A Self-Assessment Tool for Evaluating the Advancement of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) at CSUCI
The President's Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE) was charged in 2020 with developing a framework for assessing the status of DEIA at CSUCI.
This tool combines:
- An earlier draft of an Equity Lens Framework by the President’s Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE) in 2020, modeled after the Protocol for Assessing Equity Mindedness in State Policy(PDF, 2.1MB) created by the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California
with
- The NERCHE Self-Assessment Rubric (PDF, 1.7MB) for the Institutionalization of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Higher Education created by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts, Boston
With thanks to CUE, NERCHE, and members of the PACIE, the Spring 2021 ELF builds upon and blends key elements of those earlier works:
- from CUE: (1) the research and background on why equity-minded policy analysis is important, and (2) the introduction of specific equity lenses through which to examine an institution
- from ELF 2020: (1) the focus on intersectional identities (e.g., ability, age, citizenship status, ethnicity, gender, national origin, neuro-atypicality, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status), and (2) the reflective questions that were a key feature of earlier ELF iterations
- from NERCHE: (1) the identification and definition of six dimensions for institutional self-assessment, and (2) the staging of developmental growth in those six dimensions through NERCHE's rubrics, the use of which will allow our progress toward advancing DEIA to be rated and tracked over time
In 2021, the six IEATs used the PACIE's Equity Lens Framework Pilot Instrument to conduct a gap analysis between DEIA activity at CSUCI (i.e., shown in the completed inventories of each IEAT), doing their best to assess where CSUCI was at that time on a DEIA-developmental scale: emerging, developing, transforming as defined in the NERCHE Self-Assessment Rubric (PDF, 1.7MB)
Based on this assessment, each IEAT made suggestions to the President and Cabinet in Fall 2021 about initiatives that could be funded for DEIA work at CSUCI in their respective areas, accessing a $650,000 allotment for 2022-23 designated for advancing strategic initiatives.
Of the 41 ideas for action submitted, 11 were selected for funding. Several other ideas not identified for funding were identified as actions that could be undertaken within the various divisions through reallocation of existing resources. Together, these selected actions comprise CSUCI's first Inclusive Excellence Action Plan.
ELF.2 is under development. The ELF Pilot was helpful in provoking thought but was an unwieldy tool. The PACIE spent late Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 revising and simplifying it, working to make it briefer and more user friendly.