SR 11-23-20 - President’s Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence (Revised 11-23-2020)

INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE is a journey requiring collective values, engagement, and practices that support equity, diversity, and inclusion among students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni and the community. Through our commitment to this journey, we recognize that our institution’s success in all areas of endeavors is dependent on the collective community’s work of making excellence inclusive.

Operationalizing inclusive excellence requires intentional, active, present and future engagement for integrating and sustaining a wide spectrum of diversity within the campus community through a welcoming and safe campus climate, where the cultivation of inclusiveness in every aspect of campus life is every member’s responsibility. For someone to work towards becoming excellent at inclusion means many things, for example, advancing the demographic diversity of our institution, working to surface and address our biases, and acting with the intention of fostering inclusivity by ensuring that all voices, perspectives, and opinions are being heard.

Equity is defined through acknowledgement that different people need different things to be successful. Improving equity therefore involves increasing justice and fairness through procedures and processes of institutions and systems, as well as through the distribution of resources, so that all students, staff, and faculty have the access and opportunities they need for success and advancement.

Operationalizing the value of equity requires a building of an understanding of the historical root causes of outcome disparities within our society, cultivation of the habit of asking questions that account for these inequities in the decision-making process, acting with direct, explicit and intentional efforts to raise awareness about racial and social justice, and transforming university policies and practices that create or worsen inequality, especially for historically underserved populations of students, faculty, and staff.

DIVERSITY is not defined by the California State University Executive Orders 1096 and 1097; however, they value “diversity and fostering understanding and mutual respect.”1 In support of the Executive Orders, CSU Channel Islands embraces and supports differences and intersectional identities, including abilities (physical and mental), age, citizenship status, culture, First Nations (federal, state, and tribal recognition), gender identity and expression, nationality, marital status, medical condition, neurological differences, race/ethnicity (color, ancestry, indigeneity), religious/spiritual identity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, and diverse characteristics that make individuals in our community unique. Also, in conjunction with the Executive Order, we assert that “all individuals within our community have the right to participate” in CSUCI programs and activities, free from all forms of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.

In addition to the identity categories named above, we at CSU Channel Islands embrace individual differences (e.g., personality, language, learning styles, body size, physical characteristics, and life experiences) and social differences (e.g., education status, degree obtained, job status or position within the university, socioeconomic status, citizenship and non-citizenship status, and any political affiliation). We commit to the ongoing work of ensuring that our collective experience is enriched because of our diversity.

Operationalizing the campus value of diversity requires an intentional and ongoing effort to make explicit and implicit biases visible and creating a culture that embraces diversity at multiple levels:
• internally (personal responsibility within the individual dealing with explicit and implicit biases),
• interpersonally (relationships individuals have with each other),
• institutionally (within organizations created to structure society), and
• culturally (within the values, norms, belief systems, behavioral patterns, of groups of people).

COLLEGIALITY is defined as individual accountability and shared responsibility for behaviors that contribute to the mission of CSU Channel Islands, and that strengthen the potential for all members of the campus community to consistently experience civil, positive, and professional working conditions.
Collegiality does not require congeniality, deference to popular opinion, or the performance of pleasantries. It does not imply value for being compliant or agreeable. To the contrary, collegiality is what makes productive dissent, argumentation, and collaboration across differences possible. It does entail open, honest, caring, and clear conversations that take into account inequities of all sorts that may render some more free to speak without consequences than others, while actively working to mitigate and/or dismantle those inequities.

Operationalizing collegiality includes but is not limited to supporting each other in:
● engaging in mutual learning to promote the work of identifying and enacting principles of equity in institutional functioning;
● communicating in clear, constructive ways that recognize the human dignity and worth of all members of the campus community;
● surfacing, acknowledging, and addressing conflict in productive ways that encourage healthy conversation and dissent, while promoting transparency and inclusive opportunities to work toward resolution;
● learning and practicing the skill of “calling each other in” when tensions arise-naming issues courageously, with respect and care for each other-rather than “calling out” people in ways that are hurtful or harmful;
● reviewing and establishing program policies, procedures, and practices, and making equity-minded changes when necessary;
● engaging collaboratively and executing all assigned and accepted professional functions within agreed-upon timeframes;
● cultivating an atmosphere of trust and collaboration in navigating our differences.

1 Executive Orders 1096 and 1097 in “The CSU Commitment to Inclusive Excellence” by Chancellor Timothy P. White California State University, January 20, 2018. https://www2.calstate.edu/impact-of- the-csu/diversity/inclusive- excellence/Documents/CSU%20Commitment%20to%20Inclusive%20Excellence%201-29-18.pdf