Inclusive Excellence
Dear Virginia Tech Community members:
As the Implementation Team examines the recommendations from the Taskforce on Race and the Institution, I believe that the timing is right for Virginia Tech to consider a new approach to achieving institutional excellence.
Creating a campus that is both diverse and inclusive is fundamental to the successful achievement of our vision as a research intensive land grant institution. Specifically, the diversity of people, perspectives, and ideas are essential to new scholarship, innovation, and organizational effectiveness. Our success is achieved through the realization that the aforementioned vision is inextricably linked to our diversity and inclusion efforts.
“Inclusive Excellence re-envisions both quality and diversity. It reflects a striving for excellence in higher education that has been made more inclusive by decades of work to infuse diversity into recruiting, admissions, and hiring; into the curriculum and co-curriculum; and into administrative structures and practices. It also embraces newer forms of excellence, and expanded ways to measure excellence, that take into account research on learning and brain functioning, the assessment movement, and more nuanced accountability structures. Inclusive Excellence is a multi-layered process through which we achieve excellence in learning; research and teaching; student development; institutional functioning; local and global community engagement; workforce development; and more. It is the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.” (The Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2005)
I am pleased to announce that one of the lead authors of the Inclusive Excellence model, Dr. Damon Williams, Assistant Vice Provost for Multicultural & International Affairs at the University of Connecticut, has agreed to help our institution identify and implement Inclusive Excellence principles and strategies most applicable and advantageous to our institutional culture.
Dr. Williams will be on the Virginia Tech campus on November 9th and again on January 8th to share the aforementioned model with campus community members and to gather information on the current state of our institution’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
I invite you to participate during his visits to Virginia Tech. We have designated certain times for Dr. Williams to meet with different constituency groups on November 9th; however, you are more than welcome to attend any or all of his meetings on that day. Please refer to the schedule, provided on this website, for his availability.
His visit on January 8th, will be a part of a collaborative conference between Advance VT, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Office for Equal Opportunity. Dr. Williams will be leading a plenary session that afternoon.
This website contains conceptual information regarding Inclusive Excellence, as defined by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, as well as links to materials surrounding the Inclusive Excellence Model. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with this information and to play an integral role in our institutional efforts to strive for inclusive excellence.
Sincerely,
Kevin McDonald
Vice President for Multicultural Affairs & Equity