their status report.
Status Report Spring 2022 - 49 of the 73 employees who had gone through a year-long
process to become a qualified CFG/CLC coach were still employed at CI. 20 of those
49 indicated potential interest in helping to lead the “Courageous Conversations:
Town Halls & CLCs” initiative. Ultimately, 12 coaches committed to helping to lead
this initiative. In Fall 2022, all faculty, staff, administrators, and students were
invited to join one of 7 groups: 1 for students, 2 for staff, 1 for administrators,
2 for faculty and staff, and 1 for faculty, staff, and administrators. A total of
74 people are participating in these 7 groups.
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: Framers of the "Understanding Cultural Taxation and Eliminating
Its Impacts" initiative resist the idea that cultural taxation itself must be evaluated,
which suggests the need to articulate, defend, and measure its existence. Rather,
this recommendation from IEAT 4 takes as its starting point the existence of cultural
taxation at CI, necessitating the work of evaluating its impact, professionally and
personally, and designing strategies for identifying, avoiding, ameliorating, and
eliminating it. This initiative has three stages.
Phase 1: Research. A research team will design and conduct a research project which
will entail: (a) IRB submission, (b) the writing of a literature review on the topic
of cultural taxation in higher education, and (c) finding ways for minoritized employees
(staff, faculty, and administrators) to safely provide data on the professional and/or
personal impact of cultural taxation at CI, and on the ways in which it shows up in
the day to day in explicit and implicit ways.
Phase 2: Eliminating Cultural Taxation Guide for Supervisors. Outcomes of the Research
Team's findings will inform the work of a consultant or consultant team that will
create: (a) a guide for supervisors and curricula for workshops on identifying, avoiding,
ameliorating, and eliminating cultural taxation; (b) a minimum of two workshops designed
for a "coach the coaches" delivery model. (Possible workshop topics could be “How
to Recognize and Avoid Cultural Taxation” and “The Power of No: How/when do people
learn to create boundaries and say no?”; and (c) an assessment plan for the Addressing
CT Implementation Team to utilize.
Phase 3: Implementation Team: Faculty Affairs and HR will establish an Implementation
Team, which will create and pilot a plan for disseminating the research on campus,
rolling the workshops out to supervisors, and designing and implementing an assessment
plan for evaluating impact. This team will read the research findings, study the cultural
taxation guide, and attend the "coach the coaches" workshops designed by the external
consultant. A note on sustainability: The guide and workshops will need to be incorporated
into professional development opportunities through Faculty Affairs and HR and become
a living document that is reviewed and updated as the institution’s DEIA work advances.
This initiative will provide a meaningful starting place in supporting this work.
Through the IEAT/IEAP process, we are working to create a culture of DEIA praxis --
that is, the ongoing cycle of reflection and action -- with IEATs serving as the reflection
arm and IEAPs serving as the action arm of this work. Toward that end, status reports
are submitted by IEAP Initiative Leads and read by members of Inclusive Excellence
Action Teams (IEATs) and by the President's Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence
(PACIE) who will support the IEAP Initiative Leads by responding to formative assessment
questions posed in their status report.
A Call for Proposals (PDF, 184KB) was disseminated to faculty and staff in Spring 2022. One proposals was submitted,
an insufficient ent number to allow for a competitive selection process to occur.
A call for proposals will be disseminated again in 2023-2024.
This President's Advisory Committee on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE) subcommittee aim
is to identify and make recommendations to mitigate a systemic barrier on campus that
makes access to disability accommodations challenging for individuals with disabilities.
The subcommittee is working to identify barriers, or to use President Yao’s turn of
phrase, “Sand in Gears”, that interfere with the engagement of individuals with disabilities
into campus activities, including learning experiences, events, and extra-curricular
activities.
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: In July 2023, the CSU Board of Trustees released reports from Cozen O’Connor, the law firm contracted by the Chancellor’s Office in 2022-23 to investigate the
state of the CSU system’s and each campus’s Title IX services. Our Title IX Implementation
Team (TIX-IT) was formed in Spring 2023 and has been meeting regularly since the start
of the Fall 2023 semester.
Primary contacts: Laurie Nichols and Kaia Tollefson
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: This initiative is designed to ensure focused oversight of campus
climate survey administration. Tasks include developing campus climate survey instruments
and interview protocols and administering campus climate surveys. This work will inform
iterative analysis, development, and evaluation of CI’s Campus Affirmative Action
Plan and the campus plan for workforce diversity.
Prior to the development of this IEAP initiative, CSUCI administered the Higher Education
Research Institute’s (HERI) campus climate survey (CCS) twice (Fall 2018, Fall 2020),
to all employees and students. In Spring 2022, as campus leaders prepared for the
next administration in Fall 2022, the CCS working group recommended a move away from
utilizing the HERI for a number of reasons:
Length of time needed to complete the survey depressed participation rates
Breadth of topics didn’t allow depth of exploration on topics most relevant at CI
Breadth of topics required months of work on analysis, so that findings would be available
more than a semester past data collection phase – making findings actionable was complicated
by this timing
Longitudinal data lost by moving to a new instrument could be regained with careful
planning
The CCS working group recommended to President Yao a move away from HERI to in-house
creation of shorter, more focused surveys, with one administered each semester. During
a May 2022 Campus Climate Town Hall Meeting, President Yao presented this plan to the campus community. All employees and students
were invited via Qualtrics survey to identify priority topics for these shorter, more
focused surveys, the first of which would be the most frequently named topic of concern:
job satisfaction.
Dr. HyeSun Lee was contracted in Summer 2022 and Fall 2022 to work on instrument development
and validation for the first in-house developed CCS on job satisfaction.
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: Proposals will be invited for Professor & Student collaborations
on creating a 1-unit course proposal (OLLI model) to discuss current social issues
impacting racial and social justice. Processes for reviewing and selecting courses
need to be developed, as well as determining where these courses would be housed and
how students could earn credit for them.
Primary contacts: Dottie Ayer and Dianne Wei Bobritsky
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: Facilitate gathering student groups/representatives on a regular
basis to discuss DEIA principles & actions to amplify student voices. Steps would
include: (1) Gauge student/staff/faculty interest in involvement/engagement, (2) Invite
interest from current students/faculty/ staff, (3) Target existing organizations for
interest AND provide broad invitations, (4) Promote during IVO sessions for new students;
(5) Staff planning in preparation for implementation, (6) Convene all interested people
to finalize structure, and (7) Implement structure/meetings/activities
OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE: Create a common vision for DEIA work that includes rubrics for
all. Creating a resource for all learning and development work to use to evaluate
divisions, colleges, programs, units, and offices. Develop and share across campus
a rubric that communicates CSUCI’s DEIA vision, and require use of the rubric for
regular assessment, goal-setting, reporting, and ongoing re-evaluation.
From March-May 2021, six Inclusive Excellence Action Teams (IEAT) conducted inventories of campus efforts to promote racial and social justice and
to embed the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) campuswide.
Utilizing inventory data in the Summer of 2022, each IEAT evaluated their respective areas of responsibility to determine CSUCI’s
developmental stage in each area: emerging, developing, or transforming
To conduct this qualitative analysis, they used the Equity Lens Framework, version 1 (ELF.1) created by the President’s Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE).
In 2022-23, the PACIE used feedback from the IEATs to revise the ELF.1. This work
on finalizing the ELF.2 continues in Fall 2022.
Three goals of this initiative were achieved in 2022-23: (1) creation of an IEAP Website, which publishes the IEAT inventories, funded initiatives and status reports, and unfunded initiatives and status reports on those that moved forward via divisional reallocation
of resources; (2) PACIE’s revised Equity Lens Framework (ELF); and (3) conversion from paper to Digital ELF
b. Were the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and/or accessibility measurably
advanced through this initiative in 2022-23? How do you know? (Please attach or link to your
data and/or analysis of data.)
Piloting of the Digital ELF will take place in 2023-24. Impact of this tool for measurably advancing DEIA values at CSUCI will require time to determine.
