Equity and Inclusion Principles

The College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) aspires to be guided and informed by the following set of Equity and Inclusion Principles.

The College of Education and Human Sciences...

Recognizes systemic inequities among underserved communities, which therefore, provides an opportunity for improving life chances and circumstances to correct injustice.
Embraces collaborative, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. All academic units share and learn from their best practices and create new transformative projects to better our world.
Embodies compassion, empathy, and humility in our practices.
Creates structures and practices to leverage access to contextually relevant resources to improve and advance circumstances and conditions of underserved and underrepresented communities.
Identifies when and where the exercise of rights is hindered by limited resources that constrain one’s choices/options, and seek resolution through their practice.
Respects, embraces, and values diversity of thought, lived experiences, histories, and identities among a variety of sociocultural contexts (e.g. socioeconomic status, first-generation, race/ethnicity, linguistic diversity, gender, sexual orientation, intellectual/physical/hidden disability, religion, geographical location/environment (rural, urban, suburban)).
Continuously works toward curricula, programs, policies, practices, and initiatives that invite an equity and inclusion mindset across all academic units.

The scaffolding of education and the human sciences to meet the needs of the human condition.
Guideposts of accountability to ensure children/youth, families, and communities are not excluded from support systems to meet their social, civic, economic, educational, and health-related needs.
Pedagogical pathways to enable stakeholders to engage the voices, assets, skills, and knowledge of the local community as a means and method for public engagement.
Values that celebrate, educate, and render visible the distinctive differences; shaped by our histories; which influence the diversity of experiences that unify our humanity and sense of belonging.
Learning apparatuses to create an environment where all faculty, staff, and students can nurture and build healthy relationships of trust.
Ideals, seeking to come into fruition through conceptual and empirical investigation for continuous improvement toward democratic practice, fair-mindedness, and justice for all citizens.
The recognition and reconciliation of unreconciled exercise of rights, opportunities, and resources for underserved, underrepresented, and under-resourced communities.

Blind to systemic inequities and persons affected by those realities.
Solely processes or goals; they are both processes and goals.
Specific end goals for any particular group or community. They are moral prerequisites to the determination of values to advocate, mitigate, and act on behalf of and with particular groups or communities when they are affected and impacted by systemic inequities.
Neutral values. These principles are morally attentive to addressing gaps, inconsistencies, or contradictions to the American ideals of democracy.
Designed to create hierarchical divisions between different groups or communities of people. Rather, they cultivate inclusive practices across differences and disrupt barriers that calcify long standing inequities to enable hope and possibility for populations in need.
Charity. They require optimal and fair conditions for all persons to obtain resources, whereby choices and options are made available to enable the exercise of one’s universal rights.
Bound by time or history.