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Inclusive excellence resources

A page within Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning (CATL)

Deb Hoskins
Inclusive Excellence Coordinator and
Chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
161 A Wing or 4302 Centennial Hall 
608.785.8734

What Is Inclusive Excellence?

AAC&U's "Making Excellence Inclusive (MEI)" initiative focuses on teaching and learning and advocates four primary elements: 

  1. A focus on student intellectual and social development. Academically, MEI seeks to ensure that every student receives the best possible course of study for the context in which the education is offered.

  2. A purposeful development and utilization of organizational resources to enhance student learning. Institutionally, MEI facilitates deep, sustained cross-sector or cross-unit collaboration and invites each member of the campus community to contribute to student learning and psychosocial development.

  3. Attention to the cultural differences learners bring to educational experiences, and how that diversity can enhance the enterprise. In the classroom, campus, and beyond, MEI works to establish an environment that challenges each student to achieve academically at high levels.

  4. A welcoming community that engages all of its diversity in the service of student and organizational learning. Structurally, MEI attends to both campus and community cultures. 

IE asks us to shift our thinking from diversity as a goal in itself (typically focused on numbers) to diversity as part of the educational process, a real-world factor that helps  everyone  learn better when  it is engaged deliberately and handled well. 

Given that higher ed institutions are more than just places for teaching and learning (e.g., they are also workplaces, and for some, home), UWL has adopted this definition of IE:  
"Inclusive Excellence is our active, intentional, and ongoing commitment to bridge differences with understanding and respect so all can thrive."

The UW System definition of diversity includes "individual differences (e.g., personality, life experiences) and group/social  differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, country of origin, and ability as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning." 

Inclusive Excellence challenges both students and faculty to think in new ways.

CATL IE's Goals

  • to support current diversity efforts related to teaching and learning
  • to infuse thinking about diversity into teaching and learning
  • to help faculty stay on the cutting edges of their disciplines
  • to close achievement gaps in student learning
  • to create inclusive, challenging, innovative learning environments that help all students to excel
  • to grant all students equitable ways to demonstrate learning
  • to improve critical thinking and problem-solving in all students

Planning Tools:

Units:

Academic units use the Inclusive Excellence Reporting Form to report on their strategic planning and progress on enacting their IE goals.  Departments work with their Equity Liaisons to develop their plans.

Instructors:

The Inclusive Excellence Inventory of Practices for Instructor Roles (open to UWL only) can help both individual instructors and academic departments plan and enact specific changes specific to the responsibilities of instructors. The Inventory categories align with the Planning Document above. The system will return an individual report to the user with instructions to enter your participation into UWL's electronic portfolio. Department chairs can also request a department-level report that summarizes the inventory results for all the members of the department.

Non-Instructional Staff:

Try the IE Self-Developer This tool helps non-instructional staff plan ways to enact Inclusive Excellence, either on your own or with your unit. It returns a record of your choices to you by email to save on your computer or within your email account. At the end, it takes you to the IE Ideas page (with a link to the Reading, where you'll find specific suggestions for each option in the Self-Developer.